Chiang Mai

Doi Inthanon reaches 2,565 metres, the highest point in the country, about ninety minutes south-west of the city by road. The summit itself is a modest place — a shrine and a viewpoint in cloud forest — and the park around it is the real subject: moss-draped trees and rhododendrons, a boardwalk through a sphagnum bog that has no equivalent elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and the twin royal pagodas of Naphamethinidon and Naphaphonphumisiri built for the King and Queen, standing above terraced gardens with the valley falling away below. The Kew Mae Pan trail, a short loop through elfin forest to an escarpment with views toward the Myanmar border on clear days, requires a local guide arranged at the trailhead — a rule worth knowing before you arrive rather than after. Karen and Hmong villages work the lower slopes, several with homestay programmes, and the waterfalls on the way up — Wachirathan the most dramatic, Mae Ya the tallest — are stops rather than detours. Bring layers: the summit can sit near single figures while the city below is in the thirties.

Ninety minutes north of the city, Doi Chiang Dao rises as a limestone massif to 2,175 metres — an abrupt, sheer piece of geology that dominates its plain the way few mountains in Thailand do. At its foot, a cave temple system runs deep into the rock, part lit and part explorable only with a lantern-carrying local guide, which is the version worth taking. The mountain and the forest around it are among the country's premier birdwatching grounds, with several hundred species recorded and a resident community of guides who know exactly where the specialities are; the upper reaches sit within a wildlife sanctuary whose access is regulated seasonally, so the summit is a permit-and-guide proposition rather than a walk-up. The small town below has grown a quiet accommodation scene aimed at people who come for the mountain rather than for nightlife, and it makes a natural base for the northern half of the province.

The mountains of this province are home to Karen, Hmong, Lahu, Akha and Lisu communities, and multi-day treks through them remain one of northern Thailand's defining experiences — walked well, they are also one of its more sensitive ones. A typical two- or three-day route combines forest walking, a river section by bamboo raft, and nights in village homestays or basic huts, with the Mae Taeng and Chiang Dao areas the most established zones. The distinction worth drawing is between treks that stop at villages as photo opportunities and those that arrange genuine homestays with the households hosting them, where the money reaches the community and the visit is on the village's terms; asking an operator directly how their hosts are paid separates the two quickly. Avoid, on the same principle, the tourist attractions built around displaying particular ethnic groups as spectacle. The walking itself is moderate rather than technical, the heat matters more than the gradient, and the dry cool months are the season the trails are actually pleasant.

East and south of the city, the province's craft trades still operate as trades. San Kamphaeng and the road out to it hold woodcarving, celadon and silk workshops; Bo Sang has painted its paper umbrellas for long enough that the craft has its own annual festival; and Wualai's silversmithing, though inside the city, feeds from the same provincial tradition. North of the city, the Mae Sa valley is the near-country day trip — waterfalls stepping down the hillside, orchid nurseries, and forest zipline courses — close enough to fill an afternoon and far enough to feel out of town. Wiang Kum Kam, on the flats south of the city, is the province's quiet historical surprise: the Lanna capital that preceded Chiang Mai, abandoned to flooding and partly buried, now a scatter of excavated brick temples among ordinary lanes and best circled by bicycle or pony cart. None of these requires a full day; two of them together make one.

A provincial trip here is a driving trip. The city's songthaews and ride-hailing cover the city and its immediate edges, but the valleys need either a rented vehicle, a hired driver for the day, or a booked tour, and the choice matters less than the timing does: mountain roads through this province are slower than their distances suggest, with switchbacks, slow trucks on the climbs and, in the rainy months, genuine washouts. Doi Inthanon and Chiang Dao are each comfortable day trips from the city but poor ones to attempt together. Motorbikes are the popular option and the honest caution applies — the licence and insurance realities are set out in the getting around Thailand guide, and mountain roads magnify every one of them. Fuel and food thin out on the higher routes, so the sensible habit is to fill up in the valley towns rather than assume the next village has a pump.