Becca & I camp at Doi Inthanon

A series of mass transit stints puts us in Chom Thong, more than half way to our destination. There, I ask various local folks with pick-ups if they are going up to the park, hoping to avoid the 300 baht price tag from songtaus that ply the route. I track down a piece of cardboard & buy a marker. Stooped over my sign I feel a tap on my shoulder, looking up I recognize a local man, perhaps a hill-tribe member, one that I had propositioned earlier. Smiling at me he asks, "Doi Inthanon?"
"Yes." I sputter & run to find Becca. Minutes later we are piling into the back of the pick-up with uncle, two young boys, a spare tire, various food provisions & a live rooster, mom & dad in the cab. There are stops along the way, one is to pack the back with 14 boxes of milk, which changes the seating dynamics. Our ride takes us to the park entrance where we get another back of a pick-up ride to HQ; here we rent a tent. It rains at night & the next day.
Next day in the rain, we pack into a gracious family from Bangkok's small vehicle (Becca soon loses all feeling in her right leg)& we head up to the summit of Thailand's tallest mountain. The peak of Doi Inthanon is part of the same mountain range running up into Tibet where it rises as the Himalayan range & Mt.Everest. The summit is cold, windy, rainy & socked in with fog. Great, no panoramic views, no far-off horizon, no expansive sky above. The same thing happened to me on N.America's highest point, Mt.Whitney. At the nature center we hook up our next ride down the fog shrouded mountain out of the wet cold. As we make our way back to Chiang Mai the sun & humidity makes it hard to imagine our butts were freezing a couple hours ago. -TLC