KEVIN CRAIG

Thailand Journal – From Chiang Rai to Chaing Mai – Mountains and Temples and Dancers, oh my!

The next morning, we said goodbye to Chiang Rai. We drove by bus to Chiang Mai…two mini buses. It took several hours because of recent storms that washed roads away.

But first…silly photos in the hotel lobby at Chiang Rai…

I believe this was the first time I ever held an umbrella in my life.

It was a picturesque drive with a rest stop in the middle. A rest stop that had a Cafe Amazon! It’s a bit like the Thai equivalent of a Starbucks.

Whenever we get the opportunity to drive through a countryside, I LOVE it! We get to see so much. The trip from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai was no exception. Some beautiful sights.

First stop in Chiang Rai was to visit Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. This was a Theravada Buddhist temple. This temple is atop a small mountain, and there are phenomenal views of the city at the top! Also, this temple contains a relic of the Buddha.

It was a long funicular ride to the top!

There were so many beautiful flowers and paper lanterns everywhere. It felt a bit like a fairy tale up there…

Just when you feel completely enamored by the surrounding pretties, you catch a glimpse of the view beyond the distractions…

Below us? Chiang Mai. Above us? Only sky…

There was literally beauty around every corner up there.

This looks like Ganesha…not sure if there are other elephant deities, but Ganesh is one of my favourites…

Beauty wherever we looked. Buddhist statuary and iconography has always held a special place in my heart. It exudes serenity.

Us at the top of the mountain with a visiting monk in the background…

With all the fake AI wood carvings exploding all over the Facebook airwaves, it was so lovely to see an ACTUAL woodcarving at this temple…there were, in fact, a few.

We stopped at a beautiful lookout point about halfway down the mountain as we headed toward Chiang Mai in the distance…

The Bella Nara Hotel in Chiang Mai was probably my favorite hotel of the trip. The only drawback was the pool. It was okay, but tiny and surrounded by the hotel…so almost always in the shade. The hotel was beautiful. I hate to use that despised word Colonial…but it did give off Colonial vibes.

The hotel restaurant/bar was luxurious and very Colonial…reminded me of such places in both Kenya and India.

After drinks at the hotel bar, we were headed off to a traditional Khantoke dinner. Khantoke is a culturally rich dining experience that originates from Northern Thailand, particularly the Lanna people. It’s a communal dinner served on low wooden tables called Khantokes, which are surrounded by floor seating mats.

The khantoke table we sat at, though, had a sunken-in area around it…so we had space for our legs and we sat normally as though we were at a regular sized table. I kinda wish that it was an actual low table so we could have experienced it more authentically. But the meal was exceptional! I loved it.

Before we get to the meal, though…it was just the 4 of us partaking in this one. The rest of the group were going somewhere else. As they were escaping the hotel parking lot, we happened to see them…I think the following triptych of photos speak for themselves. (-:

They were truly a fun bunch of fellow travelers!

There was a lot of entertainment…from acrobatics, gymnastics, dance, knife wielding, etc.

Knives Out…

It was really quite an action-packed day! We were ready for bed. And our next day! It would be our second ethically questionable excursion. Elephants!

A LINK TO THE PREVIOUS POST ON THAILAND.

Did you get this far? BUY MY NEW BOOK HERE!

If you’re enjoying this series on our Thailand adventures and would like to support this page, you can do so by buying me a coffee! KevinCraig-BuyMeACoffee

Thailand Journal – The Golden Triangle – Big Buddhas, Opium, and Shopping Malls!

A photo sent by Rio… back at the Train Market…

The next day of our journey in Thailand was more Chiang Rai. We already knew our new guide was no RIO, but today we really saw the differences between the two guides. I don’t want to slag our new Chiang Rai/Chiang Mai guide, because he seemed like a lovely person. But Pom had this regimented teacher mentality. He breezed through things, spouting off details and leaving us in the dust unable to actually view what he had just spoken about. At our first stop, we literally had ZERO time to see a Buddhist Temple we walked around the outside of. As he spoke about the surroundings, we followed and listened. I’m sure I wasn’t alone thinking that we would have alone time after the talk to actually visit the surroundings. Spoiler alert! We did not. It was off to the bus. No photos. And there were occasionally cross words when somebody would wander to get a glimpse of something too. He definitely had a different, less tourist friendly, method of guiding.

We were brought close to this Buddhist Temple…but briskly guided around it. We never actually saw the gold Buddha inside that you can just glimpse a tiny bit of in this shot…

We saw only the things we could glimpse on the periphery of the temple we stopped at…

After our whirlwind almost tour of this temple (I didn’t even catch the name), we were off to the Golden Triangle. If you don’t know what the Golden Triangle is, it’s the land around the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong Rivers where Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Laos borders meet.

We were there for a river cruise…to cruise through the waters where the three countries meet.

