Chiang Rai
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
20
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Chiang Rai,
Thailand
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Chiang Rai is not a big place and the bus station is conveniently located right downtown. There is no shortage of places to stay within walking distance of the bus station, so we didn't bother taking a lift from one of the many tuk-tuk drivers waiting for the bus passengers. We used the trusty Lonely Planet guide to find a place called Pam's Guest House, because it had facilities that included a pool table, bar, TV and movies, as well as affordable rooms. It didn't us long to navigate our way our way there and Pam had double rooms with a TV for 300 and without a TV for 250 baht. We opted for the room without the TV, which was room #7 at the back of the hotel. This room would prove to be rather noisy at night, due to the girllie bars at the outside the back of the building, so if you are staying here try to get a room at the front of the building.
Pam's Guest House has a kitchen offering Thai and Western style food, but the Western food seemed cheaper here than most of the places that we had seen before. Several times we ended up needing a break from our steady Thai food diet, and sampled Pam's fish & chips as well as the hamburger and fries. For 80 baht, the hamburger and fries was a great deal. Pam asked if we'd like some fried onions on it, which of course made it even tastier for us. There was also an ample serving of fries, which made this meal a real bargain. The fish & chips for 99 baht was also an exceptional deal. I tried to figure out from Pam what type of fish she was serving, but she didn't know the name in English. It is too bad because I normally do not like fish very much, but this stuff was great. Twice I ordered this huge filet and I didn't get a single bone.
Chiang Rai has a number of old and historic temples to visit. The biggest one that we went to is called Wat Phra Kaew and it was very popular with both foreign and domestic tourists. According to legend, a Buddha image made entirely out of jade (but called the Emerald Buddha for some reason) made its way to this temple in the 14th century. The Emerald Buddha is told to have been made in India over 2200 years ago and was on its way to Burma in the 14th century when the wagon broke down in the Chiang Rai area. It was hidden under a stupa until it was struck by lightning in the 15th century. The Emerald Buddha traveled a great deal after that but today it resides in the Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. However over 100 years ago a local artist was commissioned to design a replica out of Canadian jade and the replica has been in the Wat Phra Kaew in Chiang Rai ever since.
A popular activity during the evenings in Chiang Rai is to shop and eat at the night market, which is much like a smaller version of the night market in Chiang Mai. There is a food pavilion with live entertainment and approximately 40 different food stalls to choose from. There are fruit shakes, including kiwi and some other fruits we hadn't seen as shakes elsewhere, for only 10 baht each. Of course there were also the normal Thai dishes like pad thai, chicken/beef/pork fried rice, lots of seafood and papaya salad, but there was also one vendor that was from Mumbai, India offering Indian food. He had some of the best snack food that I've ever had in my life, with my favorite being something called "onion crispies." I would compare this to the blooming onion from Outback's Steak House or onion rings, but really I liked this even more. They were also much cheaper at being just 25 baht for a serving. He said that the process to make them lasted over a day, with the first step being to dehydrate the onions. All I know is that I will have to look for when we are in Malaysia again in March.
The shopping in Chiang Rai was very similar to the shopping of Chiang Rai, only the prices seemed to be slightly better and the variety of goods not as good. We ended up buying quite a few more shirts and silk ties and other goods to send back home. We ended up collecting 7 kilograms of souvenirs to send back home in Canada all together. The cost was 550 baht for the first kilogram and then 140 baht for each kilogram after that, shipped by surface (which means 2 to 3 months delivery time). This cost was consistent with the pricing we had observed in Chiang Mai.
A few days after arriving in Chiang Rai, it was Christmas day. For such a predominantly Buddhist nation, the Chiang Rai area had its share of Christmas celebration. Although Chiang Rai is not a big place, Lisa and I noticed at least one large Christian church, so there are likely some people here that are celebrating Christmas for reasons other than the tourist trade. The church was close to 100 years old, so it isn't just for the "farang" expats that live in and around the area. I asked a few of the local Thai folk, whom were Buddhist in faith, about celebrating Christmas and found out that many of them bought presents for their family and friends. All in all, Chiang Rai was a lot more Christmassy than we expected.
Lisa and I decided to have pizza for our Christmas dinner this year; from The Pizza Company. Although the pizza was very consistent with Western standards, I regretted eating there because when we went back to Pam's Guest House afterward, there was a full spread of the regular holiday dishes spread across the tables. Apparently this was an annual tradition, as some of the guests that we spoke with noted that they had been at Pam's for Christmas for the last five years straight due to the Christmas party they put on. We ended up chatting with the other guests and eating as much of this great dinner as we could, but around 22:00 we had to leave if we were going to make it to the local Internet café before it closed.
There was an Internet café just around the corner from Pam's Guest House that has modern computers and a reasonably fast connection for 30 baht an hour. It closes at 23:00 though, which isn't ideal for calling home to the Eastern Standard Time Zone (12 hours behind at the moment). All these computers had Skype preinstalled with headsets attached though, so we were able to spend the last hour of the evening talking to family and friends on their Christmas morning. The sound quality was on par with the regular phone system, but using Skype Out cost only 2.4 cents per minute. I saw local stores selling long distance phone service at 10 baht a minute, so using Skype saved us a few hundred baht over that hour.
