{"id":16196,"date":"2023-04-16T11:14:52","date_gmt":"2023-04-16T15:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sunflowerit.ca\/travel\/auto-draft\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T15:00:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T19:00:56","slug":"leaving-sea-with-a-splash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunflowerit.ca\/travel\/trips-asia\/other-trips\/south-east-asia-2023\/leaving-sea-with-a-splash\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving SEA with a splash"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We wrapped up our SEA trip segment with a two night stay in each of the popular northern Thailand towns of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. In particular, our visit to Chiang Mai coincided with the hugely popular Songkan Festival<\/a>. We were immersed (or rather soaked) by the water fights happening all over the town. We bid farewell to SEA as we made our long (and somewhat complicated) journey to our first island in Maldives. It was refreshing to see once again a blue sky after weeks of haze from the burning season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2023.04.10 – Chiang Khong – Chiang Rai (Thailand)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had an enjoyable and relaxing breakfast facing the Mekong river. We were somewhat sorry we had not planned for an extra night in town as we could enjoy the hotel’s infinity pool and e-bikes. After breakfast, I took one of the hotel’s courtesy bicycle and went in search of the bus station and schedule to Chiang Rai. I was told a bus left for Chiang Rai hourly basis. Back at the hotel, we took a tuk-tuk to the bus station around 10:30am for the 11am bus. Unfortunately, for some unknown reasons, the 11am bus did not show up. At 11:30am we finally boarded on the 12:00 pm bus and waited in the derelict red bus for over half an hour. The 2.5hr bus ride offered some interesting views but the lack of a\/c onboard made the journey tiresome. Although there were a few other foreigners on the bus, the bulk of the passengers were locals boarding and being dropped off along the road. Upon arriving at the Chiang Rai bus station, we sought to buy our bus tickets to Chiang Mai from a long-distance operator in order to experience a more comfortable bus ride. We took a tuk-tuk to our hotel. We checked into a comfortable room for our two nights stay in town. We visited a money exchange office to convert most of our Laos remaining currency as well as buying some additional Thai currency with our cdn funds. In the evening, we had planned to eat at a local Thai restaurant but we changed our mind and ate at Pizza Hut.<\/p>\n\n\n