We left Chiang Rai by bus, a journey of 3.5 hours and reasonably comfortable apart from the air conditioning leaking and occasionally get slightly wet. On arrival there was a taxi desk at the bus station so we hopped in a cab to our hotel based just on the outside of the old city wall which surrounds the old city. We had been to Chiang Mai before, about 16 years ago, but didn't recognise anything. A lot of expansion including high rise chain hotels, McDonalds...

We arrived in to Chiang Rai in the dark and picked up a tuk tuk which took us to our guest house - Chat House. However, when we got there, they had no reservation. Turns out there are two Chat Houses so off we went to the next one. We checked in to our no-frills room, but it was clean, with aircon and a comfortable bed. Chiang Rai is very close to the borders of Laos and Myanmar and is within the Golden Triangle, but apart from that we didn't know anything el...