After the incident with the ants in the last guest house and being bitten to death (my body now looks like the Ebola virus has attacked) I took a couple days to stay in Chiang Rai and see the town.

Chiang Rai is a surprisingly small town, even smaller than Chiang Mai which I didn't think was possible. It occurred to me a couple days in that Chiang Rai is mainly a stop over point for seeing everything outside of the town rather than what was in it. Didn't matter to me, I went out walking and went into every single Temple they had. I was beginning to think that eating here was going to be expensive, until an Aussie biker (who had a beard in the shape of a pizza slice...not the weirdest I've seen so far!) kindly told me about the food market which was a couple of Sois away. I went and grabbed the first thing I saw which was a coconut curry with Chicken and some rather jelly like looking brown stuff. Could be mistaken for Kidneys...they're not by the way. I think it's one of those things where you just don't want to ask just in case it was something horrible!

My culinary experiences didn't stop there and I broke and went for Western food in the form of Oreos. Thinking I would try a new flavour...blueberry and vanilla ice cream. Don't. I also discovered I like some fruit which looks rather alien. It's red with green spikes coming out of it and apparently tastes similar to Lychee. I disagree. As thanks to Hayley who I met in America Lychee reminds me of eyeballs so I hate Lychees! However, the food market here is amazing! Everything you can think of, I walked past this one stall and the lady was selling nothing but dried chillies. They were towered higher than I was in these huge sacks!

Tomorrow sees me leaving Chiang Rai and heading over to Chiang Khong (another 6 am start). I will only be there for about an hour as it's mainly used as an immigration border crossing before boarding a 2 day slow boat down to Luang Prabang in Laos. Let's hope I get on well with boats! (The picture is the Chiang Rai central clock tower at night).