Heading to Chiang Rai
Again, this morning, We just reached Chiangmai by Nakornchai Air bus service from Bangkok. Aom and I went to Warorot Market to buy some breakfast. We got hot sticky rice with a Fried Moo Yaw, and Fried Naem. We decided to have our breakfast beside the Mae Ping river. We walked along the river and found a place that we can sit and eat our meal. How great!! Early morning, fresh air, and good breakfast.
Afterthe meal, we headed towards the Empress Hotel again to rent a car. We chose Suzuki Caribian again, but not the same car as the last time. This time we got 4 seats with the canvas roof , we tried to get the one with no canvas roof. But there was no Suzuki Caribian left. So we had to take that one. We paid 2,000 baht for 2 days rental excluding the gasoline.
We drove to the route of Doi Saket to Chiang Rai. The canvas roof made very loud noise. We had to listen to the wind blowing against the canvas all along the trip. Doi Saket road is hard to drive on .There are only 2 lanes on the same road , one for going and one for coming. When the big truck was running in front of us, it was hard to overtake it, especially on the climbing part along the hill. Goshhhh!!
Along Doi Saket road, there is a mountain scenery. The view of the road that snaked up and down the hills made me very much impressed. I asked Aom to find some tourist spot on this road from the guidebook. Aom found that there was a natural hot spa on the 60th kilometre spot on this road. We decided to stop for a while at this hot spa because it was on our way to Chiangrai. We knnew we had enough time to make it to Chiangrai on time.
At the hot spring, we were very disappointed. There were only 3 small hot spring ponds. To me, nothing seemed interesting to see. There were many souvenir shops around. There were some vendors trying to sell eggs for boiling in the hot spring. They said it took only 9 minutes to boil chicken eggs. That still did not catch our interest. So we stopped only 5 minutes here and then went back to the car and kept going on our way to Chiangrai.
Around 3 and a half hours from Chiangmai City to Chiang Rai City. We stopped at a police station to ask for the direction to go tothe Rimkok Resort that we had already booked. It was very easy to find this hotel because it is easy to understand the direction from the policeman. We checked in and went to the room to take a bath after all night long journey from Bangkok last night.