I got here from Laos, as an alternative to doing a \u2018visa run\u2019 and staying in Thailand, traversing northeastern and northern Thailand to get here. It was the New Year celebrations when I visited, so everywhere I went I had water thrown at me and a white chalky-substance smeared across my face.<\/p>\n
To get to Chiang Rai, I had to make the following stops:<\/p>\n
This was a fairly short bus ride from Luang Prabang. I actually wanted to go directly to Luang Nam Tha, but I had missed the morning bus by about 30 minutes and the only other bus was at about 17:00, so I decided to wait the 2.5 hours for the next bus to Oudom Xai.<\/p>\n
This was the first bus that had water thrown at it, as it was the Thai New Year and as the windows were open, a few people got soaked. Once in Oudom Xai, it was getting dark and I walked around until I found a hotel. Surprisingly, for such a small place, the best one was full and the biggest one was far too expensive. I settled for a cheaper one across from the station where there was a mother breastfeeding when I came to collect the room. I asked them to give me a new bed sheet as the existing one was filthy and I got woken up early the next day by the son of the family banging on my door, asking for the room money. I gave it to him but made it very clear that I didn’t enjoy being woken up.<\/p>\n
I got on a smaller bus in Oudom Xai to Luang Nam Tha, that seemed to be occupied mostly by French people. I sat next to Francois, who ended up talking to me about his previous job in an oil company. I found this fascinating and learnt a lot and me and all of the other French tourists ended up getting a tuk-tuk to the centre of Luang Nam Tha as soon as we arrived.<\/p>\n
On arrival in Luang Nam Tha, I went in search of something to eat. The place was a little touristy, so I thought I would try something different and go for one of the street stalls. I had no idea what they were selling but asked for one of them, eventually getting it as a takeaway. It was a load of vegetables and noodles mashed up in a big pestle and mortar and I ate it outside my hotel. This may had been a mistake, because after eating this, I was the sickest I have been since the start of my trip.<\/p>\n
I decided to go for a wander over a bamboo bridge to a local village later in the day and saw the local people washing and playing in the river along with weaving and winding cotton in other places. As I was walking around I didn’t feel very well and decided to go back to my hotel room to lie down. Later on, I was sick out of both ends many times and was going to the toilet every five minutes at one point. I tried to rough it, but after taking multiple packets of Dioralyte and not feeling any better, I decided to down some Ciprofloxacin and some Immodium and get on a bus to Huay Xai.<\/p>\n
On the journey to Huay Xai I went to the toilet at every stop. The Immodium helped keep things under control until we were able to stop, which was luckily pretty regularly. I was going to ask when we were stopping at one point, but we pulled-over not long after me thinking to myself how long I was going to wait before asking. We got to Huay Xai without any problems and I got in a tuk-tuk with about 3 local women. As we were driving down the road, someone threw some water from the roadside and almost all of us got drenched. About 2 of the 3 women got a proper soaking and much of the rest of the journey was spent screaming and laughing. The women got dropped off early and I got driven in a loop to make the town centre seem further away than it actually was. I was feeling pretty weak at this point so tried 2 hotels, took the second one and went to sleep.<\/p>\n
I got up early the next day and got a boat across the border (between Laos and Thailand). I had to sit down at the immigration office as I wasn’t feeling very well, but this was only temporary and I got a motorbike and a bus to Chiang Rai not long after.<\/p>\n
In Chiang Rai I walked around until I found a hotel, which didn’t take very long. After looking around the first place, I left my bag there and had a wander around, getting my first proper drenchings. The best one was a Thai girl who came up behind me as I was trying to avoid the water from 2 western people. This got me properly soaked, which wasn’t too bad in the heat and after not finding anywhere better, I walked back to the original hotel, getting white talcum powder smeared across my face.<\/p>\n
The next day, as it was the official Songkran festival, I had a walk down one of the main streets. I spent most of the day doing this and ended up dripping wet, with every part of my clothing saturated with water. It was very good.<\/p>\n
Even though Songkran went on for another 2 days, I felt like I had got the point after day 1 and got on a bus to Lampang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got here from Laos, as an alternative to doing a \u2018visa run\u2019 and staying in Thailand, traversing northeastern and northern Thailand to get here. It was the New Year celebrations when I visited, so everywhere I went I had water thrown at me and a white chalky-substance smeared across my face. To get to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-world-part-1"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomjay.co.uk\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}