Day 31:

This day was mostly travel. We took a flight from Bangkok up to Chiang Rai in the north. Chiang Rai is both a city and a province in the north of Thailand. The city was founded in the 1200s. At the time, Thailand (Siam) was not a single state, but a collection of cities. Sometime after it was founded, Chiang Mai became a part of Burma (Myanmar). It wasn’t until the late 1800s that it became part of Thailand.

We were renting a car so that we had more personal flexibility with our travel plans between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. We rented from a place called Drive Car through Chase Travel. It turned out to be a little odd and a couple ways. The company didn't have an office in the airport. They had to pick us up.

The fellow who was picking us up had a really hard time finding us. We spent about 10 minutes talking to each other on the phone, me trying to figure out where he was and he trying to figure out where we were at. We finally ran into each other, both of us talking on our phones, “I see you talking to me. Turn right, I’m waving.”

The driver took us over to their agency which was a 5-minute drive away. When we got there, I learned that Chase had not been entirely forthcoming about the rental price. When I rented it, I clearly indicated that we were picking it up in Chiang Rai and dropping it off and Chiang Mai. I was given a price based on that. Chase’s confirmation had a link to go to the company’s T’s and C’s. It may have been there before I paid for the car. I don’t know.

Inside their terms and conditions was a statement indicating that there may be a surcharge for a one-way trip. Even though I clearly indicated in the reservation that it was a one-way trip and got a price based on that from Chase. The rental agency charged 3210 Baht (about $94) for a one-way rental. What am I going to do? Of course I paid the price for it. We were in the middle of freaking nowhere—at least it seemed that way when they dropped the price on us.

Then came the fun of driving on the Thai roads. To begin with, it is left-handed driving. I've done that a fair number of times. We did that in South Africa two separate sets of days on this trip. Nevertheless, it throws me off my game of it. Add to that the general craziness that is the Thai traffic and roads, and it makes for some super spicy driving.

The roads often get narrow enough that you have to slow down to make sure you don't hit one side or the other. Then there are the drivers driving on the wrong side of the road. Then there is the driver in the lane next to you that decides to just start squeezing into your lane even though you're right there. Then there are the motorcycles weaving in and out of the lanes while you are going and when you stop. Then there are the folks who ignore the stop signs, stop lights and/or both and simply boogie right through (mostly motorcycles). Then there are the folks randomly stopping halfway in the road forcing all the traffic the scrunch together to go around them. Definitely some spicy driving.

(This fellow is parked in the lane, and we are waiting to squeeze by. This was a rare occurrence where the driver put on the flashers when he parked in the road. Thankfully there weren't 47.3 motorcycles in this spot. I didn't get good photos of the crazy scooters and motorcycles. Faith counted something like 25 that streamed around between us and the other cars when we stopped at one light.)

I am writing this portion of our blog during our flight between Sydney and Cairns in Australia. I'm happy to report that I managed to avoid any accidents while driving in Thailand. That's not to say that I didn't share the horn, a few choice words, and even a hand gesture or two in the midst of some of the craziness. ‘Dude, stay the hell out of my lane!’ Just saying…

By the time we got to our hotel and got settled, it was around 7:30 p.m. We were both hungry and tired. There was a restaurant next door that was rated pretty well so we stopped off to eat there. The food was fantastic. It was the best food we ate during our entire trip to Thailand. It was called Homchan.

They served a mix of Northern Thai food and the typical favorites like pad Thai and panang curry. Faith had a minced pork with holy basil. I had a curry pasta called Northern Style Chicken Curry Noodles that rivaled any panang I’ve ever had. It was rich and creamy sweet with a spicy savory kick. I was doubtful about noodles in my curry. The thick round egg noodles made the dish something special.

The server suggested that after dinner, we go over to Lanna Winter Wonderland. We stopped at a beautiful golden clock tower in the middle of a roundabout on our way there. It was built in 2008 in honor of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Lanna’s Wonderland was a Christmas themed garden where the walking market is typically located. They had snow. In northern Thailand. Big, fluffy, white, foamy flakes. Foamy?!? It was a bubble machine that spewed out bubbles that looked almost exactly like snow. We walked all around, catching our Christmas cheer and taking the obligatory roll of film. Again, metaphorical film in digital format.

