Chiang Rai

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After the Gibbons Experience, the expectations for the next part of the trip were always going to be much lower, as the gibbons was mindblowing, however it certainly came close. The main reason was the company and the laughs along the way, we were joined by our fellow Team Gibbon members Jan and Sanna from Holland and Josephine and Amalie from Denmark. The only person missing was Eduardo, who went the other way to Vietnam to meet his better looking brother! Hope you had a good time mate.

We took a short trip across the river from Huay Xai (loas) which took all of 2 minutes and arrived in North Thailand. A quick Visa check at immigration and we were in. We hired a songthaews these are covered pick-up trucks with two benches in the back, songthaew means "two benches" in Thai they squeeze about ten people on board. Our fare was 750Baht between the 7 of us, for a one and a half hour journey to Chiang Mai. Thats about 11 pounds between 7 of us very cheap and we probably got ripped off!

On the journey the heavens opened, and we knew we were going to get wet when we arrived in Chiang Rai. Oh what fun it is trying to find a guesthouse in the awful weather when every guesthouse you try is full and a 20kg backpack trying its best to compress your spine. Eventually we found a nice place, had a quick shower and headed out in search of some much needed western style food. After our jungle exploits a slap up meal was the order of the day and the Pizza Company came in tops! Even though it turned out to be very expensive, well in Asian terms anyway!

Chiang Rai came highly recommended to us with promises of a great night market and very cheap clothes. The market was very nice and some of the hand crafted wood items that were available were stunning and also extremely cheap, on the downside there wasn’t many clothes shops and those that were there seemed expensive compared to Vietnam. Myself and Mikey bought a few wood carved souvenirs but that was about it. The evenings in Chiang Mai were fairly tame although we found a very laid back rock bar, that once our group was in it was full so it was small!!. They played some classic rock music videos and we made sure we had a shot or two of tequila which was downed to Eduardo!

Chiang Rai was so quiet even I Mr Paparazzi didn’t take any pictures!! Sorry nothing worth taking pictures of!!

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