Visitors from NZ!
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For the last week we’ve had Karen, Hayley and Willem(my sister and children) with us from NZ. We’ve loved showing them around Chiang-Mai and just hanging out, eating out at lots of different places together and shopping! We had lots of laughs riding in tuk-tuks, going to the local markets and flash shopping malls . It was so nice for the girls to have their cousins with them to enjoy it together.
While they were here we booked an overnight trip which involved trekking,elephant riding,white-water rafting and bamboo rafting. The place we stayed was at a Lahu hilltribe village in very basic huts with no electricity. We all slept in one room with mosquito nets over our beds. We were all wondering what the food would be like but were pleasantly surprised by the fantastic meal of crunchy fried chicken, potato curry and stir fried veges. The first day was quite a gruelling day of uphill walking and Karen was wondering why on earth she wasn’t sitting on a beach in Phuket instead of sweating and puffing up hill in 33 degree heat. The second day was all downhill so that would have been good news if it hadn’t have been raining quite hard which made it super slippery. Karen had her special guide who looked after her and held out her hand in the dodgy bits while singing various classic English songs with his own special version of the words. It was very amusing!
We made it downhill to the waterfall where some swam and then had a short walk to the elephant camp. Riding the elephant was quite a neat experience. I must admit to feeling a bit freaked at first especially when we went up a steep boggy track. I was sure the elephant was going to fall sideways with me landing between the ground and the elephant! Once we got on level ground it was all good, though and was a very relaxing ride along the river bank.
Next was white-water rafting, or should I say brown water rafting. We decided Charlotte was too young and Karen happily volunteered to look after her and get a ride down in the van. The rapids were fun but not too scary, perfect for me but of course not quite scary enough for the rest of the family. We all really enjoyed it though. It was interesting for Tim to see how they run a rafting trip compared to how he would run one in NZ. They didn’t have a safety talk at all. If I didn’t have Tim with us I don”t know that I would have been happy jumping on a raft. At the end of the white-water section we were then transferred onto the bamboo rafts, which Karen and Charlotte joined us for. It was very cruisy, just floating , slightly submerged down the river for a while to our get out point.
After getting changed and eating iceblocks we jumped into the ute and headed back to Chiang-Mai.
We had one more day in CM before we packed up our bags and then all of us took the bus to Chiang-Rai, which took about 3 hours. There we did a bit more market shopping at the Night Bazaar, went on a boat ride to a cave, checked out an impressive temple, had lots of delicious fried chicken and fruit shakes and just hung out at our guesthouse. One day we paid for the kids to swim in a hotel pool, a bit of relief from the unbelievably sticky heat.
Monday came and this is when we left Karen, Willem and Hayley to head for the Laos border. They were heading back to CM for a few days, before heading to Bangkok. We had to catch a public bus to Chiang Saen so we could check out the Golden Triangle before getting to Chiang Khong where we’d spend the night. We had a good look around the Opium Musuem at the Golden Triangle which showed the long history of opium smoking and trading. When we got to Chiang-Khong we found a guesthouse right on the edge of the Mekong, with air-con for $30 for 2 triple rooms. In the morning we made our way to the wharf to begin our journey into Laos.
Photos coming soon……
Tags: Travel
kim
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