Simply cycling around
Today, I’ve been visiting a temple, it has been a long time. Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya is THE city for old temples apparently. There few of them in the same area. A part that, I cycled from very early this morning until the next petrol station, stayed there most of the day before I headed to temple to catch the sunset. After the visit I struggled a bit to find my next 5 stars hotel but as always, I found it! :-)
Today we did not do anything special with Stéphane. We just stayed at the guesthouse, went out to eat when you got hungry and that’s it. Around 5pm, when the lights became good enough to take pictures, I cycled to the Plain of Jars which is not really far from the city centre of Phonsavan. There is several different sites apparently but I’ve chose the main one. Of course, I cycled there.
We discussed yesterday with Kom and Tu and they want to show me around. My Thai visa ends on the 5th of April so I’m still able to make it on time. Today we went to a waterfall. I think water attractions are the best during this very dry season. The kids enjoy a lot! We have spent several hours here and then came back to their home where I played with the kids to different games.
Today we visited the Royal Park Rajapruek. It has several different areas like a garden, a “district” with different cultures represented by their building construction (like India, Japan, Cambodia, Bhutan, and others). This one was my favourite and represents Bhutan. It has very nice style and colours. Of course, the main attraction is the Royal temple (I don’t know if I can call it like this). Anyway, let’s start the visit :-)
Wua Lai Road is a famous street in Chiang Mai where hand crafters are specialised in silver and aluminium. The streets has dozen of shops who sell jewels, accessories and certainly coins. But I’m not here to buy coins here, but just to have a look to a special looking temple and some craft work around.
Today we finally reached Chiang Mai after 21 days cycling. We have done 51 km per day in average and stopped 3 days on the way. For this last day, we joined the Ping river again and followed it until the entrance of the city. The landscape did not change very much today. In fact, we avoid one more time the big roads which leads to the centre. Ours did the same but the road was nearly trafficless.
Mmmh, delicious day today :-) The last night at the temple was pretty quiet. After breakfast we cycled few kilometres before we stopped to visit a temple. There was another gigantic statue of one of the three famous monk from that province. After that, we kept on cycling until we reached a very nice coffee shop. We stopped there maybe 3 or 4 hours :-) Later this afternoon we travelled a bit further expecting to find a temple I’ve spotted on Maps but that time it did not work. The people from the place where we ate told us that temple doesn’t accept people to stay overnight. We had to find another place then and it was not easy…