Hot spring time!

Hot spring fall!

Next, heading out to some temple at the surrounding! The temple is make of white and silver chips. It looks glorious from outside, it is like a maze instead as it is not completely build finish.

My family portrait outside the temple

Time to set off to Golden Triangle as we need to take around 30 min ferry ride to reach Laos and Myanmar. Heading off to another country for a short period of 3 to 4 hours total to explore!

A group photo of everyone before we headed off to Golden Triangle

Buddha temple at the Golden Triangle

After going to different countries to explore and time to head back with some shopping done at the area before heading to hotel. Totally exhausted by the end of the day as we reached back hotel was like 9 pm already! Throughout the bus journey, everyone just fall asleep and rest in the bus! It was cold even without aircon as the temperature was around 14 degree outside.

Woke up at 6.30am to get change first den called my cousins to wake up! 7am headed down to have breakfast as we were going to set off at 8am as we had long journey to travel. First stop was to orchid garden and it was around 9.30am. The weather was super cooling around 15 Degree Celsius and below where I got out of the bus!

The orchid and plantation at the place was just like Singapore's mini botanic garden. The orchid variety was more beautiful than Singapore's one due to the cooling weather. I even saw different species orchid that normally cannot be found in Singapore. Too excited to see flower plantation especially seeing them in the tubes (cos of my fyp project, seriously fall in love with plantation).

Me with the baby elephant!

Everyone just can't resist baby elephant!

My cousin Chee wang trying out a ride from baby elephant!

After all the performance from the elephants, we got the chance to take elephant ride in the forest where they stayed and rest in. Really like a jungle with nothing else but trees. It seem to be a roller coaster ride for me as the elephant moved every single steps, walking through all the hills and slopes is not easy. It is really an new experience for me and able to spend my day with elephants are just so great! relaxing life and down to earth life u can feel that u can't get it in the city life. Time to head back to the city and shopping time! weeeee, off to get my thai food....

We took Cathay pacific airplane to Chiang Mai, it took around 4 hours to reach there. The airport in Chiang Mai is really very small, around half of SG Terminal 1 airport. There is only like 3 to 5 different countries' airplanes in the airport at that time. So it was very easy to locate our tour guides and other people in the bus. The moment I was out of the airport gantry, there is the local people wearing traditional Thai costumes to welcome us and gave a small batch of flower. Most of the time, I was not having the camera so don't have much good photo. (My dad hold on to the camera so long until I took over it sometimes, desired for photos! :p)

First pit stop of the day after checking in the hotel was temple (双龙峙)

The four of us stopped in the beginning of the steps to take photo. Like doing fashion show. After walking endless count of steps, finally reached the top of the hill. There is an alternative way to get up to the temple instead of walking the stairs, which is use a direct elevator but need to pay like S$2. That elevator is a definitely "no way" to me!

The gate of the temple is just the beginning of the holding area, the whole area is so big until is like walking at the open space of orchard ion. Walking around inside the temple is just like walking in a maze of Buddhas around you.

The moment we were inside of the temple, time to pray le! Pray with all your wishes and see whether is our prayers being answered. And there is a lot of bells along the side of the temple, I went to hit all of the bells there and started the noisy pollution. Totally suddenly disturb the peaceful quiet in the place :p

Is nobody noticed it or don't bother to hit the bells? The moment I did that, everyone else followed me.

There is a gigantic bell display at one of the resting hut, it was donated by an Singaporean who stayed in Tampines. The weather was so good, it was like close to 17 to 20 Degree Celsius in the afternoon. We also saw what the monks do in the temple, like study time for the young monks conducted by the older monks.

Next pit stop was the village that grows opium which used to be the drug trading growing ground. It is located at the other hill quite close to the temple. We need to take a van that has 4X4 rally power to get there. Disturbing my cousins with camera! The bumpy car ride nearly made me hit the roof of the van.

Last pit stop for the day was our dinner place called Kantoke palace.
The place was filled with a lot of tourists when the moment we went in. It served the popular expensive Thai cuisine that was being served to the nobles in the palace. There was like around 8 different dishes of food, which can be refill non stop until you eat until shiok! There was also performance around for 1 hour plus, but I was too engrossed with the food. Probably because this was best meal I had for the day, result of being too hungry throughout the journey.

Time to head back to the hotel and get changed to go for night market shopping. There is shopping mall near my hotel and within walking distance there is flea market. Trying to buy something back to SG. Went back hotel around 10 plus at night but my cousins and I were hungry, so I decided to explore for food on my own as it was super cool at night around 10 to 12 Degree Celsius. After awhile of wondering around, my uncle joined me to buy food and drinks too with 2 of my cousins. Ended up, I bought pocky, chips, seaweeds and drinks back. I even bought beers with my uncle and tried the local beer. After filling our stomach craving and went all tucked in the bed as next morning we needed to get up before 7am. TATA! Bed time! Can't waited for the next day activities.