Climbing Khao Ok Thalu

At the weekend, we decided to visit Phatthalung province in Thailand and climb Khao Ok Thalu. I might be going a bit over the top by saying “climb” as the summit is 581 feet but I’m still going to claim it. The mountain has a distinct shape and is very close to the centre of Phatthalung town (a few minutes drive).

As you can see in the image above, we forgot to take a nice picture of the mountain close up 🙂 and only remembered as we were driving home the next day. In the picture though, you can see the peak which is where you can climb and the secondary formation to the right. The secondary formation to the right has a Buddhist temple that I believe you can visit, but as of writing, the pandemic is still ongoing and visiting the temple was not possible.

To get to the mountain, you will want to search for @7.6242398,100.0887704. You can also search on Google maps for Mountain View Guest House. Getting to the mountain the first time was a little confusing, the road you drive down is a local road that is quite poorly maintained but continue down the road until the end. You will drive past a few local houses, a restaurant/hotel on the left a temple with stone elephants on the right and a few metres beyond is a large space for parking.

Climbing the mountain comes in two stages. The first stage involves a lot of stairs. I didn’t count but supposedly there are 1066 of them. While climbing up the stairs, in normal times, you’ll be able to stop off and see a temple with monks and at the very top of the stairs is a shrine for two important monks, one from Pattaya and one from Bangkok.

The second stage of reaching the summit of Khao Ok Thalu involves climbing, with ropes and all. I’ve never done climbing so I can confidently say that anyone can do the climb. There are local guides that will assist you on the climb itself but also tell you about the mountain itself, when the temples were built, the local are and in our case gave us great recommendations for future weekend adventures 🙂 (Trang province inc).

The picture above is the start of the second stage to reach the summit. The start is probably the second hardest part of the climb.

At the top of the mountain you’ll receive an awesome view of Phatthalung province. You can see all of Phatthalung town, Thale Noi, Thale Yai, Trang, Songkhla, and even Nakhon. I’ll just put a bunch of pictures, that will do it more justice.