Whole Day on the Road

15 June 2008 @ Chiang Mai, Thailand

Supposingly, we booked a place with our guesthouse to bring us to Chiang Rai. Unfortunately, we were told in the morning that the bus was fully booked. We had no choice but to travel on our own.

[9.30am] After packing everything, we paid the guesthouse's owner's husband to drive us to the Chiang Mai's bus station. We quickly bought the tickets to Chiang Rai.


While waiting for the bus to depart, we walked to a nearby 7-11 shop for breakfast. MinBee bought a hotdog, LeongKee bought a burger while Kuan and I bought cup noodles for breakfast.


[11.00am] We boarded the bus after that and finally gets moving at 11am. It's a rather long journey to Chiang Rai - 3 hours. We listen to mp3 and took a rest.

Sleepyboy caught on camera again!

After a while, the bus conductor started to distribute biscuits and a bottle of water to each passenger on board. Wow, never expect that coming.


Then, wet towels were given too! All with their company label - GreenBus.


[2.15pm] Finally reached Chiang Rai. We quickly look for counters that sell tickets to Chiang Kong. After we bought the tickets, we realized we don't have time to eat lunch. So we bought some snacks to eat on the bus.


[3.00pm] The bus depart from Chiang Rai heading towards Chiang Kong. The condition of the bus was much worse than the one we took before. No air-cond, no biscuits, no water, no wet towel, lots of boxes that the locals are transporting on the bus.

Kuan, MinBee, LeongKee and Me - on the way to Chiang Kong

While we have nothing to do. We ate our snacks bought earlier - custard cakes, and we took photos.





We bought the same type of food for our trekking back in Chiang Mai, because we kinda like the cake.

[6.00pm] After a another grueling 3-hour ride on the bus, our butts almost gone flat. We reached Chiang Kong town and took a tuk-tuk to bring us to somewhere where we can look for a guesthouse to stay.


The sky was getting dark and we finally decided to stay at Boom House after surveying the prices around. There were not many rooms available, so we took 1 good room and 1 bad room.

What is bad room? No air-cond, no attached bathroom and the bed is super-duper hard. And I mean it. I look under the bed sheet and I saw a mattress below it. But when I hit on the mattress, it was like hitting on a piece of board. *THUP* Me no kidding!


[6.30pm] We cleaned up and walked around town, bought some snacks and water for the long day tomorrow and went to withdraw some money. It was like a ghost town, nothing much to see around and most shops were closed.


[7.00pm] At last we found hope to cure our hunger. We found a shop that sells noodles - soup and dry. We quickly ordered and wait for our food anxiously. We have not eat a proper meal the whole day, everyone is extremely hungry.


[8.30pm] Very satisfied with the cheap and delicious soup noodles, we then walked around to look for travel packages that can bring us across to Laos. We found that the prices were almost the same, so we took the one near our guesthouse - Easy Bar. That guy looks friendly too.

You'll need these if you're going to Laos

We paid for the border-crossing package and head back to rest as we need to wake up pretty early for the next day.

For your information, crossing the border from Chiang Kong, Thailand to Luang Prabhang, Laos is no easy task. Takes two whole days to get to civilization. I shall talk more on my coming posts. Billy, out.

Previous post: Kalare Night Bazaar
Next post: 48 hours on Mekong

Kalare Night Bazaar

14 June 2008 @ Chiang Mai, Thailand

After we came down from the Doi Suthep temple, we bought some snacks at the roadside before boarding our tuk tuk to get back down to town.


First, we saw a stall selling corns. There were 3 last corns left and we bought it all. It's kinda different how they prepare their corns compared to those in Malaysia.

3 cups of corns for them, not me.

Then, we saw this stall selling some sort of sausages and fish balls. It looked really yummy and we bought one stick to get a taste of it.


To our surprise, the "sausage" is actually stuffed with rice. It has a strong pepper smell and the taste is not bad after all!

Then we boarded our tuk tuk and told the driver to drop us at the night bazaar. Before anything else, we went to the nearest public toilet to take a leak, and I saw this...


...a counter collecting 5 Baht per entry and a HUGE LCD Monitor on top of it. I wonder when will Malaysia's public toilet evolve to be like this. Hehe...


We walked around the Kalare Night Bazaar, most shops are selling the same thing; t-shirts, decos, jewelries etc etc... There is where each of us bought a cute Chiang Mai t-shirt.


Well then I saw this sign - Pusat Informasi Pelancongan Islam. Wow, can't believe there are agencies taking care of the welfare of the muslims in Chiang Mai too. Haha... I'm giving free ads to this company.


We walked to the food court for dinner. It has a lot of stalls with all sorts of food you can think of. Food courts as usual, has variery but not quality. The food has nothing much to boast about.


After a while, we heard some music and there were dance performance at the centre of the plaza. I head over to take a look and shot some photographs.



A video of the dance: [warning - boring dance]



Not really satisfied with our dinner. The four of us continue walking around to hunt for more stuffs to munch on.


