Since we had spent almost three days in Chiang Mai, we decided to take a day out of the city and go do something outdoors. My knee injury prevented any strenuous activity. We booked a day trip to Doi Inthanon National Park; Thailand’s’ only rain forest and also has the highest peak in Thailand. Our hotel helped us book this tour.
We set off at 9 am and were driven around the city to pick up other people who were part of the group (11 in all, in a Toyota van + a guide and a driver). We got to the park at around 10:30 and saw 2 beautiful waterfalls.
After that, we went to a Karen village. Honestly, I find all these villages setup and made for tourists and nothing else. There were 3 houses (I counted), 1 building in which you could see 2 women weaving and a church (the missionaries came here 30 years ago to convert these tribes). After that, we went to a “local market” that was full of … take a guess – tourists!
Then, we then headed to lunch. Since we were vegetarians, we were given a separate table from the rest of the group. I was confused at first, but I think this is because they assumed we might not be comfortable with meat on the same table. The food was good. There were more chilies in the food than there were vegetables, but the curry was very tasty. However, my throat that had been giving me a lot of trouble ever since we got to Chiang Mai, started getting worse and I got some hot water to gargle, which felt much better.
After lunch, we set off and were driven up to two pagoda’s that were created by the Royal Thai Air Force for the King and Queen, to honour the Kings 60th birthday. The pagoda’s were beautiful and the views spectacular. It was tad chilly up there and we did not have jackets since we just did not anticipate that it would go from hot to cold so far.
Finally, we proceeded to visit the highest point in Thailand. It was nothing to write home about. There is a military post there and it’s mostly a quick walk through the woods and we were done. At that point, my throat was hurting a lot and I also had severe motion sickness from sitting in the van. I just could not care less where we went. We got home and then relaxed a bit in our room and I felt much better.
For dinner, we head out to one of the restaurants on the street near our hotel. It’s the “hip street” of Chiang Mai and Thai’s and tourists come here. It was even more crowded due to Loy Krathong. We went to the Riverside café. We ordered pizza for dinner. We’d been really enjoying Thai and Indian food all these days and were craving pizza; besides it was Friday night, which is pizza night for us. It hit the spot.
After dinner, we wandered around the area for a while, taking in the vide of the city. Finally, around 10:30 PM went back to our room to call it a day.
