Cold Camping, Mountains and birds

Green-tailed sunbird
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Our lonley planet said this would be quite streight foward to get to Doi inthanon from Chiangmai (it lied) We started by getting a tuktuk to the wrong bus station, then a sawngteaw to the right one, we then got a sawngteaw to Chom Tong, From here there were supposedly regular sawngteaws to the park, well it was 11am and we were told the sawngteaw wouldn't go until it was full they said it would be around five pm for certain or we could charter one for 800 baht! We did neither we found a motorcycle taxi stand jumped on the back and were dropped off at the park gates for 50 baht each. it cost only 200 baht each to enter the national park, we werent walking long before we managed to hitch a lift from a thai family, most the thais seem to drive pickup truck type vehicles which are ideal for picking up passangers, they dropped us off at the park HQ and we thanked them greatfully having saved us a 20 km uphill trek. We couldnt blag the student thing this time and so had to pay 30 baht to camp. The campsite was in a pine forrest not as picturesque as khao yai. On the first day we hitched to the summit (after walking a third of the length from the campsite) which is 2565 metres above sea level we were above the clouds and they say it is not unusual to get tempretures as low as -8 up here. There are many beautiful waterfalls in Doi Inthanon national park, it is also very very cold, bird life was very plentiful much more it seemed than khao yai, highlights include Rufous-bellied niltava, large Niltava (both quite near the Summit) Chestnut-crowned laughingthrush (or is it now silver-eared) and green tailed sunbird. On our second day our leggs still aching from the previous day we enquired at the local village shop about hiring a moped, he said we could take his for 100 baht as long as we got it back to him by 4pm. That was a bargain at that price. Ian was absolutley rubbish on it, much to the amusement of the thais, emily however use to do off roading on bikes when she was a child and took to it alot better than Ian. Emily really enjoyed herself on the bike and it alowed us to bird all over the place  and get to the out of the way waterfalls for most of the day we stayed three cold nights there, we were planning on staying another day but on the Saturday night the Thais came in force and the camsite went from a dozen tents to about 300! it was time to leave. On the way back to Chiangmai we managed to hitch a lift in the back of another pick up with a group of young thais who took us half way to Chiangmai it was a bit cramped in the back of the pick up with five of us, our backpacks and there luggage they dropped us off where our path split and flagged down a sawngteaw for us, They were really nice thais.

2565 metres above sea level we were above the clouds