LeongKee and MinBee bought a crispy pancake each, from this stall. She chose pizza with chocolate flavour while he chose ham with strawberry flavour. Hmm... Both flavours didn't sound very appealing to me.

Ah, don't pretend. I know it's not yummy. Haha!

We walked all the way back to our guesthouse with a lousy map, but luckily managed to scrap our way through.

Then, we discussed with the owner of the guesthouse to arrange transport for us to get to the border of Thailand, because we are going to LAOS! Long journey to Loas though. Billy, out.

Previous post: Thai Massage & Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep
Next post: Whole Day on the Road

Thai Massage & Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep

14 June 2008 @ Chiang Mai, Thailand

After the adventurous and exciting trekking in the jungle, all of us decided to go for a real Thai massage before visiting other places. So we had our guesthouse to arrange transport to this massage parlour while we had our breakfast.

The surrounding of the place is very relaxed and calm. We enquired about the rates and decided to take the 1 hour full body massage, which cost us around 200Baht per person (not too sure about the price)


We changed into a set of very loose t-shirt and pants before the masseurs come in. The whole one hour massage was very painful and torturous but my body felt very relaxed after the session.


A two-hour massage would be much better, but we didn't have that much time and money to spare. Thus, we head for lunch while we wait for the rain to stop before taking a taxi to Doi Suthep.

Taken in Chiang Mai city

Doi Suthep is actually the mountain where Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep sits on. It's 15 km away from Chiang Mai city, and it's way way way up the hill.


Well, to get to the Buddhist temple founded in 1383, we climbed 309 steps to reach the top. Alternatively, one can pay 50Baht for a two-way tram to get to the temple.



The weather was quite cooling and windy at that place, resembles a bit like the weather at Genting Highlands.


Before reaching the top, there were stalls selling souvenirs and local stuff. There were also a few kids dressed up in their traditional clothings awaiting foreigners to take photos with them.


We headed to the top and saw this magnificent temple sitting there. The view from the top was also breath-taking.

A brief history about the temple

The view from up there

There were also a lot of bells lined up around the temple. We couldn't help ourselves but to hit on them.


To get into the compound of the Chedis and Buddha statues, one must not wear shoes and properly dressed. MinBee had to borrow scarf and sarong as she was wearing singlets and very short shorts.

Ta-Da! The aunty look of MinBee

Inside the compound, all we see is gold, gold and gold. The chedi is coated with gold and almost everything inside there are in golden colour.


There's also an Emerald Buddha where many locals pray at.


There wasn't much to see in there as the temple isn't very big. I was just very impressed with how gold-ish the place is.

Cat & Chedi [This cat never move an inch]

We headed down to buy some street food and head back down to the city. Till then. Billy, out.

Previous post: Bamboo Rafting in Chiang Mai
Next post: Kalare Night Bazaar

Bamboo Rafting in Chiang Mai

13 June 2008 @ Chiang Mai, Thailand

It's the last day of our 3-days journey into the deep woods of Chiang Mai. Our final activity is bamboo rafting! Yay!


As usual, we woke up early, around 7am for breakfast. We had eggs and toast! Yummy~


After breakfast, we have to pack all our stuff into our bags, and important stuff to be put into plastic bags. I hope you know why...

Too bad all our cameras are kept tightly inside plastic bags and inside the bag. We didn't managed to take any pictures on the raft! *sobz*


However, I found this photo above that resembles pretty much how our rafting goes. Just imagine one pro (so called River King) manuvering in front and 2 noobies (Me and Kuan) manuver at the back, while others stand in one line in the centre.

Well, it was pretty fun to have a chance to control the bamboo raft. One very malu-fying stuff happen, which I lost my stick when I press to hard into the bottom of the river and couldn't pull it back up. So, I was stick-less for about 15 minutes, before the River King picked up another stick for me.

The whole journey on the river was 3 hours, with a pit stop at a small village.


We arrived at our destination around 1pm. It was raining heavily, all our clothes are soaking wet. Got changed and had beehun for lunch.

Little pondok where we had our lunch

After resting for a while, we left that place around 2pm with a tuk tuk and reach our guesthouse around 3 hours later.

failed SS shot in tuk tuk - Me, LeongKee, MinBee and Kuan

We had a simple dinner for the day. Decided to walk to town's 7-11 and eat cup noodles for dinner. We went on to buy a bottle of beer since it's quite cheap.


We poured the beer into the Coffee cups (like slurpee cups in M'sia) and got ready to drink it. Suddenly, the staff in 7-11 stopped us and told us to buy cups for beer. He threw away the Coffee cups we used.

See this cups without labels?

No choice, we bought a few cups from the shop and drank the beer. Cup noodles and beer, cheap and nice.

It was a really exciting day, full of new experiences. Bamboo rafting is really cool. I'd like to try white water rafting next time though. Hehe... Billy, out.

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