Tham Luang–Khun Nam Nang Non National Park

Tham Luang–Khun Nam Nang Non National Park protects the cave where twelve boys and their football coach were rescued after nine days trapped by flooding in 2018. The park sits in Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai province, near the Myanmar border, and covers roughly 12,000 rai of the Doi Nang Non forest reserve. Entry is free, open daily around 08:00-16:00.

The cave itself runs about 10.3km into the limestone hills, but only its entrance section is open to the public, and only in the dry season. Guided visits between November and April go as far as Chamber 1, roughly a kilometre in, which served as the command post during the 2018 rescue. During the rainy season the system floods — the same seasonal flooding that trapped the football team — and the cave closes entirely. There is a visitor centre and car park at the main entrance with information on the cave’s geology and the rescue timeline.

The rescue itself is well documented: the boys and their coach were found alive after nine days by British cave divers, and the extraction took three more days, finishing on 10 July 2018. Former Thai Navy SEAL diver Saman Kunan died during the operation on 6 July, having run out of air while placing air tanks along the route out. Fellow diver Beirut Pakbara died in December 2019 from an infection contracted during the operation. Most visitors come for that history rather than the cave’s natural features, and the site is treated by park staff more as a memorial than an adventure stop.

Watch out: This is a place people died working to save others — it isn’t the setting for dramatic photos or reenactments. Keep to marked areas and follow ranger instructions, especially near the entrance where the rescue took place.

Beyond the main cave, the park’s forest covers a stretch of the Doi Nang Non range along the Myanmar border, with trails, other smaller limestone caverns, and seasonal streams. Hornbills and macaques are reported in the forest canopy, though this isn’t a park built around wildlife-spotting the way Doi Mae Salong’s hiking trails are.

The park lies roughly 60km north of Chiang Rai city via Highway 110 toward Mae Sai, and is usually visited as a stop on the way to or from the Mae Sai border crossing rather than a full-day destination on its own — Wat Phra That Doi Wao on the Mae Sai border hill is a common pairing. Bring sturdy shoes and check current cave-access conditions with park staff before planning around going inside — the dry-season window and any temporary closures are the detail worth confirming ahead of a visit.