Little Duck Hotel Chiang Rai

... guesthouse owned by the Akha hill people, 23 km outside Chaing Mai with free pick up and drops off. It was advertised as ‘getting back to nature.’

So, after a day walking round Chaing Rai and checking out the local Wat (temple), which was quite interesting (the Emerald Buddha, which is in the Grand Palace in Bangkok, was found here) we were collected in the back of a pick up truck and taken up a winding narrow road into ...

... a bit more consideration and as I’m on a roll getting all this out and my finger tips are now square-shaped anyway I may as well carry on:

When I took the long overland journey from Laos to southern Thailand last year to take my teaching qualification it was never with the intention of using it to get a ‘job’ in a school somewhere and to slip back ...

So in Huay Xai we tried to lie in until a reasonable time, but there was some building work next door. Awesome. Luckily EW is feeling more human, though perhaps she'll never be fully healed after the boat ride... To cross the border you have to get stamped out of Loas take a ferry across the river and then get stamped into Thailand, so this si what we did. It was indeed very easy, but everyone going our way was local and everyone going the other direction was westerners, I ...

... vand og fødevarer og en masse andre ting. Det kan også bruges til at bygge stillads af (ERLING) til kæmpestore bygninger af beton. (Henriette: dødkedeligt bras fra mor..... Det eneste der var sjovt var at lave knive og kopper og selv få lov!! Og så var det sjovt at se - ikke at lære om). Undervejs rejste vi med longtailboat, en meget smal lang båd med et piskeris i bagenden. Der skulle vi sidde i bunden af båden uden noget blødt som f.eks. et sæde i 1 1/2 time ...

... these days). i did venture out for a long.long walk into the counrtyside and some waterfalls that were promised to be nice. with the map being of a 5 year old sketch quality, the walk ended up being 6-8km, one way!! forever being the optimist when it comes to trekking, i rested at the other end and started my walk back to pai. just to point out the fact that nobody,or very few people (especially locals) doesn't seem to walk anywhere. so when i passed ...

... from Dec 27th, 2008 until Jan 3rd, 2009 and was designed to help support tourism and exposure of the Chiang Rai area. It highlights Lanna cultures and traditions and also presents local groups to an opportunity to sell their goods to domestic and foreign tourists. The only part of the festivities that I managed to see was part of the flower parade that we happened to discover during our last hour in Chiang Rai. I ran and grabbed my camera and ended up taking 250 ...

... where the Mekong River brings together Thailand/Bhurma/Laos. We visited Laos on a rather rickety boat (pics of which will be sent out after this blog...). Laos has been suffering dreadful rain recently, so i may be giving it a skip from my itinerary. The day visit as part of this tour may be it - i'll have to watch the weather forecast and decide. On the way home we stopped in the Acheh Village, otherwise known as the "Village of the ...

... At one point I stooped at a lonely fruit stand / store / family home, when the rain was too much. And the father brought out his whole family to introduce me to and talk with (Complements where generously meeded out on both sides) and gave me his home made rice wine. But Now I have a fever, cough and runny nose. Now I leave for Chaing Mai - soon enough I will be in the south on the beach with a Mai-Thai in hand

... lunch took about three hours to make (including collecting the ingredients), so I highly doubt it's a regular occurence. Still, I like the message: use what you need when you need it, and afterwards, pass it on to someone who needs it more. (In this case that would be the forest, which, I assume, benefits from the decomposed bamboo.) The Thais might prefer that I be a typical Western consumer, but I like this message better.

... in the area.  Apparently the Thai government and the others in the world that helped have made such progress on opium elimination that they have established a museum to describe the problem, the solution and the ramifications of the drug society that existed there over many years.  The queen mother (mother of the current king of Thailand) started the effort to erect the new museum and rehab center.  It was quite impressive ...