Buddha Arch & Art
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Samoeng is a small farming community located roughly 50 km from Chiang Mai. Its claims to fame are its strawberries, for which it is justly acclaimed, and the so-called Samoeng Loop, a 100 km circuit through the mountains from Chiang Mai, well-known to both cycling and motorcycling aficionados. The town is about as Thai as possible, with only the occasional Westerner in sight.
This Christmas I was again in India visiting family. With the near extinction of ALCOs in India I decided it was time to try somewhere new for a change, so after family time and a small trip to Ooty it was off to Thailand. I had originally planned to make a small trip to Thailand last winter but got sick in India and ended up coming straight home. This was a mistake as the railway scene in Thailand has changed quite drastically in the last year and not for the better. Even still I had a fantastic time exploring a new to me country. One of the most well known railway lines in Thailand is the famed Burma Railway (Death Railway). The line was built largely by British POWs under the Japanese occupation of Thailand in WWII and made famous by the book/movie "Bridge on the River Kwai". After the war the British forced the line to be severed and today only a small segment up to Nam Tok in Thailand is active. The line itself is an important tourist attraction and many people come to visit just to see this segment of wooden bridges along the River Kwai. Here the afternoon service to Kanchanaburi crosses trestles with a classic Thai GEK (UM12C in GE language) shovel nose leading. I ended up spending the night in one of the houseboats along the river, unfortunately traffic is light on this line but was still really cool to be able to watch trains with a beer from the porch!
It borders the southern slope of the densely forested Lamru National Park. Khao Lak Beach is about 1.5 kilometers long and is sheltered in the bay off the tropical Andaman Sea.
This is the well known Mae Suai viewpoint in Chiang Rai with parking big enough for a dozen or more buses and much against my usual stubborn refusal to capture 'viewpoints' I pulled up anyway, got my tripod out and made a 9 vertical shot pano.
But then I did have a reasonable excuse and that was my poor old car had overheated due to someone forgetting to put water in the radiator. If I could have stopped further down the ridge way I surely would have, steam was venting in all directions but the handbrake isn't exactly the car's best feature, and besides there is barely room to park a bicycle on the roads leading up here!
I suppose there are worse places to break down and I can't deny that I didn't enjoy the moment especially with it being unplanned.
Thank you cooling off here :)
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A Cloudy Day North in Thailand.
Historically the Golden Triangle has been an area well-known for the growing of opium, and the name comes from a US State Department memo on the practice. These days, though, the place lives on the cultivation of tourists, and this is undoubtedly the largest tourist trap in northern Thailand.
The landscape is hilly, divided by the Ruak River that flows into the Mekong (Mae Khong) River. These rivers form a natural boundary between the three countries Laos (to the east of the Mekong), Myanmar (to the north of the Ruak), and Thailand (to the west of the Mae Khong).