We left Chaing Mai to travel to Chaing Khong which is a town built purely for travellers to stay the night before they cross the border to Laos. A few more people had jumped on our bus and we were up to 11.

We left Chaing Mai to first travel to Chaing Rai and visit the famous white temple. We stopped for lunch at a village where there were no menus just a selection of 10 or so dishes for you to pick. It's a lucky dip really as you have no idea what you are choosing or what the meal includes. Anyway it was nice and within 20 minutes we were back in the car to continue on our 6 hour journey.

Getting to Chaing Rai we left the car (a 9 seat minibus for 6 of us all leather seats and air con, nice!!) and the palace that stood before us was beautiful. All white and had mirror mosaics all over it. It was amazing. I have added a couple if photos ( I am trying but very slow internet) but it is difficult to capture how amazing it was. If you want to google it then the Thai name is Wat Rong Khun. The palace has only been built since 1997, so a new temple compared to the majority in Thailand. There were a lot of Chinese visitors and a lot of Buddhist monks in their traditional orange dress, but they all have iPhones and rayban sunglasses! Haha. We were not allowed to take photos inside the temple but that was the strangest part...well actually a strange part was walking into the temple and either side was about full of hands and skulls (photo attached) but the second strangest part was there were traditional painting inside the temple and then inside all the traditional painting were small paintings of batman, Spider-Man, Star Trek, Kung fu panda, Michael Jackson, a minion and superman. All very weird. We then went to the wishing well and made a wish and visited a gallery. It was only a short 20 minute trip until we were back in the car for the next two hours. The driver put in some Thai/English covers of Jessie j, Justin Bieber and it was all a bit strange but passed the time. One if the things I noticed out the window as we went was that we would travel through these really poor villages but all of them would have amazing temples which were covered in gold and so clean, they stood out like a sore thumb next to the grey houses and dirty streets.

We finally arrived in Chaing Khong and settled into our rooms, I was sharing with Mel and Saskia. I even managed to get the double bed. We met for dinner at 7pm and all cycled into town. We went to a bar/restaurant and I had chicken with cashew nuts, it wasn't as tasty as the one I made in my cooking class! :) we played darts and chatted and then the Thai barmaids started to provide the table with shots of tequila and a peach jelly shot. It was funny watching our guide doing the shot if tequila as he had never done one before. We headed back to the room and had an early night although none of us slept very well, especially when the cockerels started at 3.30am...something I've quickly realised I need to get used to!

We were up at 7am to make the trip over the boarder into Laos.