As you probably know, when we travelled to NZ, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand for 2 months recently we told our staff that as their reward for successfully running the shop while we were gone that we’d take them on their first trip outside of Laos.

So 3 of the staff that worked during this time took the challenge; Korlee, On and Toc had never left Luang Namtha province before, and Korlee had never even left the town of Luang Namtha.

The adventure to the ‘big city’ of Chiang Rai started with the girls having to wait 2 hours for the Lao immigration office (the section that stamps Lao people in and out of Lao) to re-open after lunch.  During this time though, they managed to make friends with the tourist police, have lunch with them and exchange phone numbers ;) .

Once they crossed the Mekhong they were into a new world; the forbidden Thailand and needed us to pretty much look after their every move.

The first night we took them to the night bazaar, and they were in heaven shopping in the Thai market with so much more selection than anywhere in Laos.

The second day was full of adventures for them:  we went to their first supermarket, Makro, and bought all the supplies for the shop.  They were amazed and awed that such a big building could exist and have so much selection in it.

This was followed by even more amazement – the mall.  Toc was petrified to ride on the escalator, none of them having ever seen one before or known of the existence of one.  We eventually convinced her that it was fine, and took them to see their first movie.

We saw more supermarkets, actual clothes stores, computer stores, TV stores, and so many other things that don’t exist in Laos.  The second night they wanted to go back to the night bazaar for more  shopping.

We had hoped to take them to the white temple also, but it ended up raining a fair bit and so the final morning was just chill out time before the return to the safety of Luang Namtha.

Our journey to our secluded hideaway to celebrate our 14th anniversary since we met started off interestingly.

We went to our normal Chiang Rai guesthouse and dropped off some of our luggage and computers, and decided to make a ‘quick trip’ to the mall to give the computer fix-it shop Dre’s computer so that it could be there a few days getting fixed while we were away.  The quick trip turned into a few hours and so when we finally set out to our holiday location on our motorbike in the pouring rain, it was already dark.

We laughed about it and Dre made the comment that it’s awesome that our lives are never boring here!  We followed the directions on the map to the hideaway, our bike laden with our luggage and our clothes soaked through to the skin.  After about half an hour, we realised that although we were following our saturated map, it didn’t seem to be leading to where we wanted to go.  This was confirmed when the road finished and turned to mud, and we literally couldn’t keep driving because it was too muddy.

We turned around and headed back to the nearest main road, in the countryside somewhere north of Chiang Rai.  We found a shop that was still open and used our limited Thai language skills to ask if we were going the right way, or which way to go.  They pointed us back in the direction we’d come from so we thought that we’d just head back down the road and stop at the nearest hotel we found for the night.

As it turned out, it was all meant to be… after another 20 minutes or so in the now-torrential rain, we found what looked to be an extremely upmarket resort set on the mountainside.  We pulled up and the wide-eyed receptionist looked in bewilderment at 2 soaked-to-the-skin-foreigners pulling up on a motorbike in the dark in the middle of nowhere to their resort.

They showed us to their holiday house, complete with jacuzzi, kitchen, several huge balconies, an entire private rooftop with hammocks and daybeds, completely secluded from any other dwelling by extensive tropical gardens and views to mountain ranges out the front and back.  (Of course we couldn’t see the gardens or views until the next morning).  It had a kitchen, 2 bedrooms, a huge lounge and lot of extras.  So we figured that this was where we were meant to be and there was good reason we didn’t find the place we’d booked.  We still do want to find the place we booked, in future, because it looked awesome too, but this place would definitely be awesome to stay at for the few days we planned to spend there.

So we spent the following days lazing on the rooftop, stretched out on the couches, and admiring the gardens and mountains.  The staff were so excited we had come to stay (normally only Thai people stayed there) and in the mornings when we’d go for breakfast they would attempt to practise their limited English and we would spend time teaching them some new words.

It was a good way to spend some time and we returned to Chiang Rai recharged and ready for the next adventure:  taking some of our staff on their first trip outside of Laos.