Day 130 – Bangkok shopping.

Chrissy’s alarm went off at 5.30am as her shuttle to the airport was leaving at 6. I woke up with her of course, to say goodbye. I then fell back asleep and woke up at about 10. I chilled out in the room for a bit before heading out to find some food. I got in a taxi to the MBK shopping centre, there are so many big places to shop in Bangkok I wasn’t quite sure which one to go to. I realized as I got to MBK it was the first of about 6 shopping centres on that road, which was great news for me! Unfortunately I didn’t find anything I wanted in any of them and most of the high street shops were the same prices or more expensive than at home. Just like the last time I was in Bangkok before a flight home I made my way to Tesco. I know it’s a weird thing to do but everything is cheap there and it’s a great place to get the last few things to take home along with finding somewhere to eat for dinner.

I got in another taxi to take me back to my hotel. The guy said he knew where it was, which is clearly a lie as he had to ring the hotel and ask some questions, he then went a slightly longer way than last time. He pulled up at the hotel and said I owed him 500B, this was not the case. He had put the metre on and turned it off as we arrived. I knew it said 260 and I had to pay for the tolls, which only made it up to 320. He said ‘Oh ok, 400B’. No. I gave him 520 and told him he needed to give me 200 back. Anyway, I stood my ground, wasted his time, got reception involved and actually came out 20B up after about 10minutes. Some may say it wasn’t worth it but it’s the principal and I’m not some dumb tourist who doesn’t know the difference.

I’ve packed up all my stuff and it’s not actually THAT heavy…well lighter than I was expecting anyway. I’m also impressed I managed to fit it all in the 2 bags I brought away with me. So that’s it, it’s 11.56pm and I’m about to head to bed, see you for the last post tomorrow!

Day 129 – Chiang Rai to Bangkok.

One last free breakfast at the early hour of 7.30am, well early for us anyway! We got a taxi to the airport and once again the guy wanted to charge us X amount for the journey but we made him put the metre on and guess what? It was cheaper! We were flying from Chiang Rai down to Bangkok as it was cheap and only takes an hour compared to a 10 hour bus ride and we all know it would be waaaay longer than that. Our flight was with Bangkok Airways and what a fantastic airline. We checked in with no hassle and as we walked through to sit by the gate we were given complimentary drinks and snacks, I’m pretty sure we could go back more than once too! As well as this we were given a snack on our plane, it makes me laugh when they give you food for such a small journey. The time from when the seatbelt sign goes off to back on again is so short you don’t feel like you have time to do anything.

I booked us into a hotel that is a short drive from the airport to make it easier for us. I ended up booking a place with a rooftop pool and complimentary shuttle bus to the airport, great deals! We arrived and could check in straight away, which was awesome. We dumped our bags, chilled out for a little bit and then went upstairs to chill by the pool and catch some rays on Chissy’s last day. Her flight got changed a few weeks ago so she leaves tomorrow morning instead of the same day as me, which is why we are in Bangkok a day earlier, it’s worked out for the best though.

We didn’t really do much else apart from chill out at the hotel and walk down to 7eleven on the corner for some snacks.

Day 128 – Chiang Rai.

We had a few hours left with our bike (Barbara) so after breakfast we decided to take it out again. We popped back to Central Plaza to pick up a few things we didn’t get yesterday and then went for a short drive around the town. We feel quite sad to hand her back as we became quite attached to it. Felt like a local because we just hopped on it and rode around wherever we wanted to go!

The next few hours were spent just chilling in the hostel as Chrissy wanted to get some drawing done for work, which gave me a chance to write some of this as I haven’t in a few days.

We then walked down the road and went out for dinner, which was really disappointing! As you know I like to look on Trip Advisor for places to go and I found some recently opened burger place by an Australian guy. I thought this must be good, I was totally wrong. The food was bland and terrible but the service was amazing. I should probably just copy and paste this as a TA review right now. After here we walked around the Night Bazaar (market), which was also disappointing. Everything was overpriced and no one wanted to bargain with me. I think because it’s here every night they don’t really care. This made me even more gutted about missing out on last night’s market.

