The main reason you're supposed to go to Kao Yai is to see wildlife, but that's not very rewarding. You have to get up very early in the morning, and the pickings are still pretty slim. You'll see monkeys everywhere, but then again, you see them all over Thailand anyway, and you'll see lots of variations on deer. (You can see one at the campsite picture if you look carefully. Also, I may be losing my mind, but I'm pretty sure that at that campsite, we met a film crew who was working with Tom Cruise on a movie, and they said Tom had just left before we arrived. That really doesn't make any sense, but a Tom Cruise sighting at Kao Yai would have more than made up for our lack of animal sightings.) The goal is to see elephants and tigers but they're quite rare in this park, especially the tigers, which are an endangered species.

We stayed at the Juldis hotel, which is nondescript but inoffensive. There's a burgeoning leisure industry springing up around the park, including Thailand's first winery, Chateau de Loei, and a relatively new hotel with accomodation in very nice tents, as well as a popular golf course. But none of this was here when we went in '99, so entertainment is pretty much the pool at the hotel (pictured above). Of course there's always the square dancing...