LittleSandyBeach

Our 2 months in Central and Northern Thailand ends tomorrow when we board a slow boat for a journey across 2 days to Laos! We’ve loved our time in the land of smiles and will be back at the end of the year to explore the South of the country for 3 months. It’s truly our favourite country and is going to be very hard to beat! Take away the mosquitoes and it might just be perfect. Amazing people, unreal scenery, great value for money, tasty food and extremely safe.

Our last few days in Chiang Rai were great. We visited Baan Dam Museum (also known as the black house) which was designed by Thawan Duchanee and completed in 1996. It’s a collection of 40 buildings which house Thawan’s huge art collection. It’s a very dark theme with lots of animal skins and horns…. creepy!

We needed a few new clothes as we didn’t bring much at all so we found a local thrift store, I know we’re really going for the backpacker look! Tasha got 6 items of £6, 2 of the tops were 10 baht each…. 23p!

Next we visited Wat Tham Phra (Buddha Cave Temple). It’s a small place but well worth the visit as it’s free and you can see lots of bats flying in the cave.

Of course we found a very cool reggae bar where a band was playing. Very quiet as lots of travellers still coming to Chiang Rai but it’s been one of our favourite places, so chilled.

A street vendor stopped by and was selling a selection of snacks. We copied what the locals got which is unripe mango that you dip into a sachet with sugar, salt and chilli flakes. Tasted amazing!

We checked out Central Chiang Rai which is the main shopping centre. Lots to see and it had an amazing couple of food courts.

Last evening in Chiang Rai we went for a freshly made pizza which was lovely. Great music in the night market as well!

Our journey from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong took about 3 hours and we went on a local bus. It cost 90 baht, £2! Very cool retro bus and luckily wasn’t busy. Just watch out for the bumps as you get some air time!

Chiang Khong is on the border with Laos separated by the mighty Mekong river. Let’s hope we don’t fall in and find a river monster!

There’s not too much to do here as it’s used just as a stop before crossing into Laos, however we did check out a old photograph museum this morning and also a local park which is themed on the Mekong giant catfish. The biggest one ever caught was 646 pounds (293kg)! Only slightly bigger than that Carp I caught in the UK… (Dad, just say we didn’t have the scales!)

We get picked up at 7.30am from our hotel tomorrow morning and go to the border to get our visa for Laos. Then we get aboard the slow boat for 8 hours down to a village called Pak Beng, stay there a night and then get back on for another 8 hours to finally Luang Prabang. Time to explore a brand new country!