This morning we did a half day tour to visit the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun), The Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew), a market and the Hill Tribes Museum. The White Temple is a new temple which started construction in 1997. It apparently has another 20 years of construction before all the other buildings will be completed although there has been a recent setback when a 6.5 earthquake in May caused some damage. The temple has been designed by renowned ...

Today we took a day tour which took us to The Hill Tribes about half an hour out of Chiang Rai and then a trip to the Golden Triangle and a visit to the Opium Museum. We were asked to take our passports (not photocopies) as there would be many checkpoints. Not sure if the check points had to do with the drug trade, illegal immigrants or the coup. The ones that we passed through were only manned by the police (not the army) and we were never asked for our passpor...

Wandered around the town a bit today. First impression is that it is smaller and less touristy than Chiang Mai which is fine of course. The people are of course very friendly. Walking around is like being in your own personal sauna but a dip in the pool upon our return to the hotel sorted that out. We have booked a couple of private day trips for Saturday (full day) and Sunday (half day).

Caught a midday flight on a Thai Smile plane to Chiang Rai. We were met at the airport by a representative of our tour company (Travel Indochina) who took us to the resort which would not look out of place in the Pacific Islands. Our tour does not start until Sunday when we all meet up in the evening. Our intention is to tour around the Chiang Rai town and countryside as well as get some R&R by the pool - something we do not do enough of. We had dinner at ...

Left Auckland today on our long 12 hour non stop flight to Bangkok. Our destination in Thailand is Chiang Rai but as we could not make a connecting flight we had to put our heads down in Bangkok. We chose the airport hotel as we did not need to look around Bangkok having been there many times before. Flight was ok with good entertainment on board and hotel was easy to get to once we arrived.