The rest of the trip was focused on the Banthat Range again, I really like this mountain range, it's easily accessible and not far from Trang City with lots of waterfalls and streams. The more I research and explore the more possible trails and routes I find. It seems like there are at least 5-6 from the Trang side.
I mainly focused this time on Phrai Sawan WF route, which I wrote about earlier. There has been some serious rainfall this rainy season which was evident throughout the trek right from the start - the path was washed away 50 metres from the trailhead by the river and since it had been a couple of years since I was last here, I couldn't remember where the trail went or which side of the river it was on. It seemed to just dead end. A few minutes of head-scratching later I went back to the trailhead and took a left on a less clear trail. And so I stumbled upon an impressive waterfall not labelled on Google Maps. Marked on my Google Earth screenshot as 'Waterfall A'.
I am classing this sign as the 'trailhead' as this is the furthest point you can drive a bike to. But the road isn't in good shape so you might have to park 1-2km before, especially if in a normal car.
Eventually I found the trail (past the part that had fallen into the river), just by luck really. And from there it is a clear and obvious trail for about 4km, not much elevation gain on this section. Lots of wild boar activity in this area, I saw a big one which grunted and trotted off sharpish.
Then there are a few stream crossings and either I lost the trail or the trail sort of dead ends here. I searched around and eventually settled upon a minor ridge trail which has not been used for a long time. Some old pieces of litter present, but I am fairly sure this is not the correct/current way to go. The higher I got the less obvious the trail was and eventually it was battling through vines and spiky plants, not recommended. But by then I was only 1km or so away from the summit so I pressed on.
Because I arrived at the summit via an old trail, there were no dirt paths like those you can easily see from the trek at the start of this thread. I was expecting to be able to find a dirt path into the forest and take an easier route back down the mountain, but I guess I was at least 500m away from where I should have been. The summit is covered in tough bushes which are about waist height and can't be pushed through. It makes it very difficult to move from peak to peak. I scrambled up a peak topping out at 1139m which was the highest one in the vicinity, getting scratched pretty bad in the process, took some photos and settled on going back down the way I had came. Entering the forest again (which is more like a wetland/mossy type of habitat once you get over 1000m) and found a viper, pretty sure it's Trimeresurus Venustus - Beautiful Pit Viper. I found one of these before in Phuket. Their range seems to be confined to Surat Thani, Krabi, Phuket, Trang and probably some adjoining provinces.