Doi Suthep-Pui National Park

View of Chiang Mai from nearby mountain

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

It didn't take long for me to fall behind on these posts, but let's see if I can remember what we did three full days ago.

Wat Phra That Doi Suthep

It was our last day in Chiang Mai, so we had to check out of the hotel by noon. However, our flight to Phuket wasn't until 10 pm, so we had plenty of time to fill. The only top touristy thing left on my list was to see Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, which is a grand temple on top of a mountain within the Doi Suthep-Pui National Park. The temple was especially popular because its location on the mountain had panoramic views of Chiang Mai and the surrounding area. 

I was having difficulty figuring out the best way to get up the mountain on our own and to the temple, which was about a 40 minute drive outside of the city. So I discussed with the concierge, and she secured a taxi driver for a few hours. The driver ended up bringing us to a viewpoint on the mountain for a picture, to the temple for an hour visit, and then to a waterfall in the national park. We actually saw two waterfalls, with only a short walk in between. An especially sweaty man on the trail dissuaded us from trying to climb up to see a third waterfall deeper in the forest.

We returned to the hotel in the early afternoon, and since we no longer had a room, we walked around the surrounding area. Steph and I both got a massage. I made the mistake of not requesting the weakest female masseuse for my weak white boy body, and instead got a massive man who destroyed my muscles. I'm still sore today.

Doi Suthep-Pui National Park

You may recall that my electric razor had died and my facial hair was growing quickly. An update on that situation is my facial hair has continued to grow. So next on the agenda was finding a barber to clean me up a little bit. That too may have been a mistake. Because some combination of my tender, not-accustomed-to-straight-blade-shaving skin, and the woman's unorthodox knifing skills, left me with a very smooth, yet extremely painful experience. I'm still hurting today.

To walk off all of the pain, we next took a short walk to the river, which is another popular neighborhood. This happened to be part of the same river we went rafting on the day before some 40 miles further north. We didn't see anywhere we wanted to explore further, so we just snapped a picture are returned closer to our hotel. We did a little more shopping, had some more food at the live music night market, took a shower at the hotel, and then finally took a taxi to the airport.

I was a big fan of Chiang Mai and sad to see that part of the trip over, but beach destination Phuket was next up on the itinerary and I was very much looking forward to that.

Ping River in Chiang Mai