26. Doi Inthanon National Park Tour
19.11.2023
2 days ago I participated in one of the most mass-touristy things in my 3 months of travelling so far. I booked a Doi Inthanon Nationalpark tour. Pick up by van from my hotel was at 8:00am. It took around 90min to get to the location and our tour guide gave us already a rundown in the van of how the day would go. He pointed out the different stations on a piece of paper with a hand-drawn sketch.
Our group consisted of 4 couples, 1 one them with a kid, and 3 to 4 single persons including me. In terms of nationalities w had Indians, Americans, French, someone from a East European country and a German – the latter one being me. ;-) The age varied from 9 to 72 years old with most people being in their 30s to 40s. They were alright but I had very little interaction with any of them...only when I lost my group I teamed up with another guy who was also on a quest to find out where the rest of us had gone.
The trip had been planned meticulously: Tour guide Gin explained to us: stopping at A for 10 min, then driving 20min to stop B, staying for 7-10min, transfer to stop D, and so on. I appreciated the heads up but the time constraint was also taking away from proper exploration of the visited areas. Well, that's what's happening if you buy a ticket for a tour that advertises to show you half a dozen attractions in a day because you think it's the best bang for your buck. I learned that day that less would have been probably more.
I won't go into much detail about each stop we made and let the images do the talking apart from some accompanying sentences to tell you what you are looking at. ;-)
First stop was a toilet break at a gas station with the opportunity to buy some snacks.
Second stop: Wachirathan Waterfall – It's the biggest waterfall in the region. Impressive, but thanks to hundred other people arriving almost at the same time in buses, it was the embodiment of mass tourism. A 20 minutes stop to look at a waterfall seems generous in theory but for me as a photographer it felt very rushed. Or it would have, if it hadn't started raining heavily. Under the given circumstances nobody wanted to stay longer anyway. Of course a women selling cheap bin-liner material rain jackets popped up out of nowhere and I was one of her many customers because stupidly I had neither taken my umbrella nor the PVC rain jacket with me that I had bought only 2 weeks earlier when a rain storm at the night market caught me by surprise. Everyone took their mandatory waterfall selfies, the rain intensified and people were flocking to the car park with buildings offering shelter. Photography-wise the wind created an additional challenge to the already problematic rain. It blew the spray of the waterfall towards the tourist outlook covering my lens with droplets within seconds. Therefore I had to switch into quick-snap mode instead of taking my sweet time aiming for award winning shots. lol
Third stop: A short hike from a carpark to the peak of the highest mountain in Thailand. Gin took photos for us with our phones and cameras. He informed us about the history and meaning of the monument at the very top. However, not much of it stuck in my brain – shame on me! Also, visibility was reduced to 50-100m, meaning we certainly missed out on stunning views. I was thankful for the rain coat that multi-functioned as body heat protection layer as it was friggin’ wet and windy up there at only 11 degree Celsius. The coldest moment on my journey so far.
Forth stop: A car park from where we transferred to a songthaew (a kind of pick up bus with benches parallel to the direction of travel) that brought us to the twin pagodas.
One of them was built after the Queen had died and the second around 5 years later after the king succumbed to the same fate. The pagodas are monuments for worship with the idea that donating and praying earns both of them (the king and queen), although already dead, merits that lead to longer lasting happiness in heaven. I hope I did not recall that info completely wrong. You can read up on it for yourself searching: Doi Inthanon Royal Pagodas.
On postcards with grotesquely oversaturated colours you can see the beautiful gardens around the pagodas, but on the day our group arrived it was just fog, more rain and cold gusts of wind spoiling the experience. My hands became stiff, my shoes and socks were already soaked. And still, 50minutes to explore the site were barely enough.
I speedily photographed and video recorded everything that I found to be of interest and then bunched up with lots of other tourists in a building with a cafe and tourist shop with a covered outdoor area at the front. We had to cue there and wait for a shuttle songthaew to transfer our group to the lower carpark with our van.
Fifth stop: A line of market stalls selling mainly dried and fresh fruit, wine and other locally produced goods. It was a pure sales pitch: There was nothing else to see or do than checking out the products and to buy or not buy them. I got a little cup of physalis, also known as Peruvian groundcherry for 20 Baht as energising snack and then waited until we could hop back onto the bus.
Sixth and last stop: A local restaurant for lunch and afterwards a 2min van transfer into the nearby village with curated tea/coffee tasting, watching locals weave fabric and finally a walk through the settlement.
The food was pretty good and included 3 vegan options. It wasn't a proper buffet but once a plate with a dish was empty, we could ask for more as often as we liked. The stirfried veggies were really crunchy and the fresh pineapple super sweet. Probably one of the most positive surprises on that day. The van drove us to the village and of course we stopped at a house with several other tourists groups waiting to be funneled through to experience a tea and coffee tasting.
A villager with a headset announced over a speaker : We are the Karen Hill Tribe people, we are happy you are here. In the past we grew opium, but then the government gave us incentives to make a living harvesting tea and coffee. Here we have tea in 3 colours...red is blablabla, good for heart, digestion and lungs, yellow is good for hair, skin, blablublub and blue is made from butterfly flower good for whatever blablabla. Please visit our shop where you can buy all those products, handmade soap, etc. and support our people... In the 15-20min we stayed at the place I heard him repeating the identical speech with the same jokes word for word at least 5 times. He was the embodiment of a broken record and I found it admirable that he presented his declamation in a way that didn't feel like he had given it already hundreds of times before.
Our tourguide educated us during our walk through the village about the plants along the path, how the villagers’ everyday life looked like and what they used their animals for. That part of our trip was more interesting that I expected it to be and of course the puppies and piglets we encountered stole the show and prompted everyone to whip out their phones to snap a pic.
The village walk concluded the tour. We drove back to Chiangmai and got dropped off at our respective hotel. Would I do it again? Hmmm, difficult question! As an isolated trip in context of a month-long stay it was okay and I probably wouldhave rated it higher if the weather had been more pleasant. However, if I had stayed in Chiangmai for only one week and had booked three of those intense sightseeing it definitely would have been too much for me. Anyway, despite or because of the bad weather the trip will be very memorable for me and I ended up with some moody, foggy forest images that I am very happy with. That kind of compensates for the panorama views I had been deprived of.
Photos below show the fields near the restaurant. Shot through the window of our van on our way back to Chiang Mai.
