Central · Thailand
Uthai Thani · อุทัยธานี
Huai Kha Khaeng UNESCO forest, wild elephants, slow river towns.
- Region
- Central
- Population
- 324,000
- Area
- 6,730 km²
- Stories filed
- 0
About Uthai Thani
History
Uthai Thani grew up as a teak-logging and riverine-trade town on the Sakae Krang tributary of the Chao Phraya, with a strong Lao and Karen presence in the surrounding hills. Its founder — a Lao nobleman who settled here with his followers in the late eighteenth century after the collapse of Vientiane — is commemorated at a central city pillar shrine. The province remained a quiet agricultural backwater through the modern era, preserving its riverine character better than most central provinces that underwent industrial transformation in the Bangkok corridor.
Landscape & geography
The eastern two-thirds of the province are central-plain rice country, flat and irrigated by the Sakae Krang and its canals; the western third rises into the Tenasserim range along the Myanmar border. Here, Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary — a UNESCO World Heritage component protecting over 2,000 square kilometres — harbours tigers, gaur, wild elephants, and one of the largest intact blocks of mainland Southeast Asian forest still connected to the Burmese border ranges.
Why visit
Serious wildlife-watchers come for Huai Kha Khaeng, one of mainland Asia's most important wildlife corridors, though access is tightly regulated and requires advance permits and a licensed guide — plan a minimum of two nights. Casual visitors stop at the Sakae Krang floating houses — long wooden rafts moored to the riverbank, still lived in by fishing families — and climb to Wat Sangkat Rattanakhiri on its hilltop for sunrise views over the old town and river. The province works best as part of a Kanchanaburi–Uthai Thani–Kamphaeng Phet road itinerary.
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