This huge Buddha–surrounded by what looks to represent a dragon boat–sat lotus watching over the rivers and the three converging countries, from the shore in Thailand.

The boat brought us close to shore at both of the surrounding countries, without actually taking us there.

After the short cruise through the two rivers in the Golden Triangle, we got to visit the lotus sitting Buddha close up!

There was actually so much more to see than the lotus Buddha. The entire area was a shrine filled with statues, flowers, etc, etc, etc…

When sitting Padmasana (Lotus), Buddha touches the ground to help ground their body, maintain stability and support themselves.

After our visit to the shrine, we went into the little town and visited an opium museum. The House of Opium Museum. Spoiler Alert: They did not hand out samples at the door.

It was quite an interesting place, filled with exhibits on the drug…from a vast assortment of pipes and drug paraphernalia to what happens if you’re caught selling or doing it.

I bought a great pair of pants at a little stall outside the Opium House!

Can’t wait for summer when I can wear these pants!

After the opium museum, we went to a buffet restaurant on the side of the road. It was one of my favourite Thailand meals!

This young man made the noodles for a really delicious soup! You can head over to my Instagram or TikTok to see a little five second video I took. He was fast. It went from dough to noodles in SECONDS!

If you want to see the little video of the noodle making, you can click this Instagram link…but you will be prompted to log in if you’re not already logged in. If you follow the link, follow my account. I’ll follow you back. (-:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kevin T Craig (@kevinthomascraig)

The meal was absolutely delicious, and we had great views!

The view from our lunch table…

Another view from the restaurant…

So, after our lunch we did a thing. There are TWO events we did in Thailand that made me slightly to overly uncomfortable. The one I just could not deal with was our next stop for this day. We went to visit the Karen tribe…also known as the long-neck tribe.

I was not prepared for this. I was doing ethical somersaults the entire time I was in this little village visiting the long-neck women and children. I was not ready for this real life museum and all it entailed. Having experienced this add-on excursion, I would choose not to do it if I could have a redo.

I’m actually not going to share any photos of the tribe. I felt CRINGE the second I took them. I realize that our tourist dollars help them out and I’m glad we funded them by visiting the village…but the whole ON DISPLAY thing left a sick feeling in my stomach.

Michael and I had the evening to ourselves this night. Our first, I think? It was nice. We went to a mall down the street from our hotel.

Guess what! Remember the great clown scare of 2016 that swept across that failing nation to our south? You know, when Ronald McDonald was moved because of the gory clowns striking fear into everyone (AND the doctors who insisted it was unethical to use a clown to get kids to eat junk food). Well…

The clown is still doing his thing in Thailand…

Yes, dear reader…this horroshow is a reindeer…

It was great to do something so mundane as to walk to the mall and walk around inside. It was a bit of culture familiarity comfort.

We even had dinner at SIZZLER…

The mall was decorated for Christmas…

I just had to share a couple more pics of the reindeer. I don’t know how this did not strike fear into children everywhere…

Back at our Chiang Rai hotel for the night! Our next day was a short travel day to Chiang Mai.

The Heritage Chiang Rai…would recommend!

If you’re enjoying this series on our Thailand adventures and would like to support this page, you can do so by buying me a coffee! KevinCraig-BuyMeACoffee

A Link to the previous POST ON THAILAND.

7 YEARS! Pride Must Be A Place Celebrates an Anniversary!

I can’t believe that PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE released SEVEN years ago today!

I remember writing that book like it was yesterday, I swear. I wrote most of it at the Muskoka Novel Marathon. Shortly after the marathon, Michael and I stayed a week at his sister’s cottage and I completed the first draft. We took long walks throughout the day and discussed the plot. It was amazing talking a story through prior to writing it down. We narrowed down the possibilities and I wrote in a fevered pace in order to get to the end. It was probably the most fun I ever had writing a book. The collaborative effort–of talking it out–was a new experience for me and a welcome one.

It was originally published by MuseItUp Publishing out of Montreal, Canada. They were the publisher who published my debut novel, SUMMER ON FIRE($3.99 on Amazon or free with Kindle Unlimited).

MuseItUp has since shuttered its doors. But you can still read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE. I’ve since made it available on Amazon as a paperback or ebook. It’s $2.99 or FREE with Kindle Unlimited. CLICK HERE TO SEE IT ON AMAZON.

Here’s the synopsis for PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE:

Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.

Pick up a copy today! It would be a great way to celebrate its BIRTHDAY! (-; CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY OF PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE

Would you look at the little baby holding the first copy fresh off the press!

Proud parent moment—holding your creation for the first time in book form is always a little piece of magic!

If you have KINDLE UNLIMITED, I have quite a few books in the program. Which means you can read them for free as part of your KU package. Here’s a list:

Burn Baby Burn Baby

Sebastian’s Poet

Half Dead & Fully Broken

The Reasons

Pride Must Be A Place

Summer on Fire