May, Ray, Pay

Hello to the homeland,

We are currently sitting in a nice café in Chiang Rai and David is trying to figure out how to eat soup with chopsticks.

After trying out every café in Chiang Mai, we headed to the even more northern city of Chiang Rai (Konrad's realization: It rhymes!). After a 4-hour bus ride, we stumbled upon the 'Nung Nang Len' Hostel by chance (Mara spent the first few hours memorizing this name, David still can't remember it). This accommodation, specifically designed for backpackers, opened this year. For the first time, we slept here in shared rooms and shared the room with other travelers. We also spent some evenings here, as the hostel had a large scenic communal area where we could socialize with other backpackers, including the first night in a huge game round that ended in an international Trump discussion.

On our first full day in Chiang Rai, we went on a big trekking tour through the surrounding jungle. In a group of 6 people, we left the city and started the excursion with an elephant ride (We can't decide whether a pick-up truck or an elephant is the less safe means of transportation). After that, we started our hike through dense forests, past waterfalls, through tea plantations, and crossed through some villages of hill tribes. While our guide cut through the bamboo trees with a machete, he showed us the cultivation of rice, pineapple, banana, and papaya. After completing the descent completely soaked due to the extremely heavy rain, we were able to warm up in a hot spring.

The next day, we spent a café hopping sightseeing tour through Chiang Rai (It should be mentioned that the main attraction of Chiang Rai, similar to Hoffeld, is a roundabout, our personal highlights were the hot drinks). We also discovered a stand for fruit shakes, where we have been several times a day since then, and a slight addiction has developed (the average daily consumption is several liters, but this is also due to the incredibly low price).

Yesterday morning, we started on a day trip to the north with two rented scooters (Life tip from Konrad: Apply sunscreen before riding a scooter in 30-degree heat, otherwise you will have severe pain the next day and have to wear a rain jacket all day to protect your lobster-red arms from the sun). Our destination was the 'Golden Triangle', which is the 3-country border between Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand. After driving 120km, we also made a detour to the 'black house', a temple that reminds more of the devil's living room than a place of worship due to its dark color and slightly creepy interior.

This morning, we visited the 'white temple', which is the counterpart to the black house. This rather modern and magnificent temple stood out from the others because of its interior painting: Instead of the usual Buddhist drawings, this temple shows pictures of Superman, Harry Potter, Hello Kitty, and Star Wars.

Since our planned journey to Pai today was made impossible due to a full bus, we will stay one more night in the trendy hostel and start our second attempt tomorrow.

Wishing you a good start to the new week tomorrow (we just found out that today is Sunday),

Tamari, Davidovsky, and Konradin