End of Chiang Mai - Friday

Well it is our last day in Thailand for a while anyway.  Our flight to Laos is at 3pm. We are packed, had our breakfast, and going out for a last look around.  It ended with us at our usual coffee shop having an Ancient Coffee.  Bit sweet forme, but Rod has taken a liking to the.  They have condensed milk in them.

So, some thoughts on Chiang Mai.

Often when I travel it takes a few days for me to adjust to bring away.  I ge a bit out of sorts and sunsettled. For some reason this did not happen in Chiang Mai. We both felt that we just slotted into the place from day one, and have felt very comfortable from the start.

That leads on to that we have seen many people here who seem to have stayed, and I can understand why they doing. Living is easy here.

There is food everywhere. Food stalls lining the street, doing things from Pad Thai, Noodle soup, Satay, fresh fruit through to Rotee, which should be banned. These are fried thin pastry with banana, egg and chocolate, or a number of other just as interesting combinations.  Food over here is definitely not good for the waistline, but it is excellent, whatever it is.

Did I mention the fruit smoothies. Divine.

On and lastly, again whether it is to do with the Buddhist philosophy, but they seem to look after their animals here.  I don't suppose they have long lives,  but the streets are not full of starving dogs. They are all fed by the temples or the local people.  They also seem to be kept as pets, cats and dogs and all have collars and are constantly being cuddled.

We saw lots of dogs with coats on, we think this is away of marking them and they are looked after by the temples. I don't think it is a way of keeping them warm at night!

So here we are at the airport ready to board our ATR 72-500 twin prop aircraft, where we only had to take steps up into the cabin.  Whoooa!  But a very flight, through visa and immigration into Laos.

We had to ring the hotel for them to send us the taxi the promised and soon we were leaving the airport on the fifty yards of tarmac, before reaching the unsealed road where we bounced to the hotel for half and hour. Good fun.

It was a complete culture shock coming from Chiang Mai, we bounced up a narrow track to the Namkhan. It is marketed as a Boutique Hotel... But wasnt quite what we expected, he Namkhan wasn't quite what we expected, but I am sure it will grow on us.  Unfortunately it was really humid and everything in the room felt damp including the sheets. Felt a little grumpy and disappointed, but we made them put a heater in the room to dry it out a bit, had a large beer and brilliant red curry. Tomorrow is another day.