I was expecting a better breakfast this morning, there was juice, good coffee and some muesli or granola with yoghurt and you could get eggs cooked as you want them. But considering that everywhere in the area they grow pineapples and strawberries galore there were none to be had, only some poor looking chunks of melon.
We checked out and left before 09.00 and drove down the mountainside and stopped at a local craft and cottage industry centre sponsered by the Royal Family, in the car park there was a mobile medical and x-ray unit that had been set up for the day and locals were queuing up to get a check up. At the centre they make mulberry bark paper, I think mostly for the Japanese market, then we went to see some weaving, quite intricate patterns but none of that was in sale in their shop, that was all ear marked for Ikea! We then went along to see the coffee processing but that was really just spreading the beans in the sun to dry, we would have had a coffee in their shop but they had no milk and Fiona won't drink black coffee.
Then we drove to the Golden Triangle where Thailand has a border with Myanmar and Laos, we parked up and Yo got us some tickets for our long-tail boat ride. We had to leave our passports, this is a fairly new rule to prevent wanted people fleeing Thailand. We drove up river with Thailand on our left and then it was Myanmar where they have built a big casino then it was turn around and it was Laos on our left where they are building a big casino, gambling is illegal in Thailand so lots of people cross the border to use the casino's. We then visited the opium museum, opium trading was legal as rcently as 1957, well it feels recent to me.
Then it was a drive to the outskirts of Chiang Rai where we visted the Black House Museum, just weird, like Game Of Thrones. Then it was into Chiang Rai where Fiona and I had lunch in a Cabbages and Condoms restaurant. This chain was set up to sponser the general availability of family planning services so that condoms would be as cheap and available as cabbages, you can have a meal downstairs and a vasectomy upstairs! As you pay your bill they don't have a bowl of mints but a bowl of condoms.
Then it was onto the White Temple, by this time it was very very hot and I think we'd had enough; but Fiona had mentioned how she liked the buttons on the Lahu jackets and Yo knew of a place in the market where they could be bought. So it was onto the hotel but via the local market.
The hotel is very nice, on the banks of the Kok river. Tonight we'll take the hotel shuttle into town and wander around the night market and get a meal. Our flight tomorrow to Krabi is not until 15.40 so we have a later check out of 13.00 so have the morning free. We won't get to our resort until very late as we have to change at Bangkok but at least we will have a week to relax.
George
2018-03-05
The places you go to, cabbage & condoms, very high class restaurants.
Ken
2018-03-05
That restaurant is still there !!! I ate there over 20 years ago.