Friday, 26 December 2025: Chiang Rai

After breakfast we organized our transfer to the Laotian border on Sunday. 

Then we were out to explore. We’d seen some spires and some interesting buildings from our hotel room. We had a mission. First stop: Wat Jed Yod. (Seven spires) Probably the largest temple compound in this area with at least a dozen monks living here. We roamed for a couple of hours here and in the environs before we stopped for coffee and smoothie break.  

Wonder what happens up there that 
I can’t see???

 

A car for Mark Neta

Late afternoon and early evening we went to a flower show at Chiang Rai River Beach.  The locals try to keep things going in the winter, so the flower shows feature incredible floral displays, local food, crafts, cultural shows, and photo ops.  It's a major winter event.

 

 

Walking through the food stalls, I was once again impressed with the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Even though a lot of this might be considered “fast food,” it is still made from fresh, local ingredients.  For our dinner, Justin and I started with some spring rolls.  We didn’t know until we bit into them that they were filled with glass noodles.  Yes, there were also a few veggies and herbs and yes, they were tasty, but you gotta love the carb-on-carb combination.  They came with a sauce.  I asked Justin if it was Thai chili sauce.  He replied, “It’s sauce with chilis in it and we are in Thailand.”  So profound.  Our next course was some fried shrimp.  Then a delicious pad Thai and we finished with fresh fruit.  Delish!

we tried what we later learned
was a sticky rice concoction -- I passed

Uber isn’t the best transportation choice in Southeast Asia so we’d used Bolt when in Cambodia. Here we fount Grab to be the least expensive and most widely used platform. Rooky mistake on the first car we ordered so we had to cancel that. The second car we ordered couldn’t get all the way into the park where we were so we had to walk to the driver. It was less than 200 meters so no big deal at all. It’s been a long time since I had to do my own driving. Do I miss it?  Not so much.