Qualla: Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park

Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park: Introduction

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Khunkay, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cliff called Phu Hin Dang is brightly coloured — reds, oranges, and yellows banded into the rock face — and geologists have an explanation for this: millions of years ago, when this part of Asia was sea floor rather than mountain, mineral residues from seawater were absorbed into the sediment. Dry periods catalysed those minerals into the pigments now visible in the stone. The cliff did not intend to be beautiful. It simply recorded its own history in a way that anyone standing at the top can read. That quality — spectacle that turns out to be evidence — runs through much of Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park, at the far eastern end of the Dângrêk Mountains where Thailand edges against both Laos and Cambodia at once.

Image: Khunkay | CC BY-SA 3.0

Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park: At the End of the Mountains

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chanabun R, Sutcharit C, Tongkerd P, Panha S, CC BY 3.0. Phu Chong–Na Yoi was established in 1987, covering 428,750 rai — roughly 686 square kilometres — across the Buntharik, Na Chaluai, and Nam Yuen districts of Ubon Ratchathani Province. It is designated IUCN Category II, the same classification as most national parks worldwide: a p...

Image: Chanabun R, Sutcharit C, Tongkerd P, Panha S | CC BY 3.0

Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park: Water Falling in Three Steps

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naikhumklao, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park's most visited natural feature is Namtok Huai Luang, also known as Namtok Bak Teo — a waterfall that drops from an elevation of 30 metres in three distinct stages. Below the last step, a small pool forms beside a white sand beach, its water running turquoise. That combin...

Image: Naikhumklao | CC BY-SA 4.0

Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park: Rock Gardens and Ancient Shelter

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Khunkay, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Phlan Yao Rock Garden is not a garden in any cultivated sense. It is a stretch of terrain where rocks in different formations have accumulated naturally, scattered across the ground in arrangements that suggest something deliberate without being so. The Pha Phueng Viewpoint s...

Image: Khunkay | CC BY-SA 3.0

Phu Chong–Na Yoi National Park: A Frog That Nobody Had Described

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Khunkay, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2004, a researcher working in Phu Chong–Na Yoi collected a specimen that turned out to belong to a species unknown to science. The frog, later named *Fejervarya triora*, was formally described in a 2006 paper titled "Three New Species of Frogs and a New Tadpole from Eastern Th...

Image: Khunkay | CC BY-SA 3.0