The Definitive Guide to National Parks of Southeast Asia
The first complete reference to the wild places of an entire region.
Across more than 580 entries spanning all eleven countries - Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam - this book covers every national park in Southeast Asia, alongside the wildlife sanctuaries, nature reserves, marine parks, and Ramsar wetlands that complete the map of where the wild things still are.
Each entry tells you what the place is famous for, what wildlife and landscapes you'll find, how to get there, when to go, and where to stay. Iconic parks like Komodo, Khao Yai, Phong Nha, and Tanjung Puting get full treatment. So do the obscure ones - and that's where the book earns its keep.
Because anyone can find Komodo. But did you know:
- On a tiny island in the Java Sea sits Pulau Bawean Wildlife Reserve, the only place on Earth where the critically endangered Bawean deer survives - fewer than 250 left, found nowhere else.
- In Sumatra's Riau province, Tesso Nilo National Park is one of the last refuges of the Sumatran elephant, where WWF runs a "Flying Squad" of trained elephants who patrol the boundaries to keep wild herds out of palm-oil plantations.
- Off the coast of Borneo in East Kalimantan, Kakaban Lake in the Berau Marine Protected Area is one of only a handful of places on Earth where four species of jellyfish have evolved without stings - you can swim among them.
- Deep in northern Vietnam's karst hills, Tat Ke-Ban Bung Nature Reserve holds the world's largest population of the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey - a primate so rare fewer than 250 exist globally, with snub noses, white moustaches, and pink lips.
- In southern Sumatra's Way Kambas National Park, scientists have produced the first captive-born Sumatran rhinos in over a century - humanity's last realistic chance to save the world's most endangered large mammal.
- On Sulawesi's Tangkoko Reserve, a 30-minute walk from the village leads to the dusk emergence of the spectral tarsier - a primate the size of a fist with eyes bigger than its brain - leaping from strangler-fig roost trees to hunt insects through the night.
- In Indonesian Papua, Cagar Alam Waigeo is the only place on Earth where Wilson's bird-of-paradise performs its courtship dance - a scarlet-and-yellow bird with twin spiral tail wires that males display on cleared forest stages at dawn.
- In Cambodia's Northern Plains, the homestays at Tmatboey in Chhep Wildlife Sanctuary are the most reliable place on the planet to see the giant ibis - a 1-metre-tall wading bird so rare it was thought extinct for decades.
This is the book for the traveller who wants to see the real wild - not just the famous parks, but the obscure ones where the rarest animals still live. It's the book for the naturalist hunting down a particular species, the diver mapping out the Coral Triangle, the birder chasing endemics across a thousand islands, and anyone who wants to know what's actually out there.
Eleven countries. Five hundred and eighty wild places. One reference.
