2013 travel: day 226 – Chiang Rai, Thailand

Firstly, thank you so much to those of you who responded to my ‘dream job’ post and shared my attempts at being spontaneous and/or contributed an idea to the pot of where I should venture to next.

It’s been nearly 2 weeks since my request for ideas, and I’ve been busy looking into some of the suggestions, and will of course continue to do so.

In case you were curious, here’s a quick summary of the final short list:

1. Australia

2. Cuba

3. Philippines

4. Indonesia

5. North Korea

6. Ukraine, specifically Prypiat!

7. East Timor

8. Hong Kong

9. Home

10. China

11. Trans Siberian train journey

12. San Diego

As someone quite sensibly pointed out, jumping continents is probably not going to be as feasible as sticking with Asia for the moment. But that doesn’t mean it’s off the cards, after all, I did have Cuba at the top of my list when I was originally planning to take a trip! As for some of the other ideas, I’m very keen on most of them :).

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With my Thai visa free period coming to an end, it has meant a fleeting visit over to the North Eastern part of Thailand, covering Pai and Mae Hong Son, before heading to Chiang Rai, where we are now (North West). More to come on what we got up to there, but the highlight was probably having to speak 4 different languages in one day!

The weather is much cooler up here, almost cold even; with lows of 15 degrees at night.

Yesterday we headed over the border into Myanmar, in order to obtain a new visa free period. You can read more about that in the post below: Changes to Thai visa rules on 1 November 2013 and a trip to Myanmar.

Chiang Rai is one of those underrated places, often forgotten due to its close proximity to Chiang Mai (3 hours away by bus). We are using it as a base as many people speak English, there’s plenty of food choices (coffee an cake!) and it’s pretty good in terms of cost. There is quite a bit to see and do, not that far away; we covered a large area on a motorbike in the NE so are planning a similar style adventure around the NW.

Other recent posts you may have missed:

Flashpacking is …

Yi Peng and Loi Krathong celebrations 2013, Chiang Mai

PS I’m keeping an eye on the problems in Bangkok currently, they don’t seem to be effecting tourists, but there’s a chance it could get a lot worse. Fingers crossed it doesn’t!