Charlotte's Web: Doi Khun Tan National Park

This weekend Tammy, Andrew, Jack, Prince and myself visited Khun Tan National Park, an hour and a half train ride southeast of Chiang Mai. We took a 5:45am train on Saturday morning, which was definitely on "Thai time" since it didn't leave until about 7. We arrived at the station near the park entrance and enjoyed a hot breakfast of rice and eggs before hitting the trail. The cool morning was very welcoming for a full day of hiking. The first part of the hike was on the access road, where people could choose to be driven up to their campsite. There were nature trails serving as short cuts which we followed as much as we could. The hike was beautiful, filled with many new plants and not too many animals (mainly bees). We hid our bags in the woods while we took a 3km detour to visit a nearby waterfall and ate lunch there. Then we continued to hike to our final destination, the top! The summit was at 1,373m (4,505 feet). The summit served as a viewpoint for the Thai military during WWII. We spent a while at the top enjoying the hot sun and a nice view. Unfortunately the haze didn't allow us to see very far in the distance, but it was still a great view. We hiked back a few hundred meters and set up camp at one of the highest points in the park. We were surrounded by huge pine trees and had a nice breeze that lasted the entire night. It definitely felt like I was back in the Adirondacks. After dinner we made a fire and feasted American-style on some 'smores. We had searched the grocery store back in Chiang Mai and had finally found all the ingredients! The only thing we couldn't find was graham crackers, but sugar crackers were a nice substitute. It was fun to teach our Thai friend, Prince, how to roast marshmallows since he had never done it before. We stayed up late (we could only make it to 9pm) and had a nice rest before hiking down to catch our train (costing only 50 cents!!!) back to the city. We guesstimate that we hiked about 21km (13ish miles) total for the weekend. Definitely a successful weekend in the woods!