Days 10-13 getting lazy...

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Okay so it's been a few days, but we haven't had time to be updating this!

Saturday: Decide to do our own walking tour of Chiang Mai, there's a moate that runs around the city so we do a loop of it starting at the north east corner (where we are staying) and head anti clock wise, it's one of the sunniest mornings we've had so far, we are just going at a slow pace and popping in anywhere that takes our fancy. We get as far as the south west corner (half way) and it starts raining, within 5 minutes it's absolutley pi**ing down!! we take cover firstly under some trees (not very successful) and then when there's a little break in the downpour we go to the little bridge that crosses the moate, half way over there's a tiny roof thing, so if we both stand a certain angle, we get a bit of cover! There's absolutely no where else to escape to, ont the right is a psychiatric hospital and on the left is a city park, that has no shelters!! The roads are flash flooded because its raining so heavily so suddenly! after about half an hour the rain lets up a little ( although its still proper raining!) and we decide to walk through it any way! It's a bit horrible, but its warm rain so we'll cope!
There are four gates around the city, North, South, East and West, which are the remains of the wall which used to surround Chiang Mai. We stop off for a snack at the east gate, and from there we take the road out east across the river to have look around! We stop at Starbucks on the way back for some well deserved Frapuchino's and eventually head back to the guest house for a shower and dry clothes 😊 The evening was pretty quiet as we're planning on heading to chiang rai in the morning!

Sunday:

Get up, repack ( i really hate this, like i don't even properly in pack and repacking is the bane of my life!) we head downstairs and check out, except the owners have gone out so the cleaner is trying to sort us out, we manage to settle the bill, but she doesn't have access to the safe where are passports are for safekeeping. She has poor english, and we have 2 words of thai between us, we decide to go for something to eat while we wait for the owners to return.
When we come back the owners are there so we are good to go, we head off to the train station and it's packed! The buses for CHiang rai are booked out for the whole day! Uh OH!! so we booked a ticket on the VIP bus for 10 am the following morning! We get a Songthew (not sure how its spelled, but its a communal taxi truck thing that picks up anyone going int he same general directions and is cheaper than a real tai or tuk tuk!). On the way back we see our first crash (that's good going when u see how they drive here). This dude on a motorcycle is in his own little world and doesn't notice the tuk tuk in front of him has ground to a halt! He goes smack bang into the back of said tuk tuk! Luckily he was the only person in all of thailand to be wearing his helmet rather than carrying it, as he gave his head a good bang, and we think he was okay!
All the staff in the guesthouse think it's hilarious that we're back, but luckily they have a room free for us! we check back in and don't know what to do with ourselves as we hadn't really planned on being here! Off we go for a wakl to the Sunday market at the East gate, nothing cathes our eye and we have Mc onalds for din dins! 😊 End up watching some crap movie on Universal before going to sleep!

Monday: we get up early, and repack (de ja vu...) and check out of guesthouse for the final time, the owner man has given us the name of a cheap guesthouse in Chiang rai. We get to the bus station nice and early (nothing is going to keep us from going today) and do a bit of people watching! After a while our bus arrives, and we can see why its call VIP! its 24 seats in all, they're really big, loads of leg room, and recline, each row has only 2 seats, a 2 and a 1! and we have prebooked our seats so it's not like getting onto a ryanair flight! The bus trip in Chiang Rai is 3 hours, and it's absolutley fine! As we're coming into CR it's lashing, so luckily the bus pulls in under a shelter, and we get a songthew from there straight to the guesthouse that we were recommended (it's less than 5 mins walk but seriously not going out in that weather! We check into guesthouse, it's 350baht (around 8 euro) a night, and its fine, like really basic and a bit on the small side but it's clean and the shower is good! We do a little bit of wandering around for a while..
Later we decide to go to 'cabbages and condoms' for dinner, as recommended by vicky and the lonely planet, its a restaurant that put all their profits into a charity promoting safe sex etc.. but its a bit of a challenge getting there, we ask a few tuk tuk guys who deny any knowlegde of this place and we don't have our bearings so we wander around aimlessly for an hour before giving in and going back to get the map, and it turns out it was really close the whole time!!! Typical! Anyway dinner was yum and really good value too!

Tuesday: we want to leave today to head to chiang kong to cross over to Laos, but first want to visit the White Temple, I find out from the nice coffee shop girl I was takling to that, you just get the bus there from the station and its about half an hour away. We get on the bus, it's rickety and old and no A/c and no space, but it's only a half hour trip and it's 20 baht! off we go and get off at the side of the main road with all the other 'Farangs" and we're not sure which direction for sure to take, we can soo the temple but the entrance could be either of two ways... All the other tourists are taking our lead, so luckily for us we picked the right way! The temple is gorgeous, it is one of the more recently built temples, and it's really ornate, there is so much attention to detail! it's lovely to look around. There are loads of school tours to the temple, and all the little thai kids are so cute! They say hello to us and at one stage some of their teachers come over to us to tell us both how white we are! pretty soon most the teachers and kids are coming up and holding their arms against ours to compare colour and feeling our skin and loads of photo taking! Its so funny, they are totally in awe! We head back to the motor way for a bus, there's no bus stop but coffee shop girl assure me all the buses go back to town, and we're only at the raod whena bus comes along beepin g it's horn (obligatory in Thailand you know) so we jump on and it's back to the town! we coleect our bags and return to bus station for our biggest challenge yet!! A two hour ride to CHiang Kong in a non air conditioned rickity old bus that has even less space than the last one!! the driver helps us put our bags on board and we take our seats nice and early! it's so hot on the bus, at the start it's okay cos the wind coming in the windows cools you down, but after a while because the seats are kinda pvc, we both sweating buckets! it's a long journey but we make it to chiang kong! then we get a tuk tuk to the border crossing place and sign out of Thailand, and a long tail boat across the river and we're in Laos!! Yay! We have to get our visa's at the border, Rosie goes first and i watch the bags, by the time i go up it's just after 4 o'clock so I get charged and extra us dollar passport checking fee as it's "overtime" hahaha!!
Bags are so heavy and we're so hot and sweaty, now to find somewhere to stay, we check out a few places, but after each one, our list of requirements is diminishing, but we're lucky enough and get a decent place for a good price! Straight to the shower for me and rosie blasts the A/c! We feel human again in no time! SO we've just gone and booked our slow boat from here (Huay xai) to Luang prabang for the morning, it's basically 2 days sitting on a boat going down a river stopping over night at some village which i beleive is rat infested and has never heard of air conditioning, they also totaly overpack the boats, and we may have to sit on the floor! This might be the last you ever hear from me, cos i'm not sure if I'll make it as far as Luang Prabang!!

Nice know ya's
Gxx

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