CHIANG RAI PROVINCE - 22nd. Dec. 2014

As well as from Chiang Mai, as from Chiang Rai, you can discover the mountains of northern Thailand. There are two options: either join an organized tour, which tend to be relatively expensive, or rent a vehicle and explore by your own.

As Chiang Rai is a small town, you can get quickly from there into rural areas. A good way and especially economic to do so, is to rent a motorcycle, so we chose this option.

There is a long drive to be in the mountains, surrounded by jungle and small fields.

Here you can still see bamboo houses where the walls are made of thin sheets of bamboo bark and the roofs made of leaves.

Besides rice and bananas, it is also a land of tea.

Tea plants, grow through the foothills of the mountains in rows, giving the appearance of terraces.

Inside the forest, where the terrain is steeper, there are many waterfalls.

Back in the main valley, we found a hot springs lake, witch is constantly sprouting at 56°C. We liked quite a lot this place, as it was very quiet and relaxing. We arrived there quite late, and maybe that's why no one else was there. In fact, we thought it would be a kind of thermal baths for tourists, with entrance fee and so on. perhaps for this reason, we were pleasantly surprised to find what we found.

We did the way back home, on the other bank of the river, passing through a wooden suspension bridge that was not without its charm.

Arriving at Chiang Rai, we suddenly saw a giant Buddha. In fact they were still building it. The sound of the machines and the workers, could be still heard coming out from the inside of the Buddha Statue.

As we approached, we saw that it was a large complex of temples, made by the Chinese. It was partially completed. With two large temples, one of them in the shaped of a 10 stories high stupa, and within which, you could climb to the top floor to enjoy the views. Too bad, that it was at night, for sure the views must be really worth by daylight.

Inside the temple, a two stories high figure of Buddha, made of massive wood. As you can see in the picture, everything here is big.

This was our last day in Thailand for a while, as we will be about three short weeks in Myanmar, before returning back again to Bangkok.