We arrived in Chiang Rai after swapping buses from Pai in Chiang Mai and headed straight to our favourite hotel.  We laughed about how cool it is that we now have ‘regular’ hotels in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, KL, Lanta, Luang Prabang and Luang Namtha, and know our way well around these places.  Kinda of a nice feeling to arrive and know exactly where we are and where to find everything we need in town!  We were going to stay just 2 nights before heading to the border, but we enjoyed our chill time here so much that we stretched it out to the max of 4 nights, leaving it until the day our visa ran out to actually leave.

Pretty much the most exciting thing we did here was get haircuts!  Dre is super excited because for the first time since he was 14, he got a ‘real’ haircut.  And then subsequently posed for heaps of photos with his new do.

When we arrived here, we found out that a huge new mall has opened in Chiang Rai since last time we were here so we headed there to check it out.  We found an amazing hairdresser who trained in Berlin, and won, yes WON the world championship for some hairdressing competition in Berlin before coming back to Chiang Rai and setting up shop.  Lucky us!  The new mall also has movie theatres!  So after our almost-year-long movie drought, apart from KL, we now have a movie theatre in northern Thailand which shows one English movie a day.  (one is better than none!)

Also the temple that they have been building the past few times we’ve been here was finished so we went to see that too.  All in all a really nice catch up time before heading back to our Asian homeland, Luang Namtha :-)