So, we left Chiang Rai this morning. We stopped at a roadside stall on the way out of town for something to eat. We got a couple of black buns with gold stripes for the road because they looked interesting. Shortly after that we arrived at the white temple, Wat Rong Khun. This is a strange place. On the one hand, its a Buddhist temple with lots of statues of buddha & such. On the other hand it felt to me like plastic. Disneyland. Something fake made for tourists. At least thats the feel I got, but it turns out that the temple itself was closed for renovations and we could only walk around the grounds. Ill give you an idea of the fake feeling I got: the entrance to the temple itself is over a bridge, that takes you over a river of extended hands. There are heads of western modern culture icons used as plant pots with Spanish moss growing from them like beards; mutant ninja turtles, Freddy Krueger, Captain America and more. And just outside is a shopping strip with souvenir shops. Felt like a tourist trap.
interesting. We headed to Suwirun tea plantation, driving through farmland with its various crops. At the plantations center theres a tea shop, and the girl there seemed surprised to see us. I guess they dont get many tourists. Still, she was pleasant, made us some tea to taste and tried to be as helpful as she could with the language barrier, and helped us choose some tea to purchase. Outside the shop is a tea field with young bushes of Oolong tea, and we took some pictures there. Then, as we were leaving the center we saw some people working in a field of what looked like weeds at first glance. Turns out they were picking chamomile flowers, so we stopped to say hello and pick a few flower heads with them. They found that very funny!
We ate our buns before we drove off. Turns out theyre filled with a creamy, sweet custard type of filling with palm sugar. We were expecting a meat filling, but it was good as a dessert too.
Ahead of us was a longer drive through the mountains to Mae Kachan Hot Spring and Geyser. The drive was much easier than I
expected from looking at the map. It looks twisty and windy but its a wide highway the whole way. A bit disappointing really, I was hoping for something a bit more in nature. And the hot springs were a bigger disappointment. There are a few bubbling hot springs on either side of the highway, a couple of them bubbled violently enough to look like small geysers, and there were lots of shops and restaurants and women trying to sell us a basket of eggs to boil. Right next to the shops was a very large made of three ancient looking buildings. Quite impressive at a distance, but when we got closer we found it all abandoned, and quite modern - the ancient railings had cracks that showed the reinforced concrete, the sculptured facades turned out to be fiberglass. We got some lunch there (a bit overpriced by Thai standards but still good) and headed on to Chiang Mai.
We did a little shopping and checked in to the hotel. Same hotel as last time here, but an even bigger room! Im starting to think they like us!
tuktuk across town, Gilat wanted to see a mall there (a malls a mall if you ask me). Then we found an open massage parlor where we were pounded into submission. We found something to eat afterwards and then found a taxi back to the hotel.
Travelmates near
