It took 8 hours to get from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai.  When our bus finally rolled into town, I was…..concerned?  There was nothing charming about what we were looking at.  This was third world country stuff.  We were in Guatemala all over again.  We knew this would be our last stop in Thailand since our 2 month visa was about to expire and maybe that was clouding our judgement since we had seen some amazing things in this country but with all that being said, guess what?  We loved Chiang Rai.

Maybe it was the cheeseburgers.  We found a food truck selling these cheeseburgers and even though we only spent a week there, the workers got to know us and our orders.  They were soo good.  Who knew, on the other side of the planet we’d find one of the best burgers we’ve ever had? Ask me if I have a picture of them.  Go on ask.  NOPE.  The minute these bad boys landed in our hands, we devoured them and we always had the same conversation afterwards.  “How are these so good?”  “I don’t know but we’re coming back here tomorrow for dinner.”  “We need to take a picture of these so everyone knows where the best cheeseburger on the planet is.”  “Next time we will.”  And we never did.

We found a little local restaurant that we loved too.  They had this minced pork dish with rice that was amazing.  They spoke not one word of english and all I could say was hello to them.  Lots of pointing and smiling and nodding and we got things figured out.

Fun fact about this restaurant: They had a working meth lab:

Allright, so in the center of town is this huge clock thing and at night every hour on the hour, the thing lights up and puts on this little show.  We got it on video and I gotta get Mandy to edit it and put it up on Instagram or something because it was insane.

Yeah, so that and some crazy Thai music and then your head explodes.

Oh, and the next time you’re in Chiang Rai, you have to visit the white temple!  We got on a local bus to get here, just a short ride outside of town.  Note the fans on the ceiling.  A.C. Thailand style.

We were the only white folks on the bus and when it pulled up to a red light, the lady told us to get off, this was our stop and so we walked through traffic to the other side of the street and then started following some local women who were obviously heading in the same direction and then we found it and immediately knew the reason it was called the white temple.

It was free to get into, but I think I read they’ve started charging now.

Never, ever change, Thailand.

And then, this tree that had these random Marvel characters’ heads hanging from it.  This is the essence of Thailand.  So random and so awesome.

Back in town, there was time for one more thing.  We had passed by it when we first got into town and I kept saying, Ok we have to go in there before we leave.

It’s a coffee house that has cats.

I mean, come on.

It’s hard to put a cap on Thailand after spending 2 months there.  I’ve asked Mandy a few times if we spent too much time there and she always has the same answer.  She’d go back tomorrow if she could.  Might even bring me with her.

With, I think, 5 or 6 days left on our visa, it was time to leave.  The hotel we were staying in arranged a ride for us to the Laos border and we were the only ones that they picked up.  It was about a two hour ride through some amazing backcountry of Thailand that I’m sure not a lot of people get to see.  We were dropped at the border, got our bags, got our stamp out of the country and then waited for a bus to take us across the Freedom Bridge, built not long ago across the mekong river into Laos.  After we got our passports stamped into the country, more waiting awaited us while we waited for a taxi to get enough passengers to depart.

When there were enough passengers, we left to go to some dude’s house.  Dude had a store and a ‘bathroom’ we could use if we so needed and I needed.  I’m pretty sure this was just a money making scheme because they were offering us sandwiches and candy and Pringles (Pringles exist on every single country on every single planet we have determined), and of course beer.  Well.  I mean.  It would be rude not to buy a couple of beers from this family to help support them.  And then we piled back into the truck and went down to the river where we dropped our bags off on a boat and then walked up to a little restaurant to wait for it to depart.

It would take two days, and a stopover in a little town to get to Luang Prabang, our favorite city in Laos.