Best nights sleep so far, must be over the jet lag. Breakfast this morning was a simple affair, eggs, toast, fruit. It was do your own toast over a charcoal grill on the counter top. After breakfast one of the hotel workers - his name was Sky, write the rest of the story yourself - came with us and we went a short distance in the van first to the local hot springs, quite an impressive geyser that erupts every 30 minutes or so. Sky had brought some chicken and quail eggs with him for us to place in baskets in one of the hot springs so they could cook, takes about 30 minutes. We thought we would see the eggs later at lunchtime but after collecting them that was the last we saw of them. We sat for a while soaking our feet in one of the several hot foot baths, we had gone to the spa first to see if we could get a massage but they were fully booked. After that we took a short drive back to visit a couple of temples, they had to open one specially for us. Then it was back to the Phumannee to finish our packing and then some lunch. There had been a wedding earlier and the reception was in a small place across the way on the main street.
Then it was a drive of about 2 hours to Mai Sae which is right on the border with Myanmar, along the way we got stopped at a police checkpoint and our driver had to take a drugs test, thankfully for him and us it was negative. Sentences for drug crimes are particulalry harsh here. Before we got to Mai Sae we visited the Royal Botanical Gardens at Doi Tung, think Corporation gardening but on a grander scale.
Lots of it was done quite well, must be very labour intensive as virtually everything was in pots. The Royal Villa looks like a Swiss chalet.
At Mai Sae we were dropped at the local market that lines the street leading up to the busy border crossing, people cross into Thailand to work, the daily rate in Myanmar is 60 baht (£1.50), in Thailand about 300 baht. We wondered around a bit, Fiona bought some dry roasted broad beans - delicious. Then it was back tracking about 40 minutes to our hotel for the night. On the side of a mountain, cottage built of bamboo with a balcony with a view overlooking the mountainside, the place is about 800 acres of bamboo and shrubs. As we checked in we noticed it was happy hour soon so after dropping our bags went to the bar to have some mojitos.
Tomorrow we are going to the border of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos and visiting some more temples. We are at a nice hotel tomorrow and on Tuesday we can look around Chiang Rai in the morning before getting a flight via Bangkok to our beach resort in Krabi. Looking forward to next week although we have both enjoyed the touring, it's not been as strenuous as China.
On the way to dinner we had to drop into reception to ask for some extra pillows and also ask them to deal with some invading ants. Dinner was a bit hampered by the waitress saying they had run out of chicken except for some chicken wings! WTF! I didn't expect it to be like KFC. Anyway we had some chicken wings to start and then belly pork with garlic cooked with kale. Compared to some of the cheap and cheerful places we have eaten this as a supposedly high class restaurant didn't come close - and it was overpriced and they add on 10% service and 7% tax and then have a section for tips on the bill. Don't get me wrong the food was OK just not as good as we have been having for perhaps 20% of the price.
2025-02-14