Doi Suthep: Gardens, Temples, and Waterfalls

The next day we went to the national park in the mountains: Doi Suthep.  We drove through what seemed like 100K twists and turns to get to the top.  To our daughter’s credit, she didn’t get carsick once!  Woohoo!  Our driver could have benefited from a few traffic safety classes, but I digress…

At the very top of the mountain is an amazing Buddhist temple overlooking Chiang Mai.  Not far from there is the Royal Family’s winter home.  It’s AMAZING.  We walked through the royal gardens and enjoyed all the tropical plants, trees, and yes…spiders!

These photos are from the Royal Gardens.  Candace and I had to wear wraps to cover our legs as we were wearing shorts.  What a beautiful place to live:

This photo of the kids is in front of a huge rubber tree:

This is the amazing Buddhist temple.  We opted to take a cable car to the very top as we were ready to be done hiking.

Partial panorama view of Chiang Mai from the top

We finished the day by going to an AMAZING waterfall.  There was a cool breeze and we just enjoyed sitting and taking in nature (well, Candace and I did…the kids enjoyed throwing sticks in at the top and watching them go down!)

We came across this water snake at the base of the falls.  Up until this point, our daughter really wanted to go swimming.  After seeing the snake, she no longer was begging me to get in the water!  (turns out there are leaches in the water during rainy season that cause all sorts of fun, so I’m glad we didn’t go in).

Here’s a great panorama shot near the top of the falls.  What a great place!