A weekend in Khao Yai

It’s been more than 3 years that my wife and I have moved to Bangkok. So far, I have been conveniently avoiding this place called Khao Yai — a little town about 3 hours drive from Bangkok. It is also a place my wife’s been planning for as long as I can remember now. This month we had a long weekend with a postponed Songkran holiday (blame covid19 for that) and we finally had our go at it.

Getting to Khao Yai from Bangkok

There are public buses running between Bangkok and Khao Yai, but unless you have a car waiting for you in Khao Yai, I would strongly recommend to skip this option. There is minimum public transportation in Khao Yai i.e. no taxi/van/Grab/Uber, nothing.

I had rented a driver a few weeks ago on our trip to Koh Chang. He was extremely professional, punctual, friendly and spoke good English (a huge advantage, I tell you!). We availed his services for our Khao Yai trip too. He charged us about THB 6000 for 2 days. We started early at 6 AM, to skip the long weekend traffic and reached Khao Yai at 9 AM.

Staying in Khao Yai

We had a tough time finding good hotels due to our last minute plans & the long weekend. We ended up staying at Greenery Resort. It was a decent hotel with a good family vibe to it. But I wasn’t overall impressed for the cost at which we booked our room. I would recommend checking these other hotels — Thames Valley, Lala Mukha Tented Resort and My Ozone.

Day 1 — Khao Yai

Primo Piazza

We reached Primo Piazza around at 9 AM. In fact, we were the very first one to buy the tickets and enter the property. The entry fee is 200 THB, which includes a feed ticket for alpacas, merino sheep and donkeys.

The place comprises of a beautiful architecture with lush floral greenery and has a nice Italian village-like feel to it. There are plenty of Instagram worthy photo spots here. Since we were the first entries for the day, it was kind of spooky too being all alone in this empty town.

The food scene however isn’t really great, they only have a small cafe. We were hoping to have some nice breakfast options. However, they only had coffee,cakes, smoothies and that’s about it. We spent about 1–2 hours here, and then left for PB Valley Winery.

PB Valley Winery

PB valley is merely a 15 mins drive from Primo Piazza. We had pre-booked a 75 minute tour which was scheduled for 11 AM. They explained in detail about the wine making process, post which we spent around 10 mins around the facility checking the various giant containers, flask and barrels.

The tour also had a wine tasting session where they served 3 different types of wine or grape juice for the non-alcoholic. The grape juice was very refreshing. We also ended up buying a bottle for Bangkok, but ended up finishing it the same night ;)

For the last part of the tour we were taken to different farm sections where they cultivated grapes, mulberry, strawberries etc. The weather was pleasant during our visits as it had rained for few minutes while we were wine tasting.

At the end of the tour, we were dropped at the souvenir and dining arena. We picked some grape jam and juice to take home. Some scrumptious Pad Thai with river prawns and the beautiful winery view for lunch was the highlight of the tour.

We later drove back to the hotel for check in, where we relaxed till 5 PM.

Khao Yai Art Museum

We were initially very reluctant to visit the museum, but later decided to stop by as it was on the way to our dinner venue.

Nothing extraordinary about this Art Museum, some sculptures and painting were very good, but most were abstract and dark and could not be understood (At least by me :P).

MidWinter Green

We arrived at MidWinter green, our dinner venue, around 6 PM. I had no clue about this place. My wife decided on this restaurant and our driver had helped reserved seats for us. I was amazed by the looks of this place. The restaurant premises resembled old European castles and had both indoor and outdoor dining options. If you are visiting this place in the evening, I would recommend for the outdoor seating option. They had a local band belting out good English songs. The lights, ambiance, food, everything was good about this place. They had great vegetarian options too in their menu , something from my experience, isn’t an easy thing to find in Thailand.

The property is huge. They even have their own farm to grow basic veggies which is open to public for visit.

We spent about 2–2.5 hours here before wrapping up our day.

Day 2

Lam Takhong Wind Turbines

Lam Takhong is about 1 hour drive from Khao Yai city center. To be honest, I was skeptical about this place in the beginning, but after visiting it I have absolutely different views. Early morning is a good time to visit this place as the sun is not harsh and the place is breezy. You can rent a cycle (40 THB) and ride around the upper pond area and wind turbines. There are many good photo stops and the view on either side is breathtaking. There are few shops for refreshments and quick bites at the entrance.

Chocolate Factory

Next, we stopped at the Chocolate Factory. I was expecting to see how chocolates are made within the “factory”, unfortunately there wasn’t much to see. But the variety of chocolates, cakes, muffins, bread was good. I liked the quality of products sold.

Tara Cafe — A big disappointment.

Our driver recommended us to have our lunch at Tara Cafe. The place was crowded. It was quite big for a “cafe”. Unfortunately, the menu was in Thai and it seemed to have very few vegetarian options for us. In contrast to the pictures on Google showing running clean water, all we saw was a muddy water stream (possibly due to the rains). It was very chaotic, and no proper signs for where to do order or where to sit. We literally left the place in few minutes without eating.

Farm Chokchai

Our last stop for the day was Farm Chokchai. Due to COVID the main farm tour was not available. However, there were many shops, cafe, restaurants on the property to chill at. We rented an ATV for around 330 THB, and explored the property. It was good fun.

I had heard a lot about their fresh milk ice-cream, and it lived up to it’s name. I highly recommend having one (or two if you can :P) if you plan to visit this place. I tried vanilla and cookie and cream, both of them were really good.

Final thoughts

• 2–3 days is more than enough to cover all of Khao Yai
• Book your hotels well in advance, as all the good ones are sold out on long weekends.
• Plan alternatives to few places in your itinerary, sometimes some places are closed for renovation or you might just not like it. Having a fallback plan is helpful in such cases.
• Plan your travel well, leave the city before the rush hour.