Gibbon Rehabilitation Project and Bang Pae Waterfall

Up in the Northeast of Phuket in a heavily forested area is the Khao Phra Thaeo National Park. To get there, head North on the airport road from Phuket Town and turn right at the Heroine's Monument, then drive around 10km - the entrance on the left side is easy to find. We have been up this way many times, not just for the Gibbon Project and the waterfall, but nearby is Bang Pae Seafood and also Bang Rong, where you find a floating restaurant and you can get a ferry to Koh Yao Noi. The Bang Pae waterfalls are not big, but popular with locals at the weekend and you get quite a few tourists up here too. There's a restaurant called Peang Prai just at the entrance gate to the waterfall too.

The forest is thick and full of sounds from the chirping of insects to the song of the gibbons. At the entrance to the falls just as you turn off the main road there is an elephant trekking safari - the elephants looked happy and well fed. I swear they posed for photos too. If you want to try elephant trekking this might be a good spot.



As you drive up to the park entrance the roadside is lined with rubber trees as is much of this area of Phuket. Rubber was once very important to the economy of Phuket and indeed it continues to be important. There are also fields of pineapples nearby, but once you hit the park entrance you are in the jungle, baby!



The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project (GRP) is based here - this organisation aims to protect gibbons and their habitat through rehabilitation and education. It's a sad fact that gibbons are caught and kept as pets in Thailand and even hawked round the streets to have photos taken with tourists. This is illegal. The project takes in gibbons who have been rescued, taken away from their "owners" by the police or that have been handed in by owners who no longer wish to look after them. They then go through a long rehabilitation before being released back into the forests. Apparently there is a release due next week which one of the volunteers was telling me about. Sadly he also said that poaching still continues here in Phuket.

 

The Gibbons that are being kept here can be seen in large cages. There are notice boards with information about the gibbons and the work of the GRP. Gibbons swing around and sing their distinctive song. Some sit quietly. The volunteers know them all by name and say they have quite different personalities. My kids enjoyed seeing them and I tried to explain that gibbons are not monkeys!





If you are in Phuket or anywhere else in Thailand and see a gibbon being taken round the streets for tourists to take photos, please take a photo and send it to the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project - grp@gibbonproject.org - tell them where and when the photo was taken. You can also contact the Thai National Parks Office at www.dnp.go.th/complain/index.asp. Please note that the project gets none of the National Park fee (200 Baht for foreigners), so any donation you can make is appreciated. They have a small shop selling gibbon related souvenirs. For more about the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project see the web site www.gibbonproject.org.



If you walk past the Gibbon Project you see a big sign saying "Bang Pae Waterfall". A winding and (in some parts) quite steep path heads up into the forest following the river. At the bottom there are some picnic tables and a few cheap restaurants too. At several points on the way up there are sections of river where you can jump in - on Saturday it was (as usual) quite busy with locals.







• Location on Google Earth

At the very top is a waterfall of about 15m in height... wow! I wouldn't base your trip to Phuket on a visit to this waterfall, but in combination with the gibbons, a walk in the forest and a drive around this area of Phuket, Bang Pae makes a very nice day out. Also good for getting your kids tired - take them for a walk up the path to the falls and they'll sleep like logs that night!