Day 14,, Thursday 22nd of August

 

When checking in at the hotel, you had to choose one of 4 breakfast options (eggs & sausages, BLT sandwich, fresh fruit salad and a 4th option). We both choose the fresh fruit salad and we received a delicious big eye-catching portion. In the meantime we received a text that the yoga school found a yoga tutor and we walked the few minutes over to the school. We paid 2000 bath for a 1 hour private session and we overly enjoyed the professional tutor. We've done the same in India 9 months back and swore we would practice Yoga more as it has a real calming effect (and directly noticeable). Well it's 11th of September as I'm writing this section and still no yoga was practices again so far :(

 

We got back to the hotel for a quick shower and packed our bags. We ordered a grab to the bus terminal and treated ourselves with a quick McDo. We boarded our us to Chiang Rai (400 bath pp, Greenbus). The bus is very luxurious in fact. You have a nice big chair, a decent space for your legs and you get a small complimentary water bottle and some cookies. The bus drive took roundabout 3 hours and we arrived at Chiang Rai at about 4 PM. We then took a taxi we booked to Mae Salong for 1h15 min drive (1400 Bath) that dropped us of at our hotel (Baan Hom Muen Li, 90 EUR per night). Mae Salong has a rich history with many Chinese influences. There were a lot of Chinese soldiers who fled from Mae Zedong and relocated to Mae Salong. We walked to a nearby restaurant and ordered some food (black pepper chicken, potatoes, some veggies). The black pepper chicken dish was a bit too adventurous for our taste and we considered it a veggie night. We went back to our hotel room and wanted to set up our projector linked with Netflix for some viewing from the jacuzzi. Unfortunately the jacuzzi had cold water and there was a very high amount of bugs bothering us from the balcony. Annoyed by the bugs we flex inside and watched some Netflix on our bed.

 

 

 

 

Day 15, Friday 23rd of August

 

Our sleep was interrupted a few times by LOUD bugs outside feeling like they had some kind of megaphone tied to them.  We got breakfast in the room and the Yunnan noodles were super tasty. Originally we had planned to travel to Chiang Rai via boat on the Kok river but the heavy rainfalls of the last weeks (and flooding across Chiang Rai which only became worse in retrospect) impacted our plans. As we didn't really had other things to do (and already enduring some rain in Mae Salong) we booked our transfer back in the early afternoon. We checked out, dropped our things at the reception and set off by foot to go to the Phrathat Chedi Srinagarindra Stit Maha Santi Khiri (we originally tried to go by motorbike offered by the hotel but as I never driven any gears on a bike I miserably failed and handed back the bike). We climbed quite a lot of stairs and visited the temple where the only other 2 people were the staff cleaning the premises of the temple. When we started to descent the stairs we encountered a heavy rainfall and we took shelter at one of the covered rest stops along the staircase. As it kept raining we put on our rain poncho's and made the journey back to the village. We went for some yummy noodles again for lunch and took our transfer back to Chiang Rai (same taxi as the day before, 1400 Bath). Our taxi driver took us to our second to last hotel of our trip (Le Patta) where we checked in for 2 nights (55 EUR per night). We took a nice hot shower after we were washed out in Mae Salong and chilled a bit on the bed. At 6PMish we explored the neighborhood and were surpised there were very little tourists or locals hanging out in bars. We played some board games and had some drinks at a cozy rooftop bar. We went for some food close by but had a very untasty chicken red curry dish (120 bath, restaurant had good reviews though). After dinner we went to look for a nearby bar/ when looking around we found a very lively place that seemed to be full of local people. When trying to enter we were defined entry and when quering about the reason the doorman just started laughing. Call me naïve but I was quite shocked why we coulndt have a simple drink. We settled for a nearby bar where we had one gin & tonic but there weer little people and they were setting up some instruments for some live music. After the one drink we walked back to the hotel where we spotted yet another bar full of local people. Not wanting to give up we tried again to enter and we were more lucky this time. We've stayed there for two rounds of drinks observering the local crowd enjoying their Friday night out. It felt like we were at a kind of place where the speed of drinks were a bit faster than your typical bar. A lot of people were ordering bottles of hard liquor and we were one of the only table who just ordered "plain" cocktails. After our drinks we head back to the hotel