We left Chiang Rai on December 27th, 2008, which I ended up really regretting. We had purchased our bus tickets back to Chiang Mai earlier that day, which we needed to honor if we were going to use our overnight train tickets from Chiang Mai to Bangkok later that day. It turns out that Chiang Rai was having a big event that started that day, the 5th annual Chiang Rai Flower Parade and Regional Beauty Contest. Although we did not see any promotional materials for this event, some investigation afterward shows that it was scheduled to run 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 pictures before I had to run and catch our bus to Chiang Mai. I did not get the chance to see the entire parade, but what I did manage to see was really spectacular. There was dozens, if not hundreds of local people dressed up in their traditional outfits. There was also marching bands and floats that were done up with thousands of flowers that carried what must've been beauty pageant contestants. This was really a prime opportunity for any inspiring photographer, as the parade moved quite slowly and anybody that noticed my camera pointed at them would smile and do their best to pose for me as they walked by.
Since one of the main purposes of this trip for me was to practice my photography skills, I really regretted not finding out about this event earlier. Although I took plenty of great photos, if I had been better prepared I could've done even better. Between the intricate flower covered floats to the beautiful local women dressed in ornate costume, this parade was one of the best photo opportunities that I have ever come across. I was surprised by how large this parade was though because even though I had an hour, I did not see either the beginning or the end of the procession. This was only the opening event for the "2009 Chiang Rai Flower Parade and Beauty Pagaent", so I was disappointed that we were not able to stay in Chiang Rai for a few more days. However since our bus was leaving at 11:15, at 11:00 I ran back to our hotel, grabbed my backpack and proceeded to the bus station just in time.
We took the same second class bus to Chiang Mai that we arrived on, of course at the same cost of 132 baht. This bus driver drove slower than the one whom had taken us to Chiang Rai, but since we didn't have to catch the train in Chiang Mai until 17:55, we were not worried about it. The scenery was beautiful and this time both Lisa and I had prepared for the cold air-conditioned climate of the bus. By 15:30 we had finished the bus ride and were ready for some lunch. The Chiang Mai bus station has many small restaurants surrounding it and although none of them seemed to have any English signs or menus, the first one we sat down at brought us out English menus right away. As always seems to be the case in Thailand, we ate delicious pad thai, fried rice and papaya salad at very affordable prices.
After finishing lunch we needed to find a ride from the bus station to the train station. There are two bus stations in Chiang Mai and we were at the Arcade bus station, which is the one that has service to Chiang Rai. Fortunately there is only one train station in Chiang Mai, which made it very easy to arrange a ride. There were many sawngthaew mini-busses and tuktuks vying for our patronage as we walked through the bus station. However with all of our baggage, we could pretty much rule out a comfortable tuktuk ride and approached a sawngthaew instead. Although we knew it was only about two kilometers from the train station to the bus station (thanks to the GPS), the first driver wanted 100 baht for the ride. Once we started walking out of the station, he agreed to give us the ride for 40 baht instead.
The Chiang Mai train station was a comfortable place to hang out and wait for our night train to Bangkok. There was affordable massage parlors offering hour long Thai massages for 150 baht, but we didn't actually end up using them. Instead I took some pictures of the busy train station and walked around the area looking for a place to eat dinner. We found a great outdoor restaurant, right across the street from the train station, where we tried a new Thai dish called baan. Baan is minced pork with plenty of herbs and spice, with cabbage and basil served on the side. It was a dish that is supposed to be served spicy, but I think we only got a farang (Western foreigner) level of spice on our dish.
Our train left right on time, which was 17:55. Lisa and I were only able to reserve upper level berths on the Chiang Mai to Bangkok train, which turned out to be comfortable, but would not be my first option. The over-night trains are fitted with upper and lower berths which are configured as seats when first boarding the train. Once somebody is ready for bed, they approach the train attendant who converts the seats to beds and then whoever is on the top berth has nowhere to sit but their bed.
If you are traveling as a couple, it would be a lot more convenient to get an upper and lower berth in the same space, so that you can hang out on the seats until you are both ready for bed. The lower berths are actually wide enough so that you could really sleep two in the single bed. The upper berths were also very comfortable, but since most people seemed to want to go to bed before 7 PM, we were stuck in those beds much earlier than we are accustomed to trying to sleep. The good news is that these beds included clean sheets, fresh pillows and blankets and even the upper berths had enough to room to be comfortable. I was even able to string my laptop power converter to an available electrical plug and ended up playing video games for half of the night.
We both slept quite well on the night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, so when the train rolled in around 7:30 we were ready to find our way to the Eastern bus station of Bangkok. The train was a little more expensive than a bus for the same journey, but I have never been on a bus anywhere near as comfortable as that train was. We got off the train a little bit before the end of the line, at a stop called Bangsol, because it had easy access to Bangkok's subway system (which the end stop did not). The subway was able to take us to the Ekamai bus station, which had a subway station by the same name.
