The last few days have been surreal. The evening we got to Chiang Rai, we went to a little restaurant right by our guesthouse that had a ton of authentic northern Thai and Vietnamese dishes, none of which we’d heard of yet, so we got a small feast to try a bunch of new things. Most adventurous was the spicy soup with bite-sized pieces of blood cake. I expected it to have a much stronger flavor, but really, it didn’t taste like much and had the texture of tofu. We also got these little toast slices stuffed with shrimp and pork. The whole meal was great! Afterwards, we walked over to a cat cafe in town, with what must have been 20 cats hanging out together in one room. It was nuts! I am amazed that they all tolerate each other. It was fun to get in some cat-petting time since we’ve been away from Euler for so long.

Saturday, we were picked up at the hotel by a driver for the Elephant Peace Project, a group of Karen people living just outside of Chiang Rai. The Karen have been living with elephants for hundreds of years, and today we got a chance to meet three elephants and their mahouts, caretakers who devote their whole lives to caring for the animals. We basically lived the life of a mahout for a few hours, learning how to chop up banana tree stalks for feed, how to bathe and scrub them, how to communicate with verbal cues, and how to drive them around for short periods in order to bond with them. We got to know the personality of each elephant and talk with the guide about the Karen lifestyle and history. It was magical! Sitting up on an elephant’s neck bareback and “driving” it around with my voice is something I’ll never forget.

Yesterday, we rented another bike and drove north out of the city to do a big loop through the countryside. We had multiple objectives, the first of which was a temple with dozens of macaque monkeys in residence. We brought some bananas that the folks at the elephant sanctuary gave us from their garden… needless to say, the monkeys were ravenous for those bananas. I’m pretty sure we were the only white people at the temple, which was an unusual feeling compared to being in the cities. Off to one side, we saw a wildly ornamental staircase flanked by dragon tails leading steeply up into the woods, so naturally, we wandered over to check it out. After a thigh-burning climb, we reached the mouth of a cave at the base of a cliff and saw a candle burning inside. We were both a little skeeved out but decided to go in anyways. Much to our surprise, the floor inside was nicely tiled, and at the back of the cave was a shrine with candles and incense burning at the base of a Buddha. The cave was empty other than an old man who was selling candles for us to place at the altar.

We wandered around for a bit in the shadows before heading back out to the top of the stairs to a viewpoint out over the vast expanse of valley between us and the next mountain range over. At this point, it was getting scorching hot, so we boogied back to the bike to get on the road to Mae Sai, the town at the northernmost point of Thailand.

We wandered around the market in town for a bit before getting lunch in the AC of a Japanese izakaya restaurant. On the way out, we each got a pair of preposterously inexpensive shoes from the market before driving east.

Our next stop was the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet along the Mekong River. This area used to be rampant with illicit trading of opium and other drugs, but now it’s a mostly quiet corner of Southeast Asia. We stopped at the Hall of Opium, a museum dedicated to the history of the cultivation of poppies and the creation of opium, the resulting Opium Wars in China, and the impact of the drug trade in this part of Asia. We got there right before closing and had the place to ourselves, which, given the size of the museum’s rooms and all the interactive exhibits and sound effects, was quite eerie.

After the museum, we got dinner at a little restaurant right along the shore of the river: pad thai, catfish tom yum soup, and a big Chang beer to share. After dinner, we drove back to Chiang Rai through the misty, rolling hills and forests of the Thai countryside, passing farms, villages, and family restaurants, just as the sun was setting and the full moon rose. It was a magical time of day.

Once we got back to town, we went out to a bar serving craft beer from Thailand and elsewhere and played a few rounds of pool. We grabbed whipped cream-stuffed waffles for dessert and went back to the hotel exhausted.

This morning, we took the bike to the Blue Temple, one of the multiple colored temples throughout Chiang Rai. It was a spectacular sight, seeing almost every surface of the ornately carved temple coated in a layer of blue.

Just as the rain started falling, we returned the bike and walked back to the hotel to pack up. Today we cross into our next country! From here, we’ll take a bus about 90 minutes to the border, then a shuttle across the river into Laos. From there, we’ll begin the next leg of our journey with a multi-day boat ride on the Mekong into the heart of Laos.