8/15/10 (chiang rai)

Chiang Rai

Our true final day in Thailand. Jon and I extended our trip by one day to come up with a game plan for Laos. Our friends Pete and Danielle from New Zealand had given extensive notes and their Lonely Planet guidebook from their visit five months ago. I had also spent many hours researching online routes and possible activities of interest. We originally planned on heading to Luang Prabang via a two day slow boat down the Mekong River with an overnight stop in Pak Beng. During my research i had heard of horror stories on the fast boat where people had to wear helmets because the noise of the motor was very loud and because the boats are going at an incredible fast speed that they sometimes capsized. Definitely not what I call fun. I found another way for us to get to Luang Prabang that would take longer but allow us to see more of northern Laos. I was still hooked on the notion of visiting more hill tribe villages and had read that Muang Sing, a town north of Luang Nam Tha, had various ethnic tribes. We figured it was a viable route to consider and we would be able to get to Luang Nam Tha in one day. It's hard to know exactly what route to take since the information quickly changes depending on the season. We felt good about the research we had done on the Luang Nam Tha route but were ready for the slow boat to Luang Prabang depending on what the situation was like when we arrived in Huay Xai, the border of Laos.

With that taken care of it was catch up day for us. We wrote three daily details, which can take a surprising amount of time even when we split it up between the both of us. Jon had to work on photos to match each of the articles. Being the professional that he is, there is always a bit of color correction involved in each photo. it was also time to face reality and look at our finances. With the hard drive crash we lost all of our Quicken information. During our travels we had been recording all of our expenses on Quicken so we had an accurate account of where our money went. We created an excel spreadsheet to track our finances for the remainder of the trip. After a quick glance at our accounts and expenses we came to the realization that we were close to the final leg of our journey. It is always a bit sobering to look our finances but it's good for the soul and also teaches us how to communicate openly about our finances. 

After a nice meal at nearby restaurant we both craved something sweet so we walked to a rottee stand and ordered two chocolate and sweet condensed rottee. It hit the spot. We called it an early night and packed our bags for our next big adventure. We are going to miss Thailand, where we called home for a month and a half. She has been good to us and we hope one day to return to her for some more adventure.

Comments

[ml]

It seems like it indeed is the longest you have stayed and what an adventure.