About
Chiang Dao Nest tours & Trekking
We are a family operation namely
, Stuart (English) and Wicha (Thai), Joseph our 3 year old son, and Meaow, our
cat.
While we are a small organisation we now have a number of trusted
contacts and people we employ, along with considerable experience ourselves so
that we are confident of providing a memorable experience for people who let us
take care of their North Thailand experiences.
We operate from our small
slice of mountain paradise in the hills of Chiang Dao. We have a guest house -
Chiang Dao Nest Mini-Resort which consists of 11 bungalows across 2 sites.
The tours and treks were originally started to provide activities for our
guests, and as a way to attract people to our place. It also gave us a great excuse
for exploring this beautiful and fascinating area.
All of them originally
were private only and started in Chiang Dao. Now due to the requests we received
, and to make things easier for people, they are now available from Chiang Mai.
We have now also started to do some small non-private group tours /treks
- this is partly again because of the number of requests we had previously, and
partly because the people in the villages we visit enjoy the income, and asked
us to provide a few more visitors. We think that by limiting the numbers to 8
people that the impact is minimal. We are monitoring this. |
Our
Philosophy
If you are looking for the cheapest trek, this is not
the place to look. We would rather pay the guides and carriers well, have small
groups, give donations, ensure people have plenty of good quality food, and visit
beautiful areas even if it means paying a National Park entrance fee. We
only employ local people. This does mean that their level of English is basic
but, while we are trying to get them to improve, they can still communicate, are
very knowledgeable and friendly, and we would rather locals get the benefit of
having visitors.
As we live locally to the trekking areas, and accompany
some of the tours, we can monitor what is happening. We intend to go to mostly
lesser-visited villages. If the villages we go to do get a number of visitors
we will indicate it on this website. When
we first started arranging treks we were very reluctant to do the "hilltribe
thing". We were more interested in nature walks and going up the mountain.
We stayed in hilltribe accommodation because that was the only place to stay for
miles around. However, we found that even though the people who signed up for
the treks were not looking for a hilltribe experience, they ended up being made
very welcome and having an enjoyable time in the village. We also got to know
some of the villagers personally and found them to be responsible reliable and,
more importantly, fun!
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