Blogs from Chiang Rai, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 9

Chiang Rai is a sleepy town full of arty crafts and bright, buzzing night markets that sells anything from Thai cuisine, 'same, same' t-shirts to paper latins to Hello Kitty copy key rings... All worth buying, but nothing worth keeping :) So, no surprise chaps, that this sleepy town isn't really perky in the evenings. Spent the second night drinking a rather dodgy green cocktail at this bar on the main touristy strip (an expereince not worth reminising). However, with a stroke of luck we met this English dude who introduced us to the Peace (reggae) Bar; a slightly psychedelic, trancy place with cool graffiti everywhere in honour of Bob Marley and One Love. A positive vibe just ozzed from this place that we spent every possible evening there getting to know the bar tender (too ... read more

We arrived at Chiang Rai. It is much smaller than i expected but still enough for us to do to spend a few days chilling out here before we do a border run. We visited the white temple yesterday. The art work inside was amazing, it was a shame that we could not take pictures. The tuk tuk driver agreed a price and then changed it half wa so we gave him the appropriate amount (still far too much) and made our own way back. I was slightly annoyed as we only went with him to give him some business as we had said we would previously. I think we shall just stick to the local buses from now as it is far cheaper and people dont rip off. We also have some random guy who ... read more

Chiang Rai was our last stop in northern Thailand and our stay there had a few ups and a few downs. One of the downs was our very damp guesthouse room which came complete with mould on the bathroom ceiling. Another down was spending, what seemed like hours, getting lost and walking in circles in the heat, trying to find a temple on a hill to where the Rough Guide had beckoned us with the promise of a fine river view. However, when we eventually found it, the view was distinctly average, with no sign of the river. On the plus side we enjoyed perusing the stalls of the weekend night market, which had some pretty cool non-tourist-tat for sale, and also enjoyed food from the day market. The themed décor at Cabbages and Condoms kept ... read more

We took an extremely comfortable 3 hr ‘VIP’ bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai; the time flew by. We went quickly to Le Meridien Chiang Rai Resort, which was unfortunately a little outside the town center. We freshened up and were rushing out again to see Wat Rong Khun, the ‘White Temple’. This temple is different from most in that an artist built it with sci-fi murals of Darth Vader and other pop culture icons inside. The outside of the temple was ornate, impressive, and a bit other-worldly – with skulls and horns coming out of a ‘moat’ in front of the entrance. Unfortunately our hotel was wrong about the Wat’s hours of operation, and it was closed when we arrived. Still, the outside of the Wat was impressive to see. We then met up ... 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