Road Trip!

Okay, so back to our CNY holiday adventure.  We spent one night in Chiang Mai, Thailand before we picked up our rental car from Avis.  The Avis “office” was a single, well-worn desk in the lobby of the equally tired looking Royal Princess Hotel.  The lobby was full of overly-styled Japanese and Chinese tourists along with some unkempt backpackers.  It was an interesting group.

Avis was staffed with one man who ran back and forth nervously between the cars and the customers.  Our car was a non-descript, late model Toyota sedan.  We did the usual “walk around” of the car in advance of signing the paperwork.  There weren’t just little door dings and scratches; there were a couple of large dents.  Looked like running into things might be the norm…and attempting to repair the damage was not!  One interesting thing about the car (and the others we rode in) was that it had no heater.  Thailand doesn’t get super cold, but we did miss having something to take the chill off in the morning.

Neither Dave nor I could recall what side of the road people in Thailand drive on.  The good thing is that he’s a skilled driver on either side.  The official answer to the “which side?” is that cars drive on the left-side of the road; the practical answer is that cars meander from lane-to-lane, especially around curves.  This made for an interesting ride as we left the city and headed into the mountains where the roads had just two lanes.  Dave adapted quickly and was comfortable with the weaving roads and cars.  While I trust his driving skills completely, here were some white knuckles on my side of the car…

Our destination was the city of Chiang Rai about 200 miles to the north. 

We decided that we’d just take in the sites and not worry too much about how long it took.  It was fun to see rural Thailand – the farm fields neatly planted between the mountains, plentiful fruit stands along the roads, and beautiful blue skies.  We were taking it all in…and didn’t take any photos, except for this stop at a Buddhist temple that was perched on a mountain.  There were more than 500 stairs to the top, but they were covered in a canopy of trees and made for a pleasant walk. 



We reached Chiang Rai in the evening and stayed at a magnificent hotel, Le Meridien. 

From our room, we could see the river and could watch kids at a local Buddhist monastery play soccer in a nearby field.  It was so quiet and soothing to the senses, I somewhat wished we could just park it there for a few days.  But it wasn’t to be – we needed to hit the road again in the morning. 

Next stop: Burma.