Weekend away in Chiang Khan

Chiang Khan

While we were in Nong Khai, we were lucky enough to meet an amazing bunch of people. Included in that group were Tom and Mae. One of the amazing things about travelling, I may have mentioned this previously, is the people you meet. Tom and Mae offered to take us away for the weekend, to an area called Chiang Khan, about 200k's from Nong Khai. We had an amazing time, and here are a few of the many snaps we took on the way.

Chiang Khan is what I would call a rustic river side lazy town. Everything seems to be built from beautiful wood, and the people there seem to live by reading interior decor magazines. It was one of the most stylish areas we have visited. We took loads of photos of inspiration for whenever we end up building a house.

This was our room. Cool huh?

Down in the lobby. So retro.

Eiffel 65? I really need some new jeans.

cool fence

stylish sidewalk features

more cool sidewalk features.

This is the group, outside the guesthouse. Tom  on the left, then Mark, Mae and Sunita on the right. We loved the blue chair

From Chiang Khan, we drove a few hours to somewhere else. There was this lake, such a beautiful area.

So the idea goes like this. First, you go to the restaurant/houseboat booth and order your food and drinks. They give you a boat number, and you jump on.

Then someone like this ropes their longboat up to the side, and powers you out to somewhere on the lake that you like.

How cool is this photo. Mark took it, with a camera somewhat more advanced than our happy snapper. These are all the others parked up around the middle of the lake. The cool thing was that we didn't see any other "falang" or foreigners here. All the people were Thai tourists.

So we got to the business of perfecting our flips and back dives.

Then a boat brought out all the hot food we had ordered. Lake fish, chicken laab, fried pork, papaya salad, sticky rice and im sure I left some out.

Synchronised flips. good fun!

Flipping

and time to chill out too. I think this photo is the calm before the storm. Shortly after, there was the most intense tropical lightening and thunder. It started pelting down, so hard you could hardly keep your eyes open. All the food got blown everywhere, and our rock-anchor snapped and we were blown halfway down the lake. All good fun! I have to mention that the water was so warm, at least high 20's. It was so warm that if you were swimming to energetically you had to get out and cool off in the breeze every now and again. This was such an amazing experience, and I think we were very lucky to have the awesome company we had there.

We found somewhere that served an "American breakfast" Yuss!

A Buddhist temple we visited. This thing was absolutely huge! The Thai Queen actually donated the money for it to be built a few years back.

Pretty awesome

Big Buddha

After the temple, we went to a nearby national park. The scenery was really beautiful - almost a bit like the Milford Track.

Such a cool team, what an awesome time!

Then we went down to the river on the way back.

Looking across the Mekong to Laos

Foraging and throwing all sorts of rocks

On Sunday afternoon we stopped at a Thai steak house for lunch on the way back to Nong Khai. 

This is the last night we were in Thailand, we went down to the bank of the Mekong for some Hotpot - maybe Korean inspired? Anyway it was amazing. Really sad having to say goodbye to all the people we have met over the past six weeks. No doubt we will be back some time though!