Doi Inthanon

Our day trip into the Himalayas. Sort of.

Doi Inthanon is the highest point in Thailand and although probably one of the smallest, one of the peaks of the Himalayas! It was about an hour and half outside of Chiang Mai, which made for a fun day of exploring on a motorbike. On our way there we stopped at the aptly named Inthanon Coffee shop for lunch, took a small detour into the town a few miles past our turn, and searched for waterfalls. The route to the peak is scattered with different waterfalls, so I think we both expected a day full of swimming as we climbed the mountain but unfortunately our first choice, Mae Ya waterfall, happened to be quite the detour from the main path. However, it seems that if we were only to see one waterfall that day (we did actually only see one waterfall that day), Mae Ya was the one to see. The falls were enormous with water falling over staircase-like layers that stepped into the sky. There were a few people splashing in the small pool of water at the bottom but we carried on without a dip, all except for Nate’s left foot which fell short of a long hop.

We rode up and up until our little bike couldn’t go up anymore. Actually, we encouraged our tiny motor to take us pretty far past the point that it wanted to, it was once the road turned downhill that we reassessed our gas levels and decided that we’d have bigger problems if we’d have to coast back up that hill (after our gas incidents in Koh Chang we’ve developed a sense about this sort of thing). So we turned back and returned to the roadside vegetable market on the mountainside. While Nate filled our tank, I perused the different options that the high altitude gave us. We bought some bright bell peppers and some dried fruit and set on our way. Actually, once we suited up again we agreed that we were both feeling pretty cold, butthurt (Literally, our butts hurt from the scooter seat. Our spirits were fine.), and ready for dinner so we decided that we’d gone close enough to the peak and that we’d rather take advantage of the little sunlight we had left for our return trip. Yes, it was supposedly about an hour and a half from our apartment but between our pit stops and detours and our small 110CC motor carrying our well-fed rear ends up into the Himalayas, it took us all day to get almost to the peak. Regardless, we had a great time that day. The mountain scenery was refreshing with fir trees dispersed throughout the palms to remind us of home.  

On our way back to Chiang Mai our bodies needed a break from scooting around in the most fortunate of places! We stopped at a market near a town called Hang Dong that turned out to be more of a fair. It was pretty rural which made it different from the Saturday and Sunday night markets we’d been going to because it was pretty much strictly Thai people attending. No worries, we had a blast bartering with our Thai numbers, almost winning some fair games (apparently fair games you can almost win are a universal thing), and eating the delicious food.