Doi Inthanon National Park

At a waterfall overlook

We did another tour while in Chiang Mai to Doi Inthanon National Park.  We had a really great tour guide called “Boo” who helped make it fun.  The national park not only had beautiful forests, but is home to the country’s highest point, at 8,511 feet.  The tour included two beautiful waterfalls, as well as a real hill tribe market, which contained mostly fruits and vegetables.  Also in the park are two giant stupas erected in honor of the king and queen, surrounded by beautiful gardens.  At Thailand’s highest point the weather was cool, and almost cold!  We saw lots of birds too, which was nice.  The view was not great as the sky was hazy, either from pollution or all the burning we saw people doing (slash and burn agriculture is common here).

Hill tribe weavers

The tour unexpectedly included a visit to a hill tribe village.  When Boo mentioned this neither Daron nor I were sure we wanted to get out of the van, both of us remembering the zoo-like experience we had on the other tour.  Luckily this time it was completely different.  Boo gave us a tour of their village (which you could tell they really did live in), and taught us about their traditions and how they are fading fast. Typical story – the youth want to fit into modern society and don’t want to keep up the old ways. We saw a couple of older ladies who still wore the traditional clothing, and even had mouths stained deep red from constant use of the betel nut.  There was a small store of their handicrafts with no pressure to purchase, even though many people did.  It was a nice experience and we learned a lot.