Another amazing detour

We made it to Chiang Rai, loads of things to do in the city, practical things, laundry, update the blog, clean the bicycles, find a new route south...Not even in the city yet and i had the feeling i was entering another world while riding on the highway, huge, four lanes packed with trucks, buses, cars and scooters, beeping and stinking all around in a four lane road where everybody is fighting to get forward.
On the other and i was thinking of all the good things, mainly food, vegetarian restaurants, coffee shops and maybe a beer!!! everything in a walkable distance from the place we sleep...Wow!
To avoid more raving around for hours looking for a place we chose to stay at the same spot i stayed the year before, a cheap and quiet guest house close to the centre.
It was kind of shocking to be around all those tourist once again and the feeling of being social disappeared pretty fast, at least for me.
We tried to be active and went for some bike rides around the area with maps we got at the tourist information, really nice routes, secondary roads to temples and along the river.
To this add a lot of vegetarian buffet and five days where gone!
Made a plan about the new route, send a post and avoided the very lone traveller hanging around in the yard of the guesthouse and the bikes where loaded and ready to go again!

The Kok river that criss Chiang Rai, during one of our active days we follow it  upstream.

A suspension bridge to cross over the river, it looked  crooked but the locals rides their scooters over it!

Cows hanging under gigantic water trees.

We chose as destination, a little city west of Chiang Rai called Fang but couldn't find any straight way there so we had to be back on the main highway number 1 heading north, same way we came in basically , through hell. Music in our ears and steady pace we made it to the turn off on a minor road very enjoyable to ride on.
Soon realised that was the right choice, rolling among the hills, and the many villages attracting buses and minivan from Chiang Mai to visit the hill tribes from the area as if it was a real life zoo. I didn't even know, many towns names i read outside tour operators offices in the city, where actually here!And sure they are very well signed so it makes it hard to miss them.

The silliest sign for hill tribe watching pointing to the middle of the action...and there's even a seven eleven!

Entering another valley towards Fang.

Tha Tong, we just passed by, and Fang , where we ended our day after 107 km, surely left us with the feeling of  coming back as being great spots for a rest day and exploring the surrounding areas.

A great moment in driving history...

The gate at Tha Tong, nice town along the way.