Dream Ride - Phayao to Chiang Kham Thailand - January 22, 2008

Ah, you live for a ride like today!! Incredible ride. Nice and cool in the morning when we left the hotel in Phayao at 7:05 and got underway. The sun was just breaking the horizon, golden ball coming up slowly through a foggy haze. What a truly beautiful morning...thank you God, Buddha, Mohammed or whomever for giving me an extraordinary life and this wonderful experience and adventure for so many years. I'm still in awe that I've been so fortunate to experience all this while I ride by rice fields and see people in back breaking work from sunrise to sunset. One gets a really big guilt feeling for all I've been blessed while I see those less fortunate toiling away in the fields...but as someone once told me..."maybe they're the blessed ones..not us".

We rode highway 1021, a great secondary road NE to Chun then to Chiang Kham. Another map error today; the map showed total distance at 96K but we saw a road sign early on that the distance was 80K...yahoo!!!

We stopped several times and took pictures of various wats (Buddhist temples). Then we saw this beautiful temple of 3 stupas on top of a mountain with steep steps to climb to the top..yeh, we had to do it..wouldn't of been right to pass up this opportunity and besides, we had been really flying today on the road so up we went. Very beautiful area; several Buddhist monks lived at the temple.

We arrived in Chiang Kham about 12:30 pm, found a good hotel. Colin's room was 350 baht and mine 450 (I got the big room) but still less than $15 for the night. Has cable tv, ac, hot water and NO SQUAT TOILET!!! We've been amazed at finding good accomodations for such a low price...unbelievable. Only drawback is that the city is kind of boring..not much to do or see. Can't even get a massage here today! Oh well!!