Chiang Rai

Our last visit in Chiang Rai was during our journey to Laos in 2008, and we liked this peaceful and quiet town in the notorious Golden Triangle very well. The journey from Chiang Mai with a minivan took about 2 ½ hours and run through the beautiful mountains of northern Thailand. The roads are well constructed and there was not to much traffic.
Close to Chiang Rai, just at the main road is the new landmark of Chiang Rai, the Wat Rong Khun, also known as the "white temple" and meanwhile very famous. A unique building full of symbolism that was created by a local artist. An exceptional temple, we were really impressed by so much mysticism.

The town itself is still quiet and a bit sleepy. One of the main attractions is the golden Clock Tower in the center, which was designed by the same artist as the Wat Ron Khun. Otherwise, there is the normal life with market and street live. To watch this, is as everywhere in Asia, fascinating and interesting for us.

Everywhere in the city there are beautiful and pretty nice decorated Wats and temples almost on every corner, the most famous is the Wat Phra Keo with the Emerald Buddha, a copy of the statue of the identically named temple in Bangkok.

In a short time we visited the hotspots of the city and decided to explore the surrounding mountains up to the Mekong, by car. We drove the route again, which brought us some time ago, to Chiang Kong at the border to Laos. Unfortunately, most of the rice fields were already harvested, but the track was still beautifully to drive. Chiang Kong is a rather tranquil backpacker town and the location at the Mekong facing Laos is wonderful. We enjoyed it here very much and the side-trip to the Mekong with the fantastic landscape was well worth seeing.

Another nice trip is the route to Mae Suai, to see the coffee plantations round Doi Chang. The journey run again through magnificent mountain scenery with large christmas flowers, lichee trees, lakes and of course, closer to Doi Chang we also saw slopes full of coffee plants. The track was mostly newly constructed and run sometimes directly to the mountain ridge, with terrific views.

We stopped at the "Doi Chang Coffee Farm" (1200 meters above sea level) where a very good Arabica is grown and drank there our best cappuccino at all. There were no other visitors there and so showed and explained us the manager, a young Korean lady, kindly the plantation and the coffee production. It was really interesting, because coffee plants we had not really seen before.