Day 32:

This was a wat (temple) and museum day. If you travel through the Midwestern States in the US, it's not uncommon to see a church every other block and some towns. It's the same way with wats in Thailand. They are everywhere. And they are often over the top. As you may have seen from our Bangkok post.

Chang Rai has three of the most fantastic wats we saw. We visited two of them one day 32. But first we went and visited the Baan Dam (Black House) Museum. This is a museum built by the artist, Thawan Duchanee. He was a student of the artist who built the White Temple that we would see later in the day.

The whole place was surrealistic eye candy. Some of the art was painting that he did. And most of those were enabled with VR overlays via the phone. When they worked, they were phenomenal, though it was hit-and-miss. Some of it was arrangements of pieces of furniture, sculptures, or random pieces of just…stuff. Some of the art was the buildings themselves. All of it was crazy interesting.

Wat Huay Pla Kang, our next temple, was over the top as much the way the reclining Buddha was and Bangkok. The main structure is a white figure resembling a seated Buddha, that is around 79 meters tall (259 feet). It is actually Guan Yin, a Chinese Buddhist goddess. We have a magnificent painting of her in our living room at home. A set of white dragons guard the stairs from the base of the hill up to the goddess. Next door to the Guan Yin is the main temple, and next to that is the biggest pagoda we saw in Thailand. Not a chedi, but a Chinese-style building with a bit of Thai fusion in its design.

We took in the pagoda first since it was closest to the parking lot. Both of us climbed from the bottom to the top up a spiral set of stairs. Each floor had a unique alter with a Buddha, a bodhisattva (a person on their way toward enlightenment), or another divine image. The view of the large sitting Buddha from the top was fantastic.

The temple was next. The temple is mostly white in Chinese and Thai Lanna style. It's important at this point to make a distinction. This is not “the White Temple.” That moniker applies to the next wat that we visited. The plaster friezes on the walls and the columns were pure white and beautifully crafted.

The sitting Guan Yin can be reached either by writing a tram up to the top, or by walking up the stairs. We chose the stairs. Walking up the stairs allowed us to take in the beautiful white dragons, and to have a unique, upward angle view of the statue.

The Guan Yin sits on a set of dozens of columns. In the middle of the set of columns is an elevator that goes from the base up to her head. Yes, you guessed it. We took the ride up. The stairs are inaccessible. The walls inside the statue’s head is covered in plaster frieze sculptures, again all white. The third eye (a Buddhist concept that essentially correlates to the western notion mind's eye located the middle of the forehead) was a window over the valley. The eyes were open slits gazing out over the valley as well. Such an amazing tribute to the Buddhist faith.

The next temple was the White Temple, Wat Rong Khun. This temple is a gaudy, over-the-top expression of the artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat. The temple was started in the late 90’s and replaced an earlier temple on the site that had fallen into disrepair. It is still under construction—the artist built it with his own money.

The temple blends classic Lanna styles with a modern artistic edge. Yes, that is a Predator embedded in the ground with the artist’s face in its belly. No, I don’t know what it symbolizes. But it is definitely eye-catching.

The last temple we visited for the day was Wat Phra Kaew, the home of the Jade Buddha. You may recall from our Bangkok post that we also visited another Wat Phra Kaew there in Bangkok. The name means essentially temple of the green color (green-colored object). The original Emerald Buddha (made of Jasper) was re-discovered after being hidden in Wat Phra Kaew in Chiang Rai in the 1400’s. The temple had a different name back then. It was renamed in honor of the Emerald Buddha.

According to the legend, the Emerald Buddha was hidden in a chedi near the temple. Lightning struck the chedi and revealed the hidden Buddha. That chedi is still there, though it is underwhelming and understated. Perhaps that was intentional. Put something of great value in something humble to better hide it. Folks with ill intent might be inclined to look for something fantastic inside of a wealthier-type structure. Just a guess.

The temple houses a Buddha that was fashioned after the Emerald Buddha out of Jade, I believe. It is much more accessible than the Emerald Buddha with smaller crowds and no camera restrictions within the temple. A such, we were able to get some decent photos of the Buddha. It truly is a masterpiece of religious devotional expression.

We capped off our Friday night by slumming around the night market. We grabbed a bite to eat, paid 5 baht to use the bathroom (growl—if you are going to charge me for a basic human necessity, at least put some damn toilet paper in it and clean it more than once a year), and did some shopping.

