Mohn Mye Horm Chiang Rai

I'll be in Nadaland until then...no internet, no electricity, no toilets...and perhaps unfortunately, no excuses for not going. So here are a few personal 'discoveries' I've made or seen reinforced for those of you who care. I was looking for a new cover photo for this trip to replace my primary trip photo. As I mentioned, while I've yet to see ...

After the First Week

First some nuts and bolts stuff before I give you my impressions of the first week…. I've become very good friends with my roommate Jeff, the lawyer from Cherry Hill and his daughter Robyn who is a very street savvy grad student in college. We’ve been hanging out together much of the time tho Robyn hangs...

Our second week of volunteering, we helped build a wall. Nikolas was such a hard worker and I was so proud of him! We had to carry sand and peoples to make the cement, which was done right on the ground. Nik helped in mixing the cement as well as building the wall with the bricks.

We also spent a couple of days painting some puzzles fo...

Once we had crossed the Mekong into Thailand at Chiang Kong, we got a tuk-tuk to the bus station and got on the bus to Chaing Rai - but not before a pit-stop; we haven't seen a 7-11 for 5 months and I indulged in some proper cadburies dairy milk !

The local bus took just under 3 hours to get to Chiang Rai, which is a small city in the ...

   As the days went on we were blessed with great weather. Today was not the case. We walked to the school down the very steep hill, along the bumpy track for about 2km. As we set off there was light rain but about 15 minutes into the journey the heavens opened. Some of the group began the walk in rain jackets and thought they were the smart one...

On Tuesday the 5th May and we have had another travel and sort out day. We headed to the bus station in Chiang Mai at 8.30am and had to wait until 10.30 for our 3 hour bus ride to Chiang Rai. The aircon was too cold (!) and we were subjected to a Thai comedy, war, romance, drama movie - I'm not sure if it could have packed in many more genres! T...

Updates on things: Kitty - she is 10 months old and very good. Movement - She is very fast at crawling and can climb at stairs quite quickly too. She can stand up and has been able to stand for about 10 seconds unsupported. She is practicing walking with us holding her hands and she needs less and less support, so maybe in another month she'll w...

The three hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai followed a very scenic route. Both of these places are set amongst forest covered mountains and the highway between them twisted through these hills on for most of our way there. In the valleys there are small towns and farmers fields use up any extra available land. The scenery kept me looki...

Flew to Chang Rai for a brief stopover in the Golden Triangle - the Nexus of Thailand Burma and Laos. We picked a resort right at the tip of Thailand with a view down to the Mekong River, Burma and Laos. I don't think there are many places in the world where you can stand and survey three countries at once. On the way to the hotel our driver po...

Monday 19th May Today we had to get up extremely early as we are off to the Golden Triangle/Chiang Rai direction. Our minibus came to fetch us at 7 am and there were only 6 adults on this tour which was great. Our first stop was at the Hot Springs where we had a tea/toilet break and walk around. Back into our minibus and it took some time to arr...