The Jungle Thai Drama – Review & Recap

The Jungle is about a group of young men who often hunt for one night stands. The members are

• Lion Pine
• Jaguar Phethai / Wayu
• Viper Nannam
• Tiger Nanfah
• Wolf Nathee
• Tarantula Hack

The Jungle Thai Drama Review

This is by far one of the most infuriating Thai dramas I have watched. There is so much lost potential in the plot and what started out as a good attempt became a mish mash of sexual scenes between the couples, with weak character developments and rushed endings 😭 My itchy fingers are so tempted to rewrite the entire plot and do justice to the cast that acted really well in this series. If there’s a season 2, I hope The Jungle Season 2 does better in exploring the back stories and developing the bond within and between the couples.

The Jungle Thai Drama Couples Summary

The word-for-word Thai to English translation of this lakorn’s Thai name is
– Game เกม = Game
– Rak รัก = Love (see how to say “I love You” in Thai)
– Nak Laa นักล่า = Hunter (Remember in my blog Fast & Easy Way to Learn Thai Vocab that most Thai words are formed by combining a root word with another word to create a new vocab word of a similar meaning. Nak means person and Laa means to hunt)
– Bar บาร์ = Bar
– Lap ลับ = Secret

The Jungle เกมรักนักล่าบาร์ลับ Official Trailer

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❗ BE WARNED – THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD ❗

The Jungle Thai Drama Couple Review

Couple 1: Petai and Gale (acted by Lee and Mook)

Can I just say that I want to completely disregard the whole animal references for the couples? Besides Viper for Naanaam, the rest of the animal references were pretty crappy and redundant. Either they call this series “The Jungle” and do better with their animal characteristic references 🐰🐍🦋🕷🦢🦁 or scrape that random voiceover altogether and name the lakorn something else 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

SO ANYWAY. Petai is technically Wayu, forced by his mother to adopt his half brother’s identity to get child support from his half brother’s paternal grandparents. Wayu and Gale are childhood friends. I get that Gale recognised Wayu/Petai by his name. But not Wayu recognising Gale. He just heard Gale call himself “Wayu”, looks at Gale’s bare shoulder and goes “oh it’s her she didn’t change”. Just like that? That must be one of the most cursory 10-year-gap reunions ever 😵‍💫

What really upset me about this couple’s plot is the conflict with Mama Petai and how incongruent it was. Mama Petai was supposed to be the source of evil tearing Wayu and Gale apart. Gale tearfully stopped designing Wayu’s outfit after being threatened. Wayu bugged her angrily about it. Lo and behold the tables suddenly turned when a snoopy reporter found them together. After their one night stand, Wayu cruelly dumped Gale while Gale pleaded to be together with him. Which was super incongruent of Gale 😵‍💫- shouldn’t mama Petai’s previous threats hold and Gale continue keeping her distance from Wayu? Then, just as Gale tearfully bade Wayu goodbye again, Wayu grabbed Gale and kissed her in front of all the reporters. Wayu and Gale then counter threatened Mama Petai to leave them alone or Wayu would expose his real identity to Petai’s paternal grandparents. What took Wayu so long to do that, if it could be done that easily, if Wayu was always discontented with the life of pretence he led? Incongruence x2 😵‍💫🤦🏻‍♀️

Incongruence x3😵‍💫🤦🏻‍♀️ – Halfway through the episodes, it was suddenly revealed that Mama Petai had liver cancer. Given Mama Petai was an actress, I expected it to be a front and some wrench would be thrown into the happy Wayu-Gale relationship. But nope, Wayu tearfully said he understood his mother and Gale did not appear at all. What a waste of time 🥱

Couple development score: 3/10. Marks deducted for being incongruent and rushed.

Couple 2: Nanaam and Nithan (acted by Nanon and Mild)

I’m going to digress a little and give extra praise for Nanon’s and Mild’s acting. The last time Nanon and Mild acted together was as siblings in Ugly Duckling – Don’t Series. In The Jungle, they are completely different as a couple. It’s brilliant😍

This is the best couple development in the whole series 🥰 We see that fate brought Nanaam and Nithan to meet twice, and then out of desperation Nithan begged Nanaam to be her fake fiance. Nanaam was bored so he agreed. Nanaam is like a Viper 🐍- crafty and perpetually lying about anything and everything to everyone. But Nithan’s sincerity melted Nanaam’s sly cover so Nanaam became a sincere and caring boyfriend in the end 🥰🥹

Nithan’s family was hilarious in trying to catch the fake-turned-real couple in their lies (and thereby forcing them to be together). The spa-recounting incident was hilarious especially when the Jungle boys pointed out that Nanaam claimed he was uncomfortable but he was talking about Nithan non stop for 40+ minutes with no signs of stopping 🤣 I digress again to say Nanon is a fantastic actor. During the fake wedding, Nanaam’s twin (Namfah) showed up in Nanaam’s place and you could tell it’s a different person with a different personality altogether. Nithan won the twin’s approval by being able to tell them apart (yay!)🥰

Couple development score: 9/10. Extraordinary high score because it’s juxtaposed with all the other crappy couple developments. And it’s the only couple without a sexual scene/reference 👍

Couple 3: Namfah and Pladao (acted by Nanon and PunPun)

Incongruence seems to be a constant in this drama 😵‍💫🤦🏻‍♀️ Pladao and Gale took turns to abandon each other at a nightclub they considered to be dangerous 😡 Nanaam lured Pladao and Gale to the nightclub (which was the most random encounter ever) and then threw Pladao out of the club. Pladao tried to get close to Namfah to record a confession of him killing her cousin, then ended up sleeping with him 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Considering how aggressive Pladao was, for her to run away after realising she attacked the wrong twin was a nasty thing to do 😤 If I didn’t remember wrongly, Pladao never apologised to Nanaam for accusing him wrongly in front of Nithan. Which makes Pladao’s character development incomplete.

