Peakbagging continues in northern Thailand…

Final Stats:

8 miles uphill, 2800 ft gain. (12 mile downhill bike ride)

Doi Pui Hike (Chiang Mai, Thailand) Everytrail Link & GPS Files

Walking around the streets of Chiang Mai, one occasionally glances to the west and notices the prominent twin peaks of Doi Suthep and Doi Pui (“Doi” meaning peak). It probably comes as little surprise that I wanted to do a hike to the summit.

While there are many ‘trekking’ opportunities through tourist agencies, I was finding it difficult to obtain any real information about hiking all the way up to the peak from some decent distance below. Frankly, there just isn’t that much tourist demand to do some relatively strenuous hikes so I understood why there wasn’t much information.

Resorting to my usual perusal of the internet for hiking information, I came across one site that discussed a hike to the summit; however, they took over 30 miles to complete it! No thanks!

Luckily, we found a mountain biking brochure and I happened to read through it, and I discovered one biking option that allowed the participants to hike up, and bike down. And the hike would head near the summit of Doi Pui.

So we signed up and the morning of showed up at the office of the mountain biking company, Mountain Biking Chiang Mai. Immediately I was talking to the owner, Adon, into getting us a guide to take us all the way to the summit. And I wanted to start further down than the original plan. It turned out that Adon himself was going to be our guide, and he was immediately questioning whether or not we would be up for such a hike. A little indication the sort of hikes we do normally changed his opinion quickly enough into now thinking about how he would stay with us!

So we hopped in a songthaew and headed up a mountain road. Everyone else was doing the biking and we were deemed the crazy ones because we wanted to go up more than go down.

Perhaps halfway up, Rachel, Adon, and I were dropped off, and began hiking. The hike started on a paved road for a few minutes, but then we headed off onto single track.

Thailand is certainly more lush in vegetation than southern California. And there’s bamboo.

Some creatures made a loud piercing sound, apparently this was a mating call!

After a mile or so we continued along an old road bed. The road bed had moderate grade with a few shorter steeper stretches.

We ran into a few people living up on the mountainside.

And roosters staring me down

After a small lunch, we headed up the NE ridge toward the peak. And here we were treated with some socal grade steepness!

Along the ridge we had some nice views to the west

And then reached the summit of Doi Pui

And to top it off, we took some bikes down (only paved road this time)

And so completed a lovely trip in the countryside of northern Thailand.

A short hike to a viewpoint on a beautiful island…

Final Stats:

2.5 miles, 600 ft

Ko Phi Phi Viewpoint Hike Everytrail Link & GPS Files

If you ever get the chance, go to Thailand. Or rather, make that chance happen.

And amongst the plethora of great things to experience in this diverse country, there is of course some diverse hiking.

Southern Thailand is known for its beautiful beaches and islands. The islands jut out from the ocean like fingers poking up. I mean, they almost look out of place. They don’t bashfully appear from the water, they jump out; vertical walls rising hundreds of feet from nothing.

One such island is Ko Phi Phi (actually two islands), site of the movie “The Ocean” if you’ve ever seen it. The background for the movie is that these people live on the most beautiful, peaceful tropical island. Well we only spent a day here, but uh yeah I would say it was pretty freaking beautiful (So was Railay beach).

The hiking portion was spent hiking up to a few viewpoints on the island. We arrived via boat from Phuket, desembarking along with the rest of the tourists. While Ko Phi Phi was relatively unknown 20 years ago, the development of the Lonely Planet books and the internet (thanks Al) have given a lot of exposure to the place.

To get to the viewpoint path, one must walk through the main market area, generally heading east and north. As you near the end of the market, you’ll see signs pointing you in the right direction.

You’ll want to find this staircase and head up:

You’ll pass up some construction of guesthouses (as of Dec 2009) up the lower end of the stairs but soon after the path will get more ‘natural’.

You’ll run into the first view point a few hundred feet up. Hopefully not too many Swedes around (I mean, they are everywhere in southern Thailand!) Then continue on to the 2nd and 3rd viewpoints for more isolated views.

Most people don’t go to the third viewpoint, but it is highly suggested as less traffic means more butterfiles.

And other wild creatures

More photos