April 24 Chiang Mai to the mountains and trecking to hill tribes

We were picked up at 8:45 and met up with Bill and Carol Moss at a local temple, saw Wiang Kum Kam, one of the earliest settlements, 13th century, in the Chiang Mai (CM) area.  It has actually been excavated to some extent but we did not feel it was worth getting out of the car and walking around. This area had series flooding problems so they moved in the 16th cenury to the now current old city. The history and culture of this CM area has mainly been shaped by the tribes that migrated south from the Yunnan area of China .  The dominant kingdom in this area was the Lanna (literally million rice fields). We then took off for a couple of hours drive to get near the highest elevation in the area, about 8,000 feet. This required bumping around in a 4-wheel drive with a slippery back seat without seat belts, so we slid around a lot before we ended up at the Doi Inthanon National park.

Carol is in charge of nursing at the Royal Hospital, and her husband Bill works in Finance at Occidental in Oman.  We saw local agriculture, an elephant riding place with a very cute newborn elephant, local villages built on stilts. We had lunch at a Royal project for new agricultural crops to replace the former illegal opium poppies and marijuana, toured the area, saw some local crafts, and then started trecking.  We only walked a few kilometers, but it was good that we wore our boots, as we were hiking down a steep cliff with waterfalls, crossing some rough bridges, and climbing over boulders.  It took two hours to walk the track. Luckily Leslie did not see any snakes!

We saw both a Hmong and a Karin village, and were able to walk among the houses, and Leslie and Carol made friends with some of the ladies who were weaving their skirt material.  Carol had brought candy as gifts, which turned out to be popular not only with the kids but also the ladies!  And Leslie was able to buy two skirts down at the village "store" under a tree. And we had some of the local coffee from the Karen tribes' hand-processed coffee beans.

We then returned to Chiang Mai, showered, collected our laundry, bought David a new external keyboard for his malfunctioning Sony laptop keyboard, had supper at a restaurant near the night market and went to bed pretty tired.