doi suthep day trip!

Today Elena and I went up Doi Suthep. Doi means mountain in Thai, and this mountain happens to be less than ten minutes away from where we live on the west side of Chiang Mai. It's also a really fun place to explore, because there are waterfalls, a famous temple, caves, campgrounds, viewpoints, a palace, a coffee plantation, and hilltribe villages. I've spent three days exploring the mountain now - this is the third time I've made a trip up - and I have yet to run out of things to do.

Plus, the drive up is fun. No traffic and big sweeping curves. So today Elena hopped on my motorbike with me and we took off! Our original goal was to go to the campgrounds near the summit, called Doi Pui, and hike to the summit.

The view from a viewpoint on the way up.

Along the way, we saw a sign that just said: CAVE. So, naturally, we stopped to see the CAVE. I'm not sure if we ever did see the cave. There was a cave-like area at the end of a path of many many stone steps leading down into the jungle, and it even had a little waterfall, but we didn't see an entrance. I'll post the pictures, you be the judge. At least, not an entrance we thought we'd like to enter. The path continued past the cave area, though, so we took a little hike through the jungle until we realized that the path might be endless and the jungle was getting increasingly thicker, as were the clouds of bugs hanging around us. We struggled uphill to the bike and were happy to get back on and have the wind cool us down.

"CAVE" pictures/cool jungle trees:






We drove past the temple, the palace, and finally arrived at the campgrounds to try to do the summit hike. We went up one trail that we thought led to Doi Pui but then it seemed to just end at some guy's house (lovely little house though it was.) Then we found a trail that seemed correct but the sign at the base put us off. It said:

BEWARE OF LEECHES!!

So...we did not do the summit hike. Haha. If I had had on sneakers and long pants, maybe. But I was wearing sandals and capris and leeches were not really part of my Saturday agenda. So after exploring the campground area a bit more we took off. We had seen a sign for a Hmong village so we decided to check that out.

The village was really cute! The houses were sort of built up into the mountainside. There were lots of little shops for tourists, with cute bags and good prices, but I had forgotten all of my money at home (probably a good thing) so I didn't make any purchases. There was a waterfall in the village too, but the best part of walking to the waterfall were the flowers we passed on the way! The 10 baht "maintenance fee" we had paid to see the waterfall must have really been to keep up the gardens. The flowers were beautiful and there were some types I'd never seen before!





Finally, we left the village and came back down the mountain. The whole adventure lasted from 3 to 7pm. And now I'm exhausted. One of my friends wanted to go to cocktails tonight but I had to decline. I'm still recovering from the cough (and from last night, but that's a story for another day.) We had quite a fun time out on the town yesterday. I managed to have a pretty full weekend despite being ill. Good thing, because I didn't want to waste one of my last weekends here!

A few more beautiful views from the mountain: