Chiang Rai Day 78 5/12/2014

We woke early thanks to the cockerel outside the guest house and to be honest it wasn't the kind of place where you'd hang around.  We had expected to get a longtail boat across the Mekong, between the immigration post of Huay Xai and Chiang Khong in Thailand, and felt slightly disappointed to find out that a bridge had been built c12 mths ago!  It's an indication of the importance of this border crossing and the increase in traffic between the two countries.  The bridge is about 14km outside the town so after breakfast we headed off in a tuk tuk to the bridge and passed through Laos immigration.  You then board a bus and drive over the bridge and across no man's land before disembarking to go through Thai customs and immigration.  It had to be one of the quietest and quickest border crossings we've done so far on our travels, especially as we don't need visas now to get into Thailand.  We had to hang around for about an hour waiting for our minivan to take us to Chiang Rai.  Unlike other land crossings it wasn't really evident that you're in a different country other than we were driving on the left handside of the road - a throw back from when Britain ruled the world!  Although not one of our colonies, the strong influence from British controlled India, Burma and Malaysia certainly made economic sense for the Thais to drive on our side of the road.  We arrived in Chiang Rai early afternoon and got a taxi from the new bus terminal to Ben's Guest House where we're staying for the next two nights.  Luckily we'd spotted an ATM just round the corner from the terminal so were able to withdraw some Thai Baht.  The guest house is a little bit out of town and has recently been expanded and even had a swimming pool. The new accommodation which we were initially in is nice but sterile and we asked to move to the more rustic older block which certainly had more character and a common balcony area to sit out on.  We then headed into town for lunch and then went to a NGO tour company with the plan to book a jungle trek only to find the only option was more of a sightseeing trip.  From here we went to the central bus station to book our bus tickets for Chiang Mai and then headed back to the guest house.  They offered a number of tours and we found one that was trekking only and booked that for the following day.  Simon had a quick dip in the pool before we headed back into town for dinner at a local Italian.  A nice change from curries and the red wine certainly was very enjoyable.  We headed back in a tuk tuk which, given the speed we went at, must have been driven by Lewis Hamilton's brother!

Huay Xai main street 

The old boat departure point  

Leaving Laos 

Crossing the Mekong