One Pai and Three Chiangs in Two Days!

Well hello, hello everyone!

My oh my do I have a tale to weave for you all, so hold onto your butts :)

Pai (still)

This is a very very hard place to leave. We actually ended up staying five nights in total in Pai. The last two days were spent doing absolutely nothing (which is just what the doctor ordered). I finally got my first Thai massage and it was pretty cool. To be honest I also got my second Thai massage in Pai as well and it was much better then the first. During the day we explored the town a bit, but mostly we say by the river at our guesthouse and read (or slept). I bought and have already completed the DaVinci Code and Paul finished the 5th Harry Potter. We're on the hunt for new books at some point today. Side Note: There are tons of used book stores in Thailand where you can exchange books by selling your old and picking up a new one - makes traveling light a lot easier.

While in Pai Dara (in all of her brilliance) suggested an alternative route into Laos. You see we were planning on backtracking down to take the train up to Nong Khai and crossing the border there. We would then travel north to Luang Prabang and travel back down the south to leave Laos. That's right - we were going to be backtracking twice. Now that I think about it to didn't really make a lot of sense for us because we still have quite a bit of time before our Thailand visa expires (it expires Dec. 8th). So here is what we decided to do instead. Take the bus from Pai to Chiang Mai, from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai (stay the night there) and then travel to Chiang Khong where we will cross the border into Laos. From Houie Xay (which is in Laos) we take a slow boat (which takes two days) along the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. We can then travel south to Viang Vieng (sp??) and Vientiane.

I will continue with my tale now...

Yesterday (Dec. 2nd) we hopped back on the bus from Pai to Chiang Mai. This ended up being the worst day on this trip so far (for me). I haven't been feeling the greatest (a bit of a cold/flu thing) so I decided to start taking the general antibiotics that were prescribed to me a few days ago. I don't know if that is what caused my demise, but the very nauseating ride to Chiang Mai didn't help. Let's just say I now get to add "threw up in a plastic bag on a old bus in Thailand" to my resume. So I arrived in our first Chiang feeling like crap.




Chiang Mai

We didn't stay long in Chiang Mai. Just long enough to get some food (and gravol) and hop onto a bus heading to Chiang Rai. At the bus station we met this very nice woman named Ann from Belgium. She heard of our plan to continue onto Chiang Rai and decided to join us. So just as a reminder - we now have Correne, Paul, Dara (from Florida) and Ann on this adventure! Fortunately for me this ride was much better and got me to our destination feeling right as rain (I've always wanted to say that!)

Chiang Rai

We arrived in Chiang Rai to get into the second guesthouse of our choice. It wasn't perfect, but since we were only spending one night we decided it was just fine. The four of us heading out into town and have a look around and eventually hunt down some dinner. Chiang Rai also boasts a night market worth checking out. We made our way there and had a GREAT dinner at the food stalls. For practically no money (100 baht) we had fried rice, pad Thai, spring rolls and fruit shakes for desert. We spent the night looking around the night market. There were quite a few things that we hadn't seen anywhere else before. It was also nice that the market was only open to pedestrian traffic so we didn't have to worry about crazy drivers running us over while we shopped! We called it an early evening and headed to bed.

In the morning we exchanged money, had breakfast and caught the bus to Chiang Khong.

Chiang Khong

This makes up our third Chiang in the past two days! We arrived at 1pm this afternoon and found ourselves a place to spend the night. The bamboo bungalows are quite nice and apparently our guesthouse has great Mexican food (although we've been warned that it takes so long that you might actually believe it's coming straight from Mexico!) Chiang Khong is a typical border town. Lots of places to buy slow boat tickets, a few places to eat and that's about it. Just by chance they hold a night market every Saturday night so it looks like we have plans for the evening. We have already purchased our slow boat tickets for tomorrow. At 9am we head to Thailand immigration for an exit stamp. We then take the ferry across the Mekong River to Houie Xay where we will obtain our 15 day Laos visa and get on the slow boat to Luang Prabang.

Well that's it. Since we will be traveling by boat for the next two days we won't be updating, but we hope to write in our blog once we arrive in Luang Prabang. Keep reading and check out the photos - Paul got a really fast internet connection and has uploaded almost every photo we have.

Until then...