Mae Ping National Park Camping

Day one of a four day three night camping trip with the guy's from Chiang Mai, as we are well and truly into the dry season we hoped for nice cool dry nights camping over a few beers whilst enjoying some of the best roads in the area, the first night was to be Mae Ping National Park.

The whole loop would take in the MHS Loop in a clockwise direction covering just under 1700 km, well for me anyway.

The ride down from Chiang Rai is a lengthy one of around 370 km, it doesn't get interesting until you're nearing the national park.

Trying to bypass all the traffic i stumbled across this aircraft graveyard near Bo Sang

 

Even had a Thai Airways plane i wonder how they shipped them here and did the owner just purchase them for scrap or some wild theme park idea.

The route south along the 106 is not the most interesting route, but it is the quickest and the odd point of interest along the way.

Making the turn onto the 1087 got more interesting, this looked like an interesting place to spend some time.

At last some mountains coming into view and with it darker skies.

Always a Christian church to be found in the middle of nowhere trying to force religion onto the uneducated ethnic people.

The entrance to the Mae Ping park.

Having never been here before i was surprised how much it had to offer.

Very friendly park rangers.

Sadly dual pricing here, but my pink ID card got me Thai prices since i'm a resident.

Small restaurant centre picture.

Generally most parks are well managed, this one was having some road resurfacing done in readiness for the high season.

Wat Phra Yuen in the small village of Ban Ko Chatsan.

Turn for one of the waterfalls in the region.

The storm that had been following me since the turn was making this section a tad slippy as i headed to the campsite area.

Reaching the camping area, the views are spectacular over the Kaeng Ko Reservoir which is fed by the Ping River

The other arrived moments later and we pitched up to the sound of thunder over the range across the water.

The impending storm headed south, we had the place to ourselves and checked out the facilities.

A couple of floating restaurants and floating houseboats in the distance.

A small store which produced some welcome warm food and cold beer.

Clear skies, we hoped for a dry night.

Very nice sunset to round off a good days riding.

Justin carefully making his way over the woodpile bridge as we made ready with our cameras for an early bath.

That night a huge thunderstorm went over us making for a sleepless night, plus the farang hungry mosquitos had made a meal of me.

We broke camp in the rain and headed for our next destination the Salawin NP and some of the fun riding you can find.