Day Eleven - Mountain top temple

A relatively early start saw us driving up a mountain road to Thailand's highest spot at the Doi Inthanon National Park.  No-one had thought to tell me that it might actually be cold up there and I just had a T-shirt and shorts to keep me warm, so please excuse any camera shake in this set of photos.

A short descent from the mountain top took us into the park's monument to the current King and Queen of Thailand.  The chief attraction of this is the pair of matching pagodas, one for each of them.

Finally, our journey back to the hotel took us to a small coffee plantation recommended as interesting by our helpful driver, Tong (this is him in a rare photo).

It's a very basic operation, with a few small coffee trees behind this shack; fermenting, drying and roasting, grinding all take place on site. They get the ground coffee professionally bagged but the sample coffee we were given to taste was gorgeous!

Of course, we bought a pack of their coffee to bring back to the UK, so let's see if its romantic appeal survives the journey home.

Rustic canteen near Doi Inthanon, Thailand

Tomorrow, we fly to Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. Our friend, Wiew, returns to Bangkok to feast on its frenetic busy-ness, which she loves and which we can only take in small measures.  It will be interesting to contrast the two nations - the weather should be fairly similar to Chiang Mai's -but I wonder about the political and cultural differences.  We'll see.