We had a van and driver scheduled to pick us up at 10:00 am so I was free to sleep in. The only trouble was that I was still adjusting to the change in time zones and woke up around 4:00 a.m. Despite trying, I never went back to sleep. I finally decided to get up and walk up to the morning market at the entrance to the old city. I am glad I did. I took a different way to the market and stumbled onto another wat. It was so peaceful with the cool ai and the soft light of the morning. As I approached the wat, I could hear chanting (unmute the video on the right for a sample). From the temple I made my way to the South-east gate of the old city and explored more of the market. I found sections selling produce as well as the section selling various meats.
It was then back to the hotel for breakfast, followed by a 3 hour drive up to Fang.
The road was pretty curvy and a bit chaotic with slower scooters and trucks resulting in lots of passing and hard acceleration and braking. The scenery got progressively better as we slowly left the sprawl of Chaing Mai behind and made our way to the heavily agricultural Fang district. We passed bananas and papayas growing on the side of the road, which reminded me of both Hawaii and Costa Rica. We also passed by orchards of what looked like mango trees and another fruit tree that wasn’t immediately recognizable to me. There were also some smaller fields of vegetables as well as rice. Some rice was fields were just being plants, while other fields had tall brownish rice that looked ready for harvest.
We made it to our hotel and grabbed a late lunch at a nearby restaurant because and needed to wait until 2:00 pm to check in. After lunch we drove up to Tha ton (about 40 minutes away) to do some reconnaissance on the availability of boats to hire for our trip to Chiang Rai. We then returned to Fang and walked through Fang’s Sunday market on our way to and from dinner.
Looks like an adventure!
Glad you made it to the Chaing Mai market in the early morning.
Jim, so enjoying traveling along with you! The temple sounds wonderful and a great time for reflection, which you seem to do a lot in your lovely narrative. Continue to enjoy and stay safe. Smiling and thankful for you!
Very interesting love the work the organization is doing, meaning you, too! Pictures are great. Brings it all home to those following you. 🤗🫶🏻