In brief, Pladao has always been hunting the Jungle boys down as she believed Nanaam killed her cousin. It turned out twinnie Namfah was the one dating Pladao’s cousin using Nanaam’s name. (Side note, every Jungle boy has a proper job except Namfah 😂). Namfah and Pladao joined hands to catch her friend redhanded.

Plot hole: If cousin’s diary was on top of her cupboard all along, why didn’t Pladao find the diary from the start? Why try so hard to track the Jungle boys and incriminate Namfah when the diary / crucial evidence was lying under Pladao’s nose all along? 😵‍💫🤦🏻‍♀️

Couple development score: 6/10. Marks deducted for the sudden swing in Pladao’s attitude from hatred towards Namfah to acceptance and attraction. And then agreement to just be friends 😵‍💫

Couple 4: Hack and Irin (acted by Krist and Lookjun)

Hack apparently had a crush on Irin all along. Surprised it didn’t put him at odds with Wayu who was openly crushing on Irin? 😑

Irin’s character is incongruent 😵‍💫🤦🏻‍♀️ At the start of the series, Iris stood up for Gale and told Gale to stand up against Gale’s bullying seniors at work. In this love story with Hack, Irin was constantly the damsel in distress waiting for the Jungle boys to rescue her 😑

How Irin’s sister switched from wanting sex with Hack to valuing her sister more was the most random thing ever 😑😑

How Hack and Irin progressed from quarrelling to making out to love is also the most random thing ever 😑😑😑

The only thing that caught my attention in this couple’s story is the quarrel between Pine and Hack and I was waiting to see how they would patch things up. But this was glossed over in the end 😭

Couple development score: 2/10. No clue what prompted Irin’s sudden interest in Hack after just using him as a sex toy to get over Pine.

Couple 5: Nathee and Florence (acted by Luke and Aye)

This is the worst ever couple story ever. The drama would do so much better omitting this couple’s story altogether 💩

Nathee and Florence were ex schoolmates. Florence crushed on Nathee but Nathee hated Florence for being a rich girl with an easy life.

After many years, Nathee was working in Florence’s father’s company. Florence was made to date/have sex with guys handpicked by her father. And Florence was desperate to have sex with Nathee for some reason 😵‍💫🤮🤦🏻‍♀️

Nathee held Florence at arm’s length as he would not have sex with anyone he knew. He also refused to compete with rich people to be an eligible boyfriend for Florence. But after a rich and charming man asked for Florence’s hand, Nathee threw away his no competition policy and declared his love for Florence in front of her father.

Florence’s father was the evil and powerful git that obstructed Nathee and Florence. But he appeared to be unable to break Nathee and Florence apart after doing everything he could to control Florence’s love life 🥴

Couple development score: 0/10. This couple development is bullshit 💩💩💩, I’ll give a negative score if I could.

Couple 6: Pine and August (acted by Off and Pat)

August was supposedly the girl that swept Pine off his feet. August caused Pine to reject Irin. August caused Pine to mope around as a sad, lonely and forever heartbroken soul. However, instead of being the wonder woman as built up by the earlier episodes, August turned out promiscuous and incapable of saving herself when it counted 🤦🏻‍♀️ Whether it was to be bailed out of jail, or to be given a job, or to clear her name, August was totally and completely dependent on a guy to save her sorry ass 🤦🏻‍♀️

I only watched on to see how the Jungle boys banded together and started this “one night stand boy club”. So Pine, Hack and Nathee met as employees in 3 different departments in the start up where August was the CFO. Wayu frequented the club the trio hung at and lent his car to chase the bad guys. For some reason, the twins were throwing knives at the site 🤦🏻‍♀️so that’s how they all met.

No follow up story on their subsequent bonds nor how they picked each Jungle animal 😓😓

Disappointing to say the least 😭😭😭

And I gave up following Pine/August’s couple’s development or my eyes will roll out of my head 🙄🙄

Couple development score: 1/10. 

Other Grievances with The Jungle Thai Drama Plot

The whole time, I was waiting for a back story of how the Jungle boys met and how they formed “The Jungle”. Part 1 was answered patchily, Part 2 is non-existent 😤

I wasn’t expecting a backstory for Hunter (the bartender) so that was a pleasant surprise. But that still didn’t answer the question of how the Jungle club formed. Which should be the main focus of this drama.

A pretty crappy plot with a pretty crappy ending. Which is frustrating because the story started out with so much potential, and the casts were fantastic 😭😭

Ps: I am so frustrated that I didn’t watch this drama to learn Thai as intended. Nor will I ever rewatch this drama to practice my Thai listening 😭

About the author – see the About page for more information

Joanne Tan is an aspiring polyglot and has so far mastered English, Chinese and Thai languages. She first started learning Thai in 2015 before staying in Bangkok for 5 months, and then continued studying Thai up to Advanced Levels at the National University of Singapore. In 2017, Joanne was awarded ‘Advanced Thai Proficiency’ by the Sirindhorn Thai Language Institute of Chulalongkorn University. Today, Joanne freelances as a Thai teacher in Singapore and helps her Thai friends actively promote Thai culture.