From Bangkok we took the night sleeper train North to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai was a kind of disappointment on our route. It has a cosy but very touristic centre. One travel agents hits the next, cafes and restaurants are squeezing in between. Hardly any streetfood to find. Once in a while there is a temple around. But most of the time you need to book a tour outside town to see something different. I did so and went rafting for a day. It was a great trip into the woods to reach the river and load the rafts to have a 10km trip with a spectacular view. In one of the last rapids it hit the raft and I fell over board. It was quite a shock first but I managed to climb into the raft again and continued paddling. We even saw some elephants on our trip but they were all part of elephant camps which offer bathing, riding and feeding trips to them.
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| Bangkok railway station |
As there was nothing special going on in Chiang Mai we left the town quite fast to move on to Chiang Rai, even more North. We took the VIP Bus as the next option to leave town and were quite surprised when we entered it: very spacious, stewardess and even a drink and snack was included in the price. We liked the atmosphere of Chiang Mai right away and stayed spontaneously a night longer. The city is rather small but has great food to offer, some sights in town and even bigger ones right outside which are easy to reach by public transportation.
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| Clock tower in Chiang Rai |
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| Rice with fried chicken and bouillon |
As we saw the centre more or less the first evening we headed outside to see the White Temple. It is THE attraction of Chiang Rai and we were very speechless to see a new built temple with details like this. And then the artist even had a little fun building it and put nice details into it.
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| White Temple |
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| part of the hell fire scene (you see the VIPs burning in hell?) |
We had quite some fun there but had to leave Thailand now. Our next adventure was coming on the horizon.
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