March 16
We took a bus from the boarder to Chiang Rai with Sonne from Gibbons and this other guy from Gibbons that we didn’t know well. They continued to Chiang Mai while Matt and I got off after 3 hours in Chiang Rai. We finally found our hostel after driving around in a taxi for way too long and then we walked around the area. There was a neat night market that took over the main area of the town. There was live music and a lot of stalls where locals sold stuff. We ate at an Italian restaurant and then chilled by the live music for a couple of beers. We then went back to our dorm, which was on the roof of a hostel. It was a pretty cool setup but we had to take six flights of stairs whenever we left and returned. It was a long day, and we are officially back in Thailand!
March 17
We ate breakfast at a bakery and found out how we would get to this famous White Temple in this city. It was literally all there is to see here so we didn’t want to miss it. I refilled my SIM card with some data for 6 dollars and then we bargained with a tuk tuk driver to take us so we didn’t have to take the shitty public bus there. We ride for about a half hour and then arrived. It was really neat and different. It was designed and built all within the past 20 years as some guy’s art project. It looks like a normal temple but is all white and silver, and it has modern influences on it, like pictures of Spider-Man, The Matrix, and the World Trade Center towers in NYC. It was a strange temple but was really cool to walk around and admire the detail of the most unnoticeable parts. We then took the tuk tuk back to the town and got a bus ticket to Chiang Mai. Our plan was to go to Chiang Mai and try to immediately get a ticket to Pai that day, so we hoped that it was possible.
