After a few beers last night I decided I needed to climb the hill to the big white Buddha, starting at 8:00. It was worth it. It turns out that on the road up the hill above Thaton there are 9 places of interest to visit. Monasteries Buddha’s, Chidis and a ship at the end all looking down onto the valley below. The ship must have some significance in Theravadan Buddhism. All in all it takes about an hours walking to get to the top.
On the way up the hill I notice a little village accessible only by a dirt path. So on the way back down I decided to investigate. After about 15 min walking I got to about dozen wooden shacks on the side of the valley. This was a real mountain village no road no electricity and just a standpipe for water. There were pigs roaming around and people in normal clothes i.e. not traditional dress, going about there daily business. The main obstacle in getting there were the dogs which barked at me but I kept my head down and didn’t make eye contact so got through safely. It was a bit of a challenge to get through 4 or 5 barking dogs around my heels. The people offered to take me to a cave and waterfall from what I could gather. This would have been a good trek but I had decided to get the 12:30 long tail boat to Chaing Rai so didn’t have time.
Alberto was also getting this boat so we went together. The scenery was stunning and on the way we encountered a few minor rapids. The long tail boat is not really built for this so by the end of the trip we were all a little wet, except Alberto who miraculously got there dry. To my surprise we stopped half way at an elephant sanctuary. About ten elephants were wandering around or bathing in the river. As we waited a group of 4 elephants with tourist on board walked up the river to us, quite a sight. One of the male elephants was a bite excited and I have an impressive photo of it.
The boat stopped about 5km from town and we had to get into town with a Songtail (Sawngthaew). This is the local means of transport, a pickup truck covered and with two wooden seats in the back, 20 baht. On the Songtail we met a 64 year old Swede with his young Thai girlfriend who told us where to go for accommodation.
We found a nice Guest House in Chaing Rai for 450 baht a bit of luxury for me. Air conditioning a TV and a comfortable bed. We then headed out to town for some street food and a couple of beers.
The LP recommends the night bazaar but this turned out to be populated only by a small amount of tourists. The main market had much nicer and a greater variety of food.
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