Doi Inties is the highest point in Thailand at 2,565 meters high. It's a gorgeous national park about 2 hours south of Chiang Mai, with an obligatory petting farm stop before you enter the park. Entrance is 200 baht, and it's well worth it took keep this park and beautiful space protected and loved!
The drive to the top is a winding ascent that's great fun on a motorbike, ascending through valleys of strawberries, sweet potatoes, squash, corn and coffee. What else do you need to live, right? These crops grow well up here with the cooler temperatures, making them prized produce down in the city. Up here I also found my beloved zucchini, a bag of about 10 of them cost 20 baht.
Up at the tippy top is a wild array of different plant and animal species that you do not casually find in Thailand. There's a great nature center to walk through and give you an idea of what to look for, and how much effort has gone into the park. The cold temperatures and moisture are fabulous places for orchids, ferns and mountain birds, which you can see on the comfortable boardwalk through the forest.
There are other hikes to be done around the mountain, but most require that you hire a guide to make sure people are safe AND behave themselves in this protected area. There is also an observatory near the top! For outer space! Yesss! I was so excited to get inside, but somehow we flew right past it on the motorbike and missed the opening hours. I will hunt it down next time.
Within the national park are a few small Karen villages with permanent residents - I find this really interesting there are people living in the park. The Royal Project has funded various crops here to help out the locals, and coffee is a big one! Delicious, mountain grown coffee is produced here in the clouds, and apparently, it's some of the best in Thailand.
There are campgrounds around the villages, and the one we stayed in was beautiful! Like most Thai campgrounds, it was busy and the tents were packed into one big area under the trees. We've learned that this is how camping is everywhere, and people are always nice cooking up a storm in the mornings and evenings.
We were under a tall canopy of lovely trees so we slung up two hammocks and we were happy. And was it COLD! I was wearing everything I brought by bedtime. It's nice to get a slice of winter.