We depart the Riverside Resort promptly at 9:00 AM. Driving out of the town of Mae Sariang you can see every place (school) that the Princess had visited because it's completely decked out in her colour purple and with huge photos of her. Thais sure do spend a lot of money on their Monarchy and by most accounts they love their King. His photo is seen a lot around here.

For mlles and miles down the highway the purple flags stuck in the ground provide proof that the Princess had travelled that route.

First stop of the day is Chom Tong Waterfall. Honestly, by this point I've seen so many waterfalls I'm not so sure what makes this one special two days after I saw it.

We stop in a town with a very well known Wat. It's obvious upon stepping inside that it is a very significant Wat. I could've spent 1/2 a day here taking photos but unfortunately we were in and out in about 20 minutes, I would guess. In a back room they have a very special glass vault with iron bars. This back area is only opened to the public for 2 weeks a year around New Years. It is filled with hundreds and hundreds of solid gold Buddhas.

We enter Doi Inthanon Natonal Park. You can tell it's a very popular place as we are in a traffic jam. Shortly after entering the park we stop for lunch at the only lunch stop place in the vicinity. I would liken it to a humungous cafeteria except the food is served at the table. Sutti goes up and order our meal and it is brought to us within 5 minutes which is the norm in Thailand. I've never experienced such speedy food service anywhere else I've ever visited. We eat cashew chicken, the tasty Tom Yam Gui soup that has become one of my favourite Thai dishes, and fried rice. Sutti had also brought along a few pieces of fruit and the lunch place cut it up and presented it beautifully on the plate. We had pomello, star fruit, tangerine, watermelon and pineapple.

Our next stop is to another Karan Tribe: Mae Klang Luang inside Doi Inthanon National Park. This tribe is not long neck. They are coffee farmers among other crops but are known for their coffee. Starbucks used to buy their Arabica beans at one point. The village is traditional bamboo houses, teeny tiny by North American standards. A Karan woman greets us dressed in traditional attire. Married Karan women wear a white head scarf. The scarf kinda look like the way you'd wrap a towel around your head after having washed your hair. We take a look at the white beans drying in the sun. These beans are not yet peeled. Sutti pours some beans into a manual coffee grinder and the Karan woman makes us filtered coffee the old-fashioned way. She pours hot water into the cloth sack filled with coffee grounds. She lifts the cloth sack high into the air letting the brown water drip out the bottom. Then she takes that container of brown liquid and dumps it through the filter again and again and again. Sutti and I sit at a long bamboo table and bamboo bench and enjoy or fresh roasted, fresh tasting coffee.

We head up the top of the highest mountain in all of Thailand, 3500 meters above sea level. I go to the viewing point to take some photos but all I could see was the clouds below me. We do a lovely walk through the rain forest on wooden walkways. It was a lovely 15 minute little hike through the dark green aged vegetation. I get to stand on the very highest point in all of Thailand and Sutthi takes my photo.

We head back down the mountain and stop at Wachiathan Waterfalls. Wow! The spray from the fall was keeping people far back from the fence. It was a very gorgeous and powerful sight witness. It was roared like thunder too.

Next stop is Chiang Mai. Sutti wanted to show me one of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai before we part company. We went to Wat Chedeliem. It was the perfect time of day. The gold and red intricate adornments of the Wat shone in all it's glory in the setting sun. Photos don't do it justice in portraying the beauty of it.

Sutthi drops me at Top Garden guesthouse run by Victor from Montreal and his Thai wife Thanya. Sutti and I say our goodbyes and I try not to cry as I hug him goodbye. Hiring this man was the best decision ever. Sutti showed me a Thailand I would not have seen on my own. I enjoyed his company and I promised to send him a memory stick with music on it. The memory stick came about because he was playing a CD of older 70's music and he was asking me about John Denver when the song "Country Roads" came on. Well finally after two days he asked me "is this John Denver singing". I said "No". Sutti says "Who is it?" I said, "I have no clue but it's not John Denver, and that wasn't Peter, Paul, and Mary singing Blowing in the Wind either." We had a good laugh at it. He had bought the CD in Laos or Burma and obviously got ripped off.

I check into my guest house and head on down the Soi to find my Christmas Eve dinner.