Just minutes after the sun set behind endless rows of palm and rubber plantations and karst peaks draped in jungle, I pass through Phutawadi gate, a nine-peak arch that marks the entrance to Khao Na Nai Luang Dharma Park, a Buddhist temple area southeast of Khao Sok National Park. “Tent? Yes, can stay here,” says Oen in her lilting Thai accent. She’s a local vendor who sells fresh coconuts at the park, but it turns out not to be quite the campsite that I expected.

“Follow me,” says Oen and asks a few Thai men chatting in the dark whether it’s okay. They nod in unison, and she leads me to a temple nearby, where I park. Dogs bark and howl like wolves, yet the brown-orange-robed monk she introduces me to radiates poise. Before I know it, I am sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, riding up a steep, potholed road, grabbing the rails as we go over bumps.

Then, I find myself in front of a rusty open gondola of a diesel-powered cable car that looks like an aerial goods lift. There is not much to hold onto, no handrails on the side, only a gridded surface to sit on. “It’s safe,” the monk says with aplomb. I can’t be bothered to look for another campground in the middle of nowhere at this time of night, so I sit down without questioning where it will take me and close my eyes so as not to see the 100m-void below.

Meeting a former monk named Khai at the top of this 300m-long ropeway, where a roofed, open-air level beneath a mortar and laterite chedi with Buddha relics awaits, is the beginning of a wacky camping adventure in Surat Thani province, a world away from thronging tourists.

“There is no labour cost here. Monks and villagers built,” communicates Khai by showing me the Google translation on his phone, sitting cross-legged in his 15-square-metre concrete room that serves as a kitchen, bedroom, and living room. Khai has lived here in Khao Na Nai Luang Dharma Park in the province’s Phanom District for 12 years, nine of which were on the temple grounds further down, where four monks dwell.

Quietness, I sense, is the reason why he moved up here to this peaceful spot where chedi No. 5 sits. But for Khai and me, there is no one else around. Save for the chirping crickets, the boiling water bubbling in Khai’s electric cooker, plus the wind chimes tinkling in the doorway, I hear nothing. He tells me of how this place came to be, elaborating on the monks, locals, and a few farang volunteers who erected the first of six stupas around 1982.

The beginnings of this park date back to 1975, when about 40 villagers moved from Nakhon Si Thammarat’s Cha-uat district to Khao Na Nai, a communist area in those days. Locals were obliged to join the council and settle on living standards. Gradually, their conditions improved, and the community grew. Thailand’s government ending the pact with the communist party in 1982, when schools and temples opened thanks to donations, paved the way for Khao Na Nai Luang Dharma Park, a name that refers to its stupas.

Today, sitting enthroned on jungle-cloaked limestone crags that a tectonic shift pushed upwards like the Himalayas at the end of the Ice Age, the park comprises six chedi sites – numbered in the chronological order in which they were built: stupas glittering in gold, mortar spires whiter than coconut meat, plus red, laterite brick chedis reminiscent of the Khmer empire, hands down one of the most spellbinding sights of Surat Thani province, if not Thailand.

If you’re keen to visit intriguing places beyond the tourist areas, spend time with locals organically, and experience culture shocks, look no further than Surat Thani’s Khao Na Nai Luang Dharma Park. On Google Maps it’s called Thamma Park (Ban Khao Na Nai).

Only chedi No. 6 – built with laterite bricks and domed and sculpted in intricate, undulated shapes like an Indian stupa – requires a nail-biting cable car ride. You can reach chedi No. 5 via ropeway and on foot. But you’d better climb the steep stairs at daytime as you’ll have to – occasionally – pull yourself up on aerial roots or walk over moss-laden trunks and narrow bridges without railings.

The fifth pagoda, adorned with rows of gilded Buddha statues and Phaya Nak serpents legendary in Thai mythology, boasts white mortar outside. Inside, laterite bricks are all around you – creating dull, isolated sounds when you speak – with a laterite cone and Buddha relics in the centre, pots for yellow marigolds, and a donation box.

