Sitting here at the "new" bus station in Chiang Rai right now. We've spent the last 2 nights here at "Ben Guesthouse." A lovely ranch-style guesthouse with a nice pool, which came in handy yesterday.
Yesterday we were very busy & it didn't help that I didn't get much sleep the night before. I stayed up til 3:00am watching the Panthers finally win their first game of the season against the 49ers 23-20. But anyways me, Steph, Kelsey, and Marianne decided to go to Doi Tung in Nothern Chiang Rai. The bus ride up took around an hour and a half because the bus driver would stop every 10 minutes to try and get more people on.
Finally the old Mercedes bus drops us off at the base of the mountain. We are immediately approached by an old Thai man whose skin looked like leather. He offered to take the four of us and a monk to the top of the mountain to see a royal garden in his little blue song songtow. Who knows how long he had been waiting at the bus stop hoping to see four innocent looking Americans get off and want to pursue Doi Tung. We bargained with him for a few minutes while the monk waited patiently and we finally agreed to pay 125 baht/person for a round trip.
The ride up was beautiful, though I did feel a little nauseous, but the stomach ailment was worth the view at the garden. There were dozens of beautiful scenes that caught our wandering eyes. Between all of us we may have taken 200 pictures, but not one could really capture the true majesty of this garden.
After an hour at the garden, we found our monk and started back down the mountain in the little blue songtow, with our Native-American-looking driver stopping several times to point out some stellar views. This guy really liked me for some reason. There were several occasions where he put his hand on my leg, which was a little odd, and he kept talking to me in Thai like I was his old drinking buddy. But I would just smile and nod my head and try to be polite. He also gave me the first hand-shake of the trip when we bid farewell at the bus stop.
The bus ride back to Chiang Rai was miserable. When we jumped on I could tell the bus was already overcrowded. The money collector nudged and bumped her way through people to get to us and collect her moneys. She kept telling the bus driver, her teammate, to pull over and pick up more people. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but more people equals less comfort and I was standing up in the aisle with my chin tucked against my chest trying to keep my legs from locking up. I was by far the tallest person on the bus, and the most uncomfortable (see photo above). Every 5 minutes Steph, Kelsey, and Marianne would turn around and just start laughing at me because of how awkward I looked surrounded by all the tiny Asian men. After 30 minutes of this hell I was finally offered a seat, a seat beside the monk who journeyed Doi Tung with us earlier. It was a nice conclusion to the day. The Chiang Rai bus station never looked so good.
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