Touring Around Chiang Rai


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Asia » Thailand » North-West Thailand » Chiang Rai
January 23rd 2012
Published: January 23rd 2012
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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 up sideways in the river, almost tipped twice, but finally made it out. We were all quite panicked as we had all of our electronics in our bags to worry about. The only casualty was Kyle’s lens cap which flew into the river at the first impact.



In Chiang Rai we did a lot of independent touring on motorbikes. The first day we all set off together with the aim of heading to Phu Sang National Park to see a hot waterfall (it’s sourced from hot springs). We made it there but it took way longer than expected due to getting lost, running out of gas (Matt), and just the fact that 60km/hr was the fastest we ever went. We put in at least 6 solid hours of driving and were all exhausted that night. Matt and I treated ourselves to a Thai massage to help with our sore bodies.



The next day we split up with April and Kyle for a bit and Matt and I headed north on motorbikes to Chiang Saen and the Golden Triangle. The triangle is where Burma, Thailand, and Laos all meet at a triple junction, kind of cool but by far the most tacky tourist attraction we’ve been to yet. We went to a brand new museum on opium as this region was notorious for it but the museum was more geared towards encouraging young Thai’s to not do drugs so it was a bit weird.



The next morning we set off to Mai Sai to see some caves. We ended up driving into Mai Sai on the number 1 super highway – absolutely terrifying, 4 lanes of one-way traffic, no rules, crazy busy. I could’ve broke down and just cried but I made it out. We found the caves and they were incredible. Huge, cavernous limestone caves with beautiful speleotherms and the best part was we had them all to ourselves. We took lots of pictures but they just can’t do them justice.



On the way back to the highway we decided to stop at a roadside soup stall. We had had great experience with them before. The lady didn’t speak any English but she only served on dish so that’s what we got. I thought it was black tofu chicken soup. Matt soon found some odd looking stuff in his though and figured that it was intestine, liver, kidney, etc. soup. He didn’t share this information and let me eat all of mine before he told me – thanks a lot. Needless to say we had burgers and fries for supper in Chiang Rai that night.



We headed back out to the number 1 and only had 56km to go to Chiang Rai but it felt like it took hours. Just insanely stressful, although, the chaos works – everyone here is an aggressive offensive driver but also the best defensive drivers we’ve seen.



Well that’s about it for now. I’ll try and do a blog post Gibbon Experience but northern Laos isn’t very developed so I’m not sure what the internet will be like.



Hope it’s getting warmer over there!

Rae


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