Travel – Page 3 – 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.

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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. (-:

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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.

Travel Journal – Train a comin’ – Thailand Continued!

We woke up the next morning in Bangkok. But we would not be staying there much longer. We all got up extra early in order to stop at the famous Train Market. We were warned ahead of time by Rio that the people in the stalls don’t really like tourists. He explained that we come to take our videos and photos, stepping over everything, causing havoc, and blindly walking in front of the train, etc. Picture clueless stampedes of migrating wildebeest charging through a market while a train barrels through it. But they’re all holding phones and talking to their Instagram followers in live Reels. He also suggested that all the vendors know we are not there to buy anything, and that mostly we do not.

We were warned to be on our best behaviour, and not to be stupid.

With practiced disdain for the ‘other tourists’, we blended ourselves into the market and waited for the train to arrive. We were not like the other tourists. We were orderly and polite and aware.

And if you believe that hocus pocus, I have a tree farm in Albuquerque to sell you.

I immediately saw the reason the vendors have grown weary of tourists. We’re like a plague of locusts spreading over something, making it untenable, and then disappearing forever…not caring about the chaos left in our wake.

Turns out there were tourists ON the train as well. Tourists taking photos and videos of tourists taking photos and videos. Makes you think…

It was quite a thing to see, however. I’m glad we did the sideshow side trip.

Just imagine how chaotic this is several times a day for the vendors. People stepping all over their stuff trying to watch a train go by. Thousands and thousands of pounds of metal capable of ripping them all asunder. It’s no wonder they’re tired of seeing tourists.

After the Train Market we stopped at a coconut farm. It is absolutely astounding how many things one can make with coconuts! As it is with all tourist locations, there was a souvenir shop…resplendent with coconut merchandise.

It was a gorgeous place, too. So much to take in.

After the coconut farm was the big event of the day…the floating market.

boarding a boat for a ride to the floating market.

This event was a little misleading. We did not really participate in the floating market. Rather, we were taken to where it is and then dropped off on land. It was definitely a gorgeous boat ride, though.

We made our way through various canals until we came upon the actual floating market…

The floating market…

Once we were dropped off on land, inside a market, we could look down into the floating market from a little foot bridge. But we did not participate. We had a walking market. Talk about false advertisement. Oh well.

After the floating market, where we had an amazing lunch, we went for a river cruise. As you can see from the photos below, it was a little wet. It wasn’t the greatest weather during our trip. It was warm, but the sun didn’t come out so much and there were occasional rain showers. Anything is better than snow and cold, though.

Later that evening, a few of the tour group took the dinner cruise option. Our group of four among those who chose this option. It began at the iconic Iconsiam shopping centre. This place was the literal lap of luxury. They had every high-end store you could think of…including boutique car dealerships right inside the mall.

We had some time to snoop around the insanely upscale mall prior to boarding our dinner cruise. They had a gorgeous rooftop lounge. Of course we imbibed.

We had GORGEOUS views of Bangkok from the top of the Iconsiam…

The dinner cruise was buffet, which was a little chaotic. Not a lot of space for the buffet and everybody wanting to get to it at the same time. Rio guided us into a little nook and we were able to attack it before it got too overcrowded.

There was lots of entertainment on the dinner cruise and lots of fireworks on the shore. It was nonstop wonderment.

The views were stunning…the world was all lit up.

The shore looked like a magical wonderland. Not a thing was not lit up to the nines.

I want Rio’s camera. Takes such great shots.

It was a brilliant night and such a great way to end our time in Bangkok! The next morning we would leave Rio (and Bangkok) behind. It was time to move on! We all wished Rio could follow us for the rest of the tour. What a great guide!

See the PREVIOUS THAILAND POST 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