3. Thailand - further north to Chiang Rai and then to Oz

Covering 28 August 2019 to 2 September 2019

heading towards the mountains

It was time to move on from Chiang Mai and we’d booked a car rented from the airport.  The problem we’d not anticipated was that most if not all other people book a car from an airport when they’re arriving by air.  So when we turned up, we had to get through security to get into the Arrivals area to do the necessary paperwork.  There was a method to this booking, when we got back to Chiang Mai we were flying to Bangkok en route for Perth, Western Australia, so we could just drive back to the airport and drop the car.

Having thoroughly photographed the car inside and out as it will also be on it’s return to counter any incorrect claims of damage, we got going, heading further north.   The main rule of the road in Thailand is drive on the left and priority goes to the biggest vehicle.  I have to say that to begin with it felt quite odd driving and I think it was more difficult on the left in such an obviously different country.  Partly familiar and partly unfamiliar. 

remains of one of the three Pai bridges washed away
in the monsoon rains - there's one left

the Pai valley from the White Temple

It was about a four hour drive to Pai, a very touristy town but one that had a few attractions such as a decent hotel.  Pai lies at a higher altitude than Chiang Mai and after about two hours or so the road begins to climb through a very large number of what the guidebooks call hairpins but which are really tight-ish sweeps.  It was rarely necessary to slow down much for most of the turns.  The road climbed through some wonderfully wooded landscape with a huge variety of different trees.  This did mean that distant views were restricted and on the few occasions we had a good view, it was spectacular.  Many minivans full of tourists ply this route and they don’t hang about.  So there are stories of people in the front of the vans enjoying the view while everybody else gets to see their breakfast again in a bag.

working up to writing a blog

We were thankfully on the edge of the touristy part of town in a lovely hotel where we had a thatched cabin in the tropical garden.  Mosquito coils were delivered already lit for us every afternoon and in the evening we could hear deep voiced bullfrogs croaking.  They sounded as if they must be quite big but when we saw a couple they were only about an inch or so long.

some classic paddy fields

Having a car meant we could explore the area a bit and we visited the uninspiringly named ‘Bamboo Bridge’ because it was on the way to somewhere else.  It wasn’t a bridge at all, it was a bamboo causeway, four or five feet above paddy fields, which ran for some half a mile between a temple and a village and it was very impressive indeed.  Something they really ought to make more of as a tourist attraction.

a small section of the Bamboo Bridge

Pai didn’t hold us for long and to be fair we didn’t have much more time at our disposal here in Thailand but we now headed even further north to Chiang Rai.  This was a spectacular journey through a quite mountainous, or at least very hilly area with forest cover over the surrounding countryside.  Adding to the dramatic views were the clouds drifting around the trees, the sudden rain and then sun.  A really great drive.

 

 

en route - Chaing Mai to Chiang Rai

In this part of Thailand, only Thai script was used in public areas, so street names and directions were lost to us.  Despite nearly ten seconds of cursory study, Thai script still means nothing to me.

Pizzeria ahead !

Frankly Chiang Rai was a disappointment other than for two things, three if you count the smart hotel with huge room and big swimming pool surrounded by garden at only one third of the usual price because this was low season. 

Chiang Rai clocktower - the only thing in the town
we saw that was worth seeing

The big attraction here is the White Temple, Wat Rong Khun which dates only from the late 1990s.  The whole complex was as you might guess, white but it had small mirrored surfaces scraped clean of the whitewash which glinted in the sun.  Highly decorated with fancy sculpted motifs but without the gold usually seen, it was very different from any Buddhist temple we’d seen before and spectacular.  The interior of the main temple was much plainer than normal but was painted on the inside with a whole range of unexpected characters as small wall decorations.  We spotted Elvis Presley, Superman, Spiderman, Harry Potter, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean (although it might have been Keith Richards), Star Wars C3PO, and a host of cartoon characters from computer games.

The White Temple

just in front of the temple.  no explanation but note the single red fingernail

the old colonial house restaurant

The second (or third) thing was an old two storied colonial style house still set up with the old library, a pool table and various ephemera which made it look like the owners had just stepped out for a bit.  Music from the 1920s/30s was playing to set the mood.  It was some way from our hotel and we drove there in the dark convinced we weren’t going to find it.  But there it was down a couple of back streets and set just above the river.  It was a restaurant and we had the best meal we’ve had on the whole trip so far.

It was an early start for us in the morning because we had to get that car back to Chiang Mai, catch the plane to Bangkok, sit around for ages and then catch the midnight flight to Perth.  Our bags were checked in straight through from Chiang Mai to Perth.  How trusting we were but they did arrive in Oz with us.  However, as we sat waiting to board that midnight flight, the announcement “all passengers in Royal Silk Class are invited to board your flight” was made.  It struck me that if I’d paid some enormous sum to get a glass of champagne and presumably think I was superior to the cattle class passengers, I’d want to board last, not sit on the plane even longer.   After all that extra cost, Royal Silk Class passengers have to wait for ME !