The final thing I wanted to see in Chiang Rai was the Clock Tower show. There is a roundabout with a clock tower on it and on the hours of 7, 8 and 9pm it has a light and sound show. Imagine the Disneyland castle but smaller, basically the same thing. It was a cute little thing and went on for about 5 minutes. Once that was over we went back to the hostel to pack up all ready for our flight to Bangkok early tomorrow morning!

Day 127 – Chiang Rai Scooter!

Another hostel, another free breakfast. This one comes with tea, toast, cereal and bananas. When I googled somewhere to stay the other day I discovered there had been an earthquake in the Chiang Rai province of 6.3 magnitude only on Tuesday, so 4 days ago! Crazy to think we could have been here when it happened. The main reason for coming here was to see the white temple and I read in an article that had been partly damaged and was closed, so I was very happy to find out it had only closed for the day and was reopen for us!

We debated about hiring bikes to ride around the town but decided to go all out and hire a scooter for the day and ride to the temple ourselves. It only cost 250B, which is about £5 for 24 hours! Absolute bargain! The temple was about 12km from the hostel and it was one straight road to get there, so we couldn’t really get lost. I have driven a scooter once before in Malaysia and got used to this one really quickly and loved every minute.

The white temples official name is Wat Rong Khun. This contemporary temple began being built in 1997 and apparently wont be finished until 2070! He has since added it will take 2 years to fix the damage the earthquake has caused. This is the most impressive temple I have ever seen. I think because it’s not traditional and has been created by an artist you can really see the story behind it. He’s a crazy man but still, it was amazing to look at. I think you might have been able to walk through the temple and get closer than what we got but just seeing it was better than not seeing it at all.

We left the temple grounds and made our way about 17km down the road to see the Khun Korn waterfall. We went down some crazy potholed roads and I managed to miss a lot of them! We then had to go on a 1600metre trek through the forest to find the fall. It was totally worth it, out of all the waterfalls I’ve seen on this trip this could potentially be top spot, you could feel the force from the fall as soon as you got to the top of the trail.

When we left the waterfall we took the same journey back to the temple and onto the highway to take us back to our hostel. On the way back we stopped in the Central Plaza shopping centre to take a look around. We bought a few goodies, grabbed some lunch at 5pm as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and then went back to the hostel.

Seeing as we had the bike we decided to take it out for a spin in the evening and find the Sunday market, which was slightly too far to walk too and good job we did! Within about 5 minutes of arriving at the market a storm appeared and did the rain come down! We took shelter in a pub for about 40minutes waiting for it to stop and when it did… well, we went outside to walk back to the bike to get back before it started to rain again and the road was completely flooded. It was about 3inches deep so we waded through it and somehow the road from where we parked the whole way back was fine. We were gutted as we really wanted a bit of street food and the market looked really good before everyone grabbed it all and legged it under cover!

Day 126 – Arriving in Chiang Rai.

We stopped 5 minutes from the border for 20minutes for no reason. We eventually arrived at the border about 9am and were told we had to pay to leave Laos… I paid $35 to get in, I’m not paying to leave as well, we told them we had no money and walked through anyway. They had already stamped our passports and it worked! To get to our next destination, Chiang Rai, it took about a 2 and a half hours.

FINALLY we have made it! To bus terminal 2, which was no help. I knew from terminal 1 it was a 5 minute walk to our hostel but had no idea where we were from 2. Chrissy and I walked over to the tuk tuk drivers because I thought we might be able to negotiate a deal, they wanted 100B and no way were we paying that, so we walked over to the taxi driver who said 100B too. We decided to go with him but made him put the meter on. What a surprise, we turned up to our hostel and it cost 52B! You can’t make money out of me just because I’m a tourist!

We were absolutely knackered from the journey but finding some food and a drink was more important than having a nap right now. We made it part way down the road before collapsing in an air-conditioned café. I think it was called the Golden Triangle and it was an awesome choice, exactly what we needed! We then walked back to the hostel and chilled out. I decided not to nap so I’d sleep really well later. We didn’t really do a lot and ended up having dinner in the hostel too because we were too lazy to go anywhere else. We are staying in Fun-D hostel and it has been the most welcoming in a long time. I really do love Thailand!