Day 33:

We made good use of our car on Day 33. We drove from Chiang Rai to Sop Ruak at the Golden Triangle. The Triangle is the border intersection between Thailand, Laus and Myanmar. Thailand is south of the Ruak River and west of the Mekong River. Myanmar (Burma) is north of the Ruak and West of the Mekong. Laos is east of the Mekong. The triangle is the point where the two rivers and the three countries meet.

It is also the former opium capital of the region. Understanding that many of my friends and family have been negatively impacted by opiates, I’ll keep this part brief. Opium was a key government-sanctioned trade commodity in this region during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Government stopped sanctioning the trade during mid-1900s.

In the 1970s and 1980s when Princess Srinagarindra, the mother of King Bhumibo, spearheaded an effort to end farming of opium in Thailand. She helped the local farmers to switch to fruit, vegetable and flower crops—even tea. This significantly reduced the amount of opium produced and traded in Thailand. Opium farming and trade remains a huge issue in Myanmar.

We made several stops in the Golden Triangle area on the Thai side. A few miles south of Chiang Saen was a temple along the main road. Since we were driving our car and didn’t have a heavy temple plan for the day, we decided to check it out. Wat Phra That Pha Ngao was a pleasant local wat with some attractive temples. We walked around, snapped some pictures and were getting ready to leave when we noticed a sign indicating a lookout.

We were SO LUCKY! What a terrific find. The Mekong Skywalk is not well marked on Google Maps and it is not a main attraction on any of the sites we use for planning. It was FANTASTIC. We rode in the back of a tourist pickup for something like 30 baht (90 cents) each up the hill to a glass skywalk that overlooks the Mekong River. It has two artificial trees with pink flowers in the middle of two sections of the skywalk. We shared the skywalk with a group of young Buddhist novices from Laos.

We stopped in the town of Chiang Saen for a few minutes to look at the Mekong River. While there we parked near some old brick chedis from the 1600s just sitting in a neighborhood off the main road. Further north of Chian Saen, we visited a pair of viewpoints in the town of Sop Ruak. Both were nice and afforded good views of the Triangle. From an experience perspective, the Mekong Lookout won hands-down.

We ate lunch above the Ruak River with a couple of French-Canadian women from Quebec. It was fun talking with them about our respective tours around Thailand. We capped off the Triangle area with a visit to the Hall of Opium. This a museum dedicated to an honest appraisal of the opium trade in the Triangle region, the few positive benefits that came from opioids, and the devastating impacts on people. It was a sobering view for me relative to my own challenges with opioids.

While researching our time in the Triangle, I ran across a super interesting site. A few months ago, Faith and I watched a movie called 13 Lives. It chronicles the rescue of 12 young football (soccer) players (the Wild Boars) and their coach from the Tham Luang Cave. You may have seen it in the news. They were trapped 4 km deep in the cave when the monsoons came early. The cave floods during monsoon season. The rescue effort was truly amazing and tragic. One Thai navy seal lost his life during the effort.

Ultimately, all 13 were rescued. They were knocked out one-by-one using general anesthesia. They were then strapped to a set of tiny rescue stretchers with scuba air supply taped to their mouths. The divers rescued each of them, all 13, via six-hour long dives through the squat, murky, flooded, stalagmite strewn tunnels to the surface. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it.

We drove back to Chiang Rai and stopped off at the temple of Guan Yin (Wat Huay Pla Kang) for some amazing night pictures.

Day 34:

We checked out of our hotel around 10:00 AM and made our way to one more wat in Chiang Rai. We had planned to skip it since it is a four-hour drive down to Chiang Mai. We figured a 30-minute delay would not be so bad and stopped by Wat Rong Suea Ten, the Blue Temple. Worth it! Every minute of it!

The temple was built starting in 2005 to replace an older temple. It follows the style of Chalermchai (White Temple artist) with fantastical sculptures and amazing, shimmering sapphire blue colors. Together with the temple of Guan Yin and to a lesser degree the White Temple (just a touch too over-the-top), Chiang Rai had the best temples we visited while we were in Thailand (with one addition along the road to Chiang Mai but closer to Chiang Rai).

After the Blue Temple, we started our dive to Chiang Mai. We will pick up the tale of Day 34 in the Chiang Mai blog with amazing views at Wat Saeng Keo Phothiyan. Ah, but that is a tale for another day, dear friends.

- See you in Chiang Mai -