"Golden Triangle Capers"

Lots of Buddha
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After the elephants it was time for more Temple bashing. Off we went up to the highest point overlooking the city to see monks and Buddha's some more. Every man in Thailand at some point has to live like a monk for a period of time, the minimum being seven days and today was the night before another two hundred were getting signed in. All the guys looked resigned to their fate, some were even happy...must have been a last minute beer! After that we went off and visited the night market. It was such hard work that Mer and I gave up and had a foot massage after an hour of looking at fake watches and other market wares etc.

Got a Monk on!
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The next day was a travelling day as we took a VIP bus across to Chiang Khong to do our border crossing into Laos. On the way there we did some stop offs to include a visit to a cashew factory (well more like a workshop) where we saw the tree that cashews grow on and were able to try all of the different flavours and even buy some - we went for plain old salted and also got some dried banana chips and caramel macadamias - all for about 3 pounds! We then visited a newer temple on the way to Chiang Mai. It was pure qhite and quite dazzling in the sunshine. The temple is amde of mosaic glass and is brilliantly sparkling in the sunshine. There was a very important marble white Buddha inside and great hand-painted murals to look at. We also stopped off briefly in Chiang Mai and had a lunch at the "Cabbages and Condoms" restaurant. We were a little confused by this first of all but soon realised that it had been set up by a charitable organisation that has been working to offer free condoms to Thai people and introduce them to safe sex. You can realise why this charity is so good when stats that show 17% of sex workers in Thailand have HIV and this charity is trying to educate Thais to stop this % from increasing further.

had a lunch at the "Cabbages and Condoms" restaurant....