Enter the Orient

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And the adventure begins...

After flying into Bangkok, we got off the plane and made our way north to Chiang Mai. Now officially on a budget, we travelled by sleeper train (albeit without much sleep) rather than bus, and much delayed after 17 hours, pulled into the town and found ourselves some digs.

Recovering from jetlag, we were off to a slow start with a gentle river cruise, visiting Wats (temples), eating sticky rice and mango and learning about the history of Thailand. Evenings have been spent wandering around the night markets and sampling increasingly spicy but very tasty curries.

We had a great two days trekking near Chiang Dao, seeing bat caves (Chris was very excited and ran ahead of the group headtorch at the ready) and waterfalls in amongst trekking up and down steep hills through forest and farmland in alternating heavy monsoon rain and hot and humid sunshine! It was pretty heavy going, even for she that runs marathons, but it was fun, and the scenery was awesome.

Since we've both been to Thailand, we thought we'd make our stop here relatively brief and so began our trip to Laos on Friday taking a minibus to the border town of Chiang Kong in North Thailand, stopping on route to see the amazing White Wat, being constructed by a local artist. Started about 8 years ago, it's final completion as a temple complex looks similar to that of Barcelona's Sagrada Familila (i.e. it's going to take a long time)!

We spent one night in Chiang Kong staying up late playing cards with a mormon couple we met - who were very nice and have educated us on mormonism without any attempt at conversion, then it was an early start ready for the immigration process and a boat over the Mekong river into Laos.

Mosquito count to date:

Emma - 50 approx

Chris - 1

Bob - 0 (although he is suffering in the humidity, what with the fleece)

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Comments

[Jane Jarrett]

Bob
I was wondering how Bob was enjoying the sticky rice and mango? Only he is looking like he has lost weight?

[Bobs Blog]

Re: Bob and weight loss.
Bob hasn't lost weight at all. He's just really vain and makes sure he breathes in for photos! He's currently eating huge quantities of Nepalese curry ready for a trek up to Everest base camp over the next few weeks!