Blogs from Chiang Rai, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia

Like anyone travelling in South East Asia, I have visited a ridiculous number of temples. Some amazing (Angkor Wat), while many seem blah after you have seen too many. So itis with great surprise that the strangest temple I have seen in almost 4 months of travelling is one that we stumbled upon between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. I call it the White Temple because I have no idea what its real name is, but it is way more than its obvious white colouring. While white means purity and peace in the West, it represents death in Asian cultures and death is what was on display at this temple. From hanging heads to demon sculptures, there was nothing pure or peaceful about this temple. It was absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately, we weren't dressed properly to go ... read more

The first thing I noticed about Chiang Rai was that it was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I expected it to be a small to medium sized town but it is quite large and businesses along the highway stretch for quite a few kilometres. I stayed in the guesthouse area of town for 5 days and I found it very peaceful with a laidback atmosphere. There is a simple restaurant ran by an older woman nearby that serves up a very nice massmun curry with rice for $2. So I ended up eating there quite often. The first night in town I ran into Bjorn and Ellen from Belgium who I had met and traveled with a couple of weeks earlier in Laos. The following night while I was eating at the ... read more

It was that time again to do my visa, this time I had to go to MaeSai so that I could cross the border into Myanmar to get (try) my 60visa extension. I wanted to spend a couple of days in ChiangRai first so I left MaeNaChorn on the sunday. It took me 12hrs to finally reach my guesthouse! After Rut took me to MaeCheam and I caught the sonteyose to ChiangMai I switched bus terminals all pretty smoothly but then it seemed like everyone wanted to go to ChiangRai and I had to cue for an hour to buy a ticket. The next bus with an available seat was a 3hr wait. There is nothing to really do out by the bus station so I was a book then as it was Chinese NewYear there ... read more

Hey Everyone, I’m writing this from the shore of the Mekong River in Chiang Kong. We are taking a boat across it to get to Laos tomorrow and then we’re heading off into the jungle for 3 days for the Gibbon Experience – can’t wait! Zip-lining, gibbon monkeys (hopefully), and sleeping in a tree house. We travelled to Chiang Rai from Chiang Mai via Thaton. Thaton is beautiful, sleepy river town. From there we got on a longboat with 3 other people and headed off downriver to Chiang Rai. The trip was gorgeous and it was a good ride besides one little incident with some rapids. Long story short we missed the correct path through the rapids, our driver made a terrified noise to alert us that something was wrong, we smashed into some rocks, ended ... read more

- The Pineapple Lady - I know there's a number of you back home who I've told this story to because it's probably my favorite experience that I've had here yet but I'm retelling it just in off-chance that something happens to the physical copy of my journal. January 21, 2012 9:50pm - Reggae Bar - Chiang Rai I'm still reeling from the last four hours of my life. Everything here has this way of becoming so surreal when you least expect it. This morning I rented a motorbike from my guesthouse for 200 baht for the day (~$7). After about 30 awkward minutes of pacing around the machine and faking phone calls (I'd never ridden one before and I wasn't looking forward to learning in the chaos that is Thailand traffic). The ropes course in ... read more

As our time in Chiang Mai dwindled down we signed up for the foot massage course I mentioned in the last blog. The course is based on reflexology which basically links every part of your body with some part of the foot. I’ve heard a lot about foot reflexology, but never had the opportunity to experience it or see it at work – our class changed that. The massage class teaches you how to give a 30-40 minute foot massage (15-20 minutes per foot). It goes through a methodical process that I’m sure is based upon years of knowledge passed down for generations. It starts by warming up the foot and then essentially goes from the top of the foot down to the heel and achilles area, and includes a small massage of the lower leg. ... read more

From January 5th to 8th... read more