Chiang Saen

In the morning we were picked up by a driver and taken to another guesthouse where we were expecting to pick up another couple who were also taking a boat downstream but were going up to a local Karin village before. There had been a bit of a mix up and here wasn't enough room in the vehical to carry everyone and their stuff as the couple also had bikes and were adament that theirs would not go on the roof. We wouldn't have minded that our tandem got a ding or two extra to add to the growing collection. Shortly the organiser of ours and the other couples' boat trips arrived and arrange another car, which just happened to aready be there. I suspected that the organiser knew that this might happen and had a second car as backup but wanted to save on the cost if she could get away with it. At the end of it all both couples left in different cars, with us wondering why we didn't go straight to the boat without this mini-drama. I figured this was all part of the Thailand experience. 15 minutes later we were dropped off at the pier where our boat was waiting. The ride down the river was lovely. The water level was quite low and there wre a few rapids that we went over that seemed dramatic, though probably only to those like us who'd never done it before. Though the ir was still very hazy the scenery along the river banks was lovely with villages appearing every so often. We had a couple of stops along the way. One at a village where we were observed with almost complete non-interest. We'd expected to be attacked by trinket sellers but only a couple of old ladies tried it out on us with woven purses and bags. The houses in the village were constructed with wooden beams as supports and rattan and bamboo as walls The village was not connected to the electricity grid but we saw a couple of solar panels. There were a few scooters and a car. A dirt road led along the river. Pigs and chickens roamed free.
The next stop was at a hotspring area. As we'd bathed in one the previous day we just took a look around and went back to the boat.
The end station was a Karin village that had set itself up as an elephant camp. We'd been planning to take an elephant ride in the afternoon. Unfortunately we'd arrived on the only day in the year that these animals get a day off,we'll need to wait until Laos for this. Though the drivers were taking them around and showing them off. They are impressive beasts. After having lunch we hit the road.
We passed just North of Chiang Rai but didn't manage to avoid the main road to the border with Myanmar. At Mae Chen we decided to continue as the town didn't look so nice and it was early. Once out of town it became nicer but we feared that we'd found ourselves on a hotel-less road. We pressed on as the Sun started to go down looking at each sign along the road for words in Roman script which we figured was an indication of our business. We eventually found something in the fading light.
We stayed at Viang Yonok resort on the shore of Chiang Saen Lake. Quite an expensive place but it was getting dark and we were worried about not getting somewhere before it got too dark, easily our most expensive night so far at 1200 baht.
N20'15.700 E100'2.987
77km - 3 hr 51 mins - avg 19.9