New Year’s Doubler (ok, half a doubler, but the rest is coming soon!)

As soon as the Christmas festivities at Sara's school were finished, we hit the road for the New Year's holiday. Sara had found us an amazing place to stay on Doi Inthanon in Chiang Mai called the Bamboo Hut. We caught a bus to Chiang Mai on the side of the road in Hang Chat and almost made it out of the city before the bus broke down. Luckily, the bus attendant had a backup plan: have everybody stand on the side of the road and hope someone came to our rescue. About a half hour later, a different, equally disheveled, twice as full bus rolled up and the crowd of refugees squeezed on board, bound for Chiang Mai. For real this time.

The owner of the Bamboo Hut (and their homestay), Nong, picked us up and we headed about an hour outside of Chiang Mai city. She dropped us off at a temple in the main town Mae Wang. It was here that we met Nong’s husband Koko, who would be our constant companion for the next two nights. His reliable old pickup truck just managed to climb the sheer cliff "road" that led up to the cabins, and I considered us lucky for surviving until Sara and I noticed hill tribe villagers riding their motorbikes up and down the mountain.

The Roof of Thailand (Doi Inthanon)

I’d been craving a particularly big adventure, so last weekend Jack and I headed to Chiang Mai to book a tour to Doi Inthanon. We hadn’t seen much of the beautiful natural wonders in Thailand so this was long overdue. I wanted some waterfalls, damnit!

Since haggling is a part of everyday life here, we weren’t sure if we should book online or see if we can get a cheaper price at a travel agency. Turns out tours are one of the few things that are not haggleable—lesson learned. We paid about $33 each for a full day (9-5) group tour, which seemed reasonable enough anyway and turned out to be well worth it!

Doi Inthanon is known as “The Roof of Thailand,” being its tallest mountain at 2565m (8415 ft) above sea level. It is named after Chiang Mai's last sovereign, King Inthawichayanon, who worked hard to preserve the forests in the north.

The company picked us up at our hotel at about 8:30 in an air-conditioned minibus, where we met another couple (the woman was Thai and the man Turkish). After picking up a Chinese woman and her son, a couple from France, and a couple from Bahrain (as our bus represented almost all corners of the globe), we headed out. The drive to the mountain was about an hour and 15 minutes (~65km away).

The first place we stopped was the Sirithan Waterfall: