Country Retreat (Mae Rim)

Hanna and I take a 'grab cab' to our next destination where we'll stay for a week. It's in the country and we have a mini villa to ourselves. The country side is beautiful and so is the view from our room (see pictures for evidence). The place is run by a super nice and entertaining British / Thai couple (Pete and Ying). There's not a lot around the place, but they made fantastic freshly made meals for breaky, lunch and dinner in their little restaurant. 

We used this as our base of operation for a number of excursions:

Doi Inthanon
This is the highest point in Thailand and this it he one thing we take a tour to. Our guide is ms Rainbow and our driver's name I forget. Best to check out the photo's but there's a shrine from one of the former kings, a jungle walk way, a spectacular waterfall, the King and Queen's pagoda, lunch at crappiest restaurant ever (with the best food) and a hill tribe village with cute puppies which Hanna would later return to help them with all the lice they had.

Doi Sutheb
This is royal temple on a mountain and tourist attraction number one in the whole area. We take a grab cab there and admittedly it IS a very nice temple, but lo and behold every tourist in a 200 mile radius is ACTUALLY there, like everyone! So yeah, bit touristy, but what are you gonna do. At least the place we were staying was off the beaten track, not like this track, which basically wasn't just beaten, but had the shit kicked out of it for the last couple of decennia :P Still nice to hang around with Hanna and enjoy / make fun of it all. 

Mon Chem
We rent a car and head into the nice looking mountain where we do see a lot of cool stuff. I don't really understand what mon Chem is partially because it's a tourist trap and partially because we don't really find it. 

Erotic garden
There's an eccentric lady who runs an erotic garden nearby the country retreat. We head over and she has cool stories, her garden is nice and it indeed is filled with erotic flora and artifacts. Definitely something different, but still awesome. She tells us about when the cops raided the place because they thought it was a brothel and she gave the chief of police all kind of honest answers like 'this is a penis' and 'this is my dream'

Celebrating Loi Krathong
This is the annual festival of the lights, where the locals use all kinds of things to let go of the bad vibes of the last year. We make little boats called krathongs (see pictures) and let them float away on the river (they had candles, fireworks, incense, etc). it's supposed to cement a couples relationship and it's a good sign when they float together, which ours did! on a different note, there's also a saying in Thailand that a good marriage is like an elephant where the man is the front feet who decide the direction and the woman is like the hind feet in that they provide the strength, so what the fuck right??

Poopoopaper
At the end we head to this place where they get all the poo from all the elephant parks (where we did not go btw, as it's not cool for the elephants in our opinion) and use it to make paper! It's a pretty dopey idea for an amusement park, but it's also just pretty dope. They show you the process and you can buy cool products and it's just very nicely setup, which is not always the case in Thailand. 

Numerous walks and biking trips
We rent bikes one day and walk everywhere to just get to know the environment, which was awesome, but often very hot :P The area is very tranquil, lots of nice temples and not touristy at all. There's a couple of great little cafes and restaurants with air-condition where we return to have an 'italian soda', which is apparently not a thing in Italy at all, but still nice. it's just sweet flavored sparking water.