We've been in Thailand for about a week and it didn't take nearly that long to remember how much we love it here. The food is fantastic (probably reason #1), people are friendly, it's relatively easy to get around and it's beautiful and interesting. And the weather is perfect. What's not to love?
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| Mountain Scenery! |
We arrived at the Thai border on January 10 - entering via the new "Friendship Bridge" between Laos and Thailand that was opened just three weeks earlier. We got a nice hotel in Chiang Khong, the border town where we had stayed a few years earlier on our way to (and from) China. We weren't all that excited about it, but it was better than we remembered, and we enjoyed a nice dinner with Chris - a New Yorker we met on the boat from Luang Prabang.
The next morning, we took the public bus to Chiang Rai and checked in to our fabulous hotel (also recently opened). We immediately took our clothes to be laundered and got some kao soi (curry noodle soup with chicken). Delicious! Luckily it was Saturday, and we were able to visit the market on the "Walking Street" which was packed with crafts, souveniers and general schlock (tons of tacky iphone covers and handbags) but the real draw was the food stalls - rows and rows of delicious (and sometimes weird) offerings, including satay, grilled meat and fish, salads, stews, dumplings and more! Of course, Matthias was in heaven with his favorite: chicken butts on a stick. I'm not kidding.
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| Matthias and his chicken butts |
The next day we rented motorbikes and tried them out riding out to the nearby elephant camps. This was really just pratice for our upcoming tour of the golden triangle, but we loved seeing the elephants and enjoyed getting to know our motor bikes before setting out on a longer journey. And fortunately, that night there was another night market!
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| Matthias at the elephant camp outside Chiang Rai |
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| First day on the motorbike |
On 1/13, we checked out of our Chiang Rai hotel, leaving some of our stuff with our kind hotel host, and set out toward Mae Salong, a mountaintop village settled by Kuomintang Chinese and surrounded by hill tribe villages. The ride was nice, and the scenery was breathtaking. We were in heaven!
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| Rest stop after Mae Salong |
The next day we rode through the mountains past the royal villa at Doi Tung and back down to Mae Sai, the northernmost city in Thailand and one gateway to Myanmar. It was a typical bordertown, with lots of tacky shops, but did have some interesting food stalls serving all sorts of treats, including some we hadn't seen before (we didn't ask, but we think we ate a burmese soup - it was delicious so we didn't care). Our "hotel" was a bamboo cabin on the edge of town, on the river facing Myanmar. Cute and quiet, but we were surprised the next morning when we awoke early to try and find some coffee and found our motorbikes locked together and the gate padlocked shut. We were prisoners! But it didn't much matter since when we did finally break out (someone woke up), we didn't find anything open anyway - except for 7-11 where we were able to get some nescafe.
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| By our cabin in Mae Sai |
After the nescafe and shower, we headed across the border to visit Myanmar. Granted, we only had a couple of hours to visit (just another) border town, so we didn't expect much. However, we were struck by how diferent, and ethnically diverse the people were, and we enjoyed a hot breakfast at a burmese tea house, and then more mouthfuls, including a rich delicious noodle soup, from some street vendors. Couldn't bring myself to purchase any tacky souveniers, so we returned to Thailand with full bellies but not much else to show for it, but a few pictures.
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| Our Entry permits into Myanmar |
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| Entering Myanmar |
After that, we took a short ride to Chiang Saen, a lovely riverside town just past the "golden triange" (point where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet). That's where I'm writing this now. We're planning to stay another night here before returning to Chiang Rai and figuring our next steps. We were planning to head to Bangkok and spend our last days there, but with the protests and all, we think it might be better to hang out here and just fly in (and out) of the airport. By the way, if it weren't for the news reports, we wouldn't even know about any turmoil. People around here just don't seem interested. Anyway, I don't want to think about it because it means the end of this fantastic journey and I prefer to just live in the moment now....
I've got hundreds of photos to share,and although I'm working on it, I'm finding it's a pain to try and label them with a tablet (have I mentioned this already?) so the album will probably have to wait until after we get home So, that's all for now!
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