Road Trip Day 3 and Coffee!

We started our last day of our getaway with one last swim instead of going for the free breakfast. We had enough time to swim and shower before checking out. We got a good workout holding up this tree and swimming. Since we weren't allowed to swing on it we had to do something. It just looked too neat curving out over the water.

I'm beginning to think one of our goals in traveling to and from Chiang Rai is to take every possible route. The return trip took us through Phayao which has this beautiful lake. The only problem was the extreme sunshine made it a bit uncomfortable in the early afternoon, but we still had fun practicing our picture taking skills. Rusty had the big camera, and I enjoyed getting a different perspective with his cell phone.

I often turn around and find myself alone when we're out on one of our adventures. As usual Rusty's off in search of another angle or something interesting to capture.

The new road back to the city was great, and we found two waterfalls really close to the road. I'm not sure if their proximity to the road made it where we didn't have to pay an entrance fee, but I was thankful they were free! We actually saw this one second, but we stopped here first. We had buzzed right past the first one, slowed down to find a place to turn around, and spotted the second one. There was a lot of water rushing down.

The views along the route were amazing! This shot was not far from where we rejoined our traditional route to Chiang Rai.

One of our highlights on any trip is trying coffee from different coffee shops!

We try to find good deals whether it's in the basement of the mall or at a market, but we also buy some from a place that just looks like a nice place. And then there are restroom breaks as well where the coffee is expensive so we share. It's all enjoyable though!

We have deemed the route to Chiang Rai the coffee highway of Thailand. As we traveled back the new route I decided to count how many shops there were. On the normal route it's impossible to count because there are so many. In 240 kilometers I was able to count 81 shops. I'm sure I missed a few as we were buzzing by.

 

These are just a few of the stops we made. As you can tell even if you pull over at a scenic lookout you will probably find a coffee shop. And to think--we didn't even drink coffee when we moved here.