hiking doi chiang dao

This past weekend I opted to head back north to Chiang Mai for a little hiking, some cooler weather and a bit of an adventure. After a long night of drinking with the Kellogg folks Friday evening, we started off the weekend with a day-long Thai massage class on Saturday. Turns out giving a proper Thai massage is rather strenuous. Not ideal when you stay up to the wee hours partying the night before. Nevertheless, it was still a whole lot of fun, though I'm not entirely sure my massage skills have actually improved any.

Sunday, Joud, John and I rented scooters and went north to Chiang Dao for the day. Now this was a bit of an adventure... In general, there isn't much hiking to be dne in Thailand, and unless you're with a guide, there's not too many hints as to where trails might go, or if they even exist. Nevertheless, we wanted to do a hike, didn't want to follow a guide, and only had a day. Doi Chiang Dao, the third highest peak in Thailand, and 80km north of Chiang Mai seemed like a perfect challenge. So with that in mind, we set off at 7am to get an early start on the hike. The only directions we had were from a random blog post I had found on the internet, which claimed that the hike was doable in a day: 3-4 hours up, 2-3 hours down. The vertical was purportedly 3000 ft or so. Besides this post, there wasn't much to be found anywhere online about the hike. All the other information we had from various travel agencies around Chiang Mai claimed that it was a two day hike, and that hiring a guide was a sensible idea. course you all know how I operate by now...

So we got to Chiang Dao at about 8:30 or so and decided to fuel up with some breakfast. Fried rice for John and I and two eggs (including one heart shaped egg) for Joud. A good start. Then we had to find the wildlife sanctuary main office which was mysteriously located at a different spot than where you enter the park. After finally convincing the park ranger that we were capable of doing what she thought was at least a 6-8 hour climb in 3 hours, that our bikes would not be stolen and that we knew what we were doing, she finally sold us an entrance pass for 200baht. Now we had to find the actual trailhead, which of course is not marked. We drove about 12km up a very steep hill, which was rather challenging when you're topping out at 4mph. After stalling a couple times, we eventually found the unmarked trail head (thanks to the blog post we'd printed out), parked and locked our bikes and started up the trail.

The trail was actually easy to follow, since guides to take tourists up and down regularly. The hike was a bit more strenuous than I had anticipated but after 3 hours of straight climbing we had made it to the top... or not. actually john is the only one that made it all the way up. Joud and I essentially quit 20 minutes from the peak. What can I say - you can't win everything. Nevertheless, it was a great hike and certainly doable in a day.

The ride home was a bit of an adventure since we left as the sun was setting. A hour and a half drive on a scooter at night in Thailand is not exactly relaxing. However, the roads were relatively straight, well lit, and well paved, and we carefully made it back safely to Chiang Mai in time for dinner and a well deserved beer. Once I get John's pictures of the peak and the thai massage class I'll post those up too.

Now back in Bangkok for week three of classes and two midterms on Thursday! hooray!