Construction of the park’s pagodas took 12 years, and it’s an ongoing project. “I want to stay here and build pagodas until I die,” the tattooed, ample Khai, who’s in his forties and wears his hair in a bun, says matter-of-factly. He wants to create something for future generations. He continues a tradition common in the past when citizens devoted themselves to monastic life to prevent the religion’s demise.

Today, with some 95 percent of the kingdom’s denizens prescribed to Buddhism, Thailand’s dominating faith is planted in people’s lifestyles. It was estimated in 2019 that the country had around 350,000 monks.

This lifestyle creates peace, mindful tranquillity, and an exceptionally hospitable and polite disposition. Serving chicken sausages, making clinking sounds with tongs, Khai adds almost apologetically that he’s not in good shape. I learn that he eats MAMA noodles, chicken sausages, and meatballs daily, apart from cabbage, because they’re easy to cook.

“Do you ever miss the outside world?” I ask. “I do, sometimes,” he admits, looking at his room’s daisy-painted floor. While he thinks he wouldn’t find a job beyond the temple grounds because he never studied and can’t speak English, taking pictures provides constant joy for him. “I’m a photography enthusiast,” he says with a childlike sparkle in his eyes, showing me images of the sun setting behind the stupas of Khao Na Nai Luang Dharma Park and karst peaks bathed in a sea of mist. The happiness he radiates is infectious.

Chatting all evening in his room that smells of Fineline’s peach blossom-scented fabric softener, we make each other understood, relying on Google translations and my smattering of Thai. Taking another look at his four walls equipped with a fridge, fan, tea-maker, electricity and wifi, plus a gold-framed photo of Lu Phra on the wall, an important Buddhist monk, I tell him to wake me at 9 am and retire to my tent.

Aloft in total seclusion, I’m left soaking up a gentle curtain call of chirping crickets and chorusing frogs. But then, a pleasant breeze turns into a cold, bitter wind picking up speed. It buzzes like mosquitoes, just 100 times louder, opening and slamming the metal door behind my tent. The first fat raindrops hit the ceramic tile flooring, and all of a sudden it starts pelting down, drowning out even the mate-friendliest frog.

I love all of it – the sound of driving rain, the clean air, clouds moving into the roofed, open-air storey beneath chedi No. 5, and the aroma of wet plants and earth. Becoming one with nature, I collect my thoughts, enjoying the moment before pulling the tent zipper. I bundle up on my thin mat, enveloped in my toasty sleeping bag, and look forward to a proper shuteye.

“Hey, you!” says Khai in front of my tent, waking me with a start, half an hour earlier than I expected. I pace myself for the daunting ropeway, but Khai has good news. “I’ll show you chedi No. 4 – let’s walk.”

He helps me roll the tent tightly, and within minutes, we’re leaving. Getting past that rusty cable car I used last night I admire the views of eclectic stupas fanning out below as I follow Khai down the stairs. We defy the oppressive morning heat under the patchy blanket of grey-black skies and arrive at chedi No. 4 within five minutes. Chirping tailorbirds welcome us as we cross a balustraded bridge that connects the rocks between the fourth and fifth stupas, passing through a gate that reads in Thai, sapan JD loyfah, or sky pagoda bridge.

Khai tells me there are 41 golden mini-stupas. Each one is made from cement, I presume, because he shows me a photo of what looks like concrete and mimics a potter with his hands. The centrepiece is a gilded, pavilion-like shrine framed by sweet-smelling paper flowers and lance-shaped oyster lilies – plants with glossy, dark green leaves and purple undersides.

Devotees come here to pray for good luck, prostrating before a black Buddha sculpture and donating yellow marigolds. We shoot some photographs and continue our trek down the challenging nature trail, where Khai and I part ways. He doesn’t want money for camping at his place. Shaking his head, he also refuses a tip for the food and free water and says, “Come anytime. Everyone welcome.”

Seeing me coming back, Oen smiles as if knowing the cable car ride required some courage. I buy a coconut from her and set off, chasing other yes-can-stay-here-sites in Surat Thani province.

Header image: © Khai aka Saen