Imperial Mae Ping Chiang Mai

We had breakfast at the hotel and waited for the van to pick us up for the day's adventure. Our fellow travelers included a 40 yr old Aussie, his 24 yr old Filipina girlfriend - he was just on the trip because he needed to cross the border to renew his visitation visa, and 2 couples from Spain who spoke next to no english. The tour guide, Mr. Noom (aka Mr. Forever-young) decided that Bri and I knew the most spanish (umm....) and would translate (el bano, si, and a couple of other elementary w...

The last day in Chiang Mai was pretty uneventful, we woke up, ate breakfast and headed to the airport. Had a 20 minute foot massage and boarded the plane. We flew Thai air. As soon as we were off of the ground, lunch was served. The attendents basically ran up and down the isle with coffee or tea and if you wanted it, it was your job to flag them down. We were in the middle seats of the airplane, so we only saw bits and pieces of the land as we flew by. Once we arrived in Phuket and collected...

Kim's entry:

1/2/09 – Friday
Well we had a pretty quite January 1st. We got up early and were hungry to we went out for what has become our usual breakfast of noodles or curry with rice. The food really is wonderful, I've learned it's just knowing what to pick as far as how spicy it's going to be.

(Pic of food vendor 1/3)

Then after breakfast we slept until 2PM – we deserved it after our night of celebrating! The rest of the day we just di...

We meet and sign the waiver. Charles and Ann from Minneapolis, James and Crista from Melbourne with Ant, our guide, Jump, his intern assistant and Pansit, our driver. good quality Trek bikes. We did a 25 km flat cycle just to test us out. everyone seemed to be pretty able. We stopped and wandered round a handicraft village. Some trees have multicoloured ribbons: they contain a spirit. Thai men have to spend 3mth as monks, usually by age 20. Evening: local culture show: dancing etc. followed b...

An early morning flight into Chiang Rai and out again as quick as possible, to the Imperial hotel resort thingy in the Golden Triangle. If you push aside all the golden triangle kitsch - including the "U R Here" sign , its not a bad place to chill out (literally - around 10 degrees at night), eat some tasty seafood, suck a few cold beers , and look wistfully across the Mekong into Laos. A fine temple with elevated views of the river completes the picture, but a fulfilling 7 day holiday it wou...