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Published: February 16th 2011
After spending the night in Chiang Mai, we made our way to the North. As you may already guess, we are on our way to Laos.
We can easily say that our 10 days trip would have fitted easily in a 20 days leisurely experience, but this is it, we have only 10 days. So after a night in Chiang Mai, we took the bus to Chiang Rai. It's three hours on a comfortable bus, during which you are crossing amazing landscapes....pue beauty!
Well, this is it if you take the 7am bus, the 8am was a VIP bus, not much more expensive, and they have also seriously slow buses...but for 169baht on an air-con bus, I'm not going to complain. Once in Chiang Rai, we knew our room would not specially be ready. Our resort is 3km out of town and the plan was to spend a relax afternoon around the swimming pool. So first thing first and on to explore Chiang Rai on foot.
Chiang Rai is a starting point for many multi-days trekking in Northern Thailand, but this is not our plan this time, so we kept ourselves to Chiang Rai. We have visited few
Wat. We knew that the most beautiful one is around 10km out of town and is a brand new affair...we saw the Wat and the continuous construction from the bus on our way to the city.
Let put it simply, Chiang Rai is a small provincial city and we didn't find the place very interesting. So we made it to Le Meridien by lunch time. We still managed to come back to town for dinner as I prefer local food to any kind of resort buffet. We had a great dinner and a very early night. Oh, yes, and our "room" was pretty impressive!
5.15am...wake up time...one more early morning rise, and not the last one of the week! This time we have to walk out of the hotel, took us 500 meters to find a Tuk Tuk at 6am...but found one to get us to the bus station. 6.30am, local bus to Chiang Khong. This is the small city bordering Laos. It is a 2 hours ride in a pure northern Thailand...really nice, I guess as long as the bus is not full and you have some space for yourself on those tiny seats!
Our next
stop is our next entry. We had our passport stamped out....bought our 40baht (each) longtail ticket, and on for a five minute ride across the Mekong. Do not miss our two next entries, I have to admit, they will be much more interesting than this one. I'm not sure they will see me back for a week-end in Chiang Rai anytime soon!
With love from Laos!
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Donna and Neil
Donna and Neil
We remember the journey to Laos well on the slow boat. It was a great experience, we met so many people who we are still good friends with...bonded by the slow boat experience! Have a great time...enjoy the coffee and cakes in Luang Prabang, we are drooling just thinking about them! Have fun x