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 124 – Luang Prabang Waterfall.

Free breakfast! The best thing a hostel can do is free breakfast because it actually makes people get up and out of bed to make the most of the day and when you’re trying to organise 10 people it becomes very helpful. Some people from our room along with some others we met last night decided that today we would go and visit the Kuang Si Falls, which are located just south of Luang Prabang.

The weather wasn’t great and as we were waiting for a couple of people to get drinks and things the weather turned and started to chuck it down. We were told it was dry season… I think you’ll find we are in monsoon season with the amount of storms we have encountered recently! We were trapped under a tent for a good 40minutes before it stopped. We decided, as it was a couple of people’s last days that we would go to the waterfall. Chrissy and I debated about going tomorrow instead but the more people you go with in a tuk tuk the cheaper it is so we gave in and went anyway. It took about 20 minutes to drive there and the views were stunning.

On arrival we paid £1.50 to enter the park and the first place we got taken to was to see the bears. The bear sanctuary looks after 23 Asiatic Black bears and they have been brought here by the Laos government to save them from being tortured in a bile farm. Apparently they are kept in small cages and there bile is sold because it is used in traditional Chinese medicines.

Kuang Si Falls has a 60m cascade and is collected in various pools along the path until you reach the top. This place would have looked amazing in the sun but just seeing it was good enough. Within minutes of reaching the waterfall the rain started again. Chrissy and I made shelter in a café whilst some of the others went swimming. We got the tuk tuk back to town after the rain had stopped and I was very excited to have a warm shower and put on my joggers. Four of us went out to explore the market and get some cheap street food for dinner. We found a street off the market that had these buffet stands. You pay 10,000 kip (75p) to fill your plate as much as you can. It was a cheap and satisfying dinner!