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Published: January 26th 2012
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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 touristy night bazaar I ran into Nina who had just done "the gibbon experience" in Laos. It was very interesting to hear about her experience and to see the photos. There is a similar zipline experience in southern Laos and I am seriously thinking about doing it if I have the time and the price is reasonable.
On my second full day in Chiang
Rai I hired a motorbike and rode about 18kms south of town to have a look at the White Temple. There were more tourists than I expected and quite a few souvenir shops and cafes. The temple was quite pretty and I enjoyed having a look around and taking a few photos. After this I rode west for about 15kms past some very nice scenery to Khun Kon waterfall. The river and the forest is very nice and I noticed lots of Thais having picnics along its bank. From the carpark it is a very nice 30 minute walk to the falls. There is only 1 drop but it is about 70 metres high and impressive. The next day I still had the motorbike for a few hours so I decided to ride north of town to the Black Temple. This temple sees a lot fewer tourists than the White Temple, so I found it very relaxing walking around the grounds having a look around the many buildings and strange art. There are many skeletons and skins of different animals on display. The art was not really my taste but I found the trip worthwhile. I developed a pretty bad
cold so I decided to stick around a couple more days and just take it easy.
Wednesday afternoon I left the guesthouse and took a songthaew to the new bus station, 6km south of the city. I found a bus leaving just over an hour later at 5pm. I booked a ticket and then went across the road to have a coffee and contemplate how I will cope with a long bus trip like this. I coped as well as could be expected on what turned out to be a 19 hour trip. I am pretty sure that is the longest time I have spent on one bus in my travels. It could have been a lot quicker if we didn't stop at about a dozen bus stations along the way. Also we refueled twice which took an hour each time. We finally arrived at the Thai border town of Nakhon Phanom just after midday on thursday. To my surprise there was a newly built bridge (Friendship Bridge 3) which is the new border crossing. I booked a bus ticket for the 1pm bus to take me across. The crossing went very well and I was back in Laos
with a new visa after only 45 minutes. The bus unfortunately dropped us at the bus station out of town where I had to get a tuk tuk into town. I then wandered around for about an hour before finding a suitably priced room at $7.50 a night. It felt so good to have a nice hot shower after being on transport for almost 24 hours. Tomorrow I will do some research about doing the famous motorbike loop around this area which I plan to start saturday.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
FANTASTIC
Wow...I am blown away by your White Temple & Black Temple pics...Chang Rai...beautiful. Must say I am looking forward to your further travels in Laos...a country I know little about...keep safe.