Chiang Rai - Dentist, Ice Plant & FUN

We had a fun trip to the dentist in Chiang Rai, about 60 Km south of our home here in Mae Sai.  Why does "Fun" and "Dentist" not seem to go together correctly?

We left around 11:30 AM and stopped at the chicken place by our friend Peter's house.  Peter is from Australia and has retired here in Northern Thailand.  It is good for both of us to talk in English as there are only a few folks around this part of Thailand that can understand us.

We picked up the bar-be-cued chicken along with some stick rice and vegetables and eat together in Peter's patio.  Peter mentioned the new ice factory just a little ways from him.  It was a coincidental as Daeng's son, Boonreang, has stopped going to school about three weeks ago and is working part time at an ice factory.

After we said our goodbyes to Peter we drove around the corner and stopped at the new ice factory.  They are still building it but the lady knew of Daeng and showed us around a little.  From what I'm told Boonreang works on a team that provides ice for large events like marriages and funerals. 

They come in the late afternoon, get everything ready for the next day, sleep in a little house in front and then leave very early in the morning and set up the coolers and ice for the event.   The coolers are huge.  You can see the blue one behind Daeng in the picture above. After the event is over they clear everything, load it on the truck and bring it back.  It makes for a long, hard day but with a fun crew.

I'm happy that he is doing something constructive as I was very worried about him dropping out of school.  I explained to him that I did not like school when I was his age so I stopped going after High School and did okay working for a living.  We hope he can find a career that he likes.  I have found that if people like what they are doing they do well.

We also stopped at the little house in the front which Daeng kept calling the "Gift Shop".  I thought it was a shop you could buy gifts but what it really is a "Gift Shop"; that is a shop that makes gifts.  They make them here but don't sell anything retail.

The big project that was going on was the "bottle girls" were recycling small, glass bottles to be reused.  What they do is for several days they soak the bottles in big concrete tubs and then they, in an assemble line style, remove the labels and clean the bottles sparkly clean. 

I don't know what was going back into the bottles but they were all laughing and having fun.

After we said: "Good-Bye" we drove the rest of the way to Chiang Rai and checked into the Diamond Park Inn Hotel, right in town.  It is a nice hotel with plenty of safe, well lite parking and is close to the Night Bazaar and the dentist's office.

We took a little nap, showered and drove over to the dentist's office for Daeng's 6:00 PM appointment; yep, 6:00 PM on a Friday night.  For the last month or two, Daeng some times has been having a little pain from her back tooth.  She had some periodontal work done in this area a few years ago by this same dentist.

When the dentist came out to get her we all laughed because on Tuesday she sat next to Daeng on the plane from Bangkok but we did not recogniser her.  She said she laughed, inside, at us as Daeng and I were kidding about things in English and she speaks and understands English.  It is a small world!

After an x-ray and exam she stated that Daeng needs "Root Planning" on her back tooth.   We said okay and she gave Daeng a shot so she would not have any pain and proceeded to treat her.  I watched and it was a lot of work.  She also showed me part of what she removed. Daeng was in the chair for over 45 minutes to do the root planning.

When she was finished she showed us a book with some pictures to let us know exactly what she had done.  The pictures made everything understandable.

By the way, the total charge was 1,700 Thai Baht (about $56.00 US Dollars).  I'm very happy that Daeng could wait until we got here as I am sure it would have been hundreds of dollars in California.

Daeng felt pretty good so we went to the "Night Bazaar", eat some Thai food and split a home made ice cream, banana split.  By the way, here they just call "Thai Food" by the name of "food".

After a good nights sleep we met our Canadian friend, Charlie, at Jan's Coffee Shop. We had coffee and brought each other up to current speed with all our lives.  Jan is Charlie's girlfriend, as well.

We had a good drive back to Mae Sai and Daeng is playing Bingo with the neighborhood ladies while I'm writing this blog.

Life is Good!

Trip to Chiang Rai and Water Fall

It's time to travel, again. We got up, walked down the road for coffee/breakfast and stopped to talk with the cock raisers and parking lot fellows. They have a big empty lot that they change folks 40 TB a day to park. People drive here to cross the Myanmar (Burma) Border to shop.

They also raise fighting cocks. They were cleaning them and rubbing their black feathers with the black from the bottom of the frying pan to "make them look beautiful", as they say.

It was a sunny mid-day as we checked out of the Yeesun Hotel and loaded our bags in the tuk-tuk we took to the bus station. Tuk-tuk's are small three wheeled vehicles that are make by many companies. For Thailand CLICK HERE.

The air conditioned bus was comfortable but about half way to Chiang Rai we were told that this bus goes to the new bus station about 7 Km south of town. Daeng told the lady we wanted to go to the old bus station as we were staying at a little guest house by the bus station in town.

Well, when we got to the turn off to town the bus stopped and left us out with our bags. We flagged down another tuk-tuk that took us into the old bus station for 60 TB. We did not know there were two bus stations as the new one only opened last month. Oh, the life of a traveler.

The Orchid Guest House is small but clean and cheap, 350 TB ($10.50 USD) a night. It is also in the middle of the Night Bazaar. What that means is fun for shopping but noisy until after 11:00PM.

When we went for our evening meal we ran across our friends, Jan, Charlie and Charlie's son, Arron, who had just arrived from Canada a few hours ago. We ate with them and enjoyed their company. We made an agreement to meet at Jan's coffee shop in the morning around 9:00 AM.

On Saturday, we met Charlie and Arron at Jan's Coffee Shop. We had Joke, a rice breakfast dish similar to oatmeal but made with rice, baht-a-go which is a Thai donut. We talked for some time and then said good-bye until next year when we return.

We took it easy for the day and went shopping at the Night Bazaar. I took three pictures of the Night Bazaar area; one in the daytime when it is just a street like any other street in town, one during the set up of the bazaar in the late afternoon and one at night when it was all set up and operational.

It is pretty impressive to watch the people do this every day and every night. They have everything including a purple dog.

On Saturday we had coffee at Jan's and walked over to rent a motorbike for the next 24 hours.

The first stop was to see Daeng's son, Boonreang at his school room. We also wanted to see his grades for the fall semester. He was in pretty good spirits and had a grade average for the first half of the year of 2.8.

We congratulated him and told him we are raising his allowance due to him raising his grades from the year before. Here is his school picture.

We they drove over to Daeng's nephew, Kit. We decided a little trip to the Huai Mae Zayi Waterfall would be fun. Five of us jumped on two motorbikes and made the 18 Km trip. We did stop to buy some food to go on the way.

We arrived at the parking area and no one was around. We parked and walked up the path to the water fall through the jungle area.

The walk was not to bad for an old guy. The area was very clean but you could tell from the path that a lot of folks come here.

As we got closer to the water fall you could hear the noise of the water. We walked along more to reach this beautiful water fall.

The kids swam and then we ate. There were a few snakes and everyone was afraid of them. I did not realize but most Thai folks are afraid of snakes.

It started to get cold as the sun moved to the west so we called it an afternoon.

Daeng and I headed to the dentist for our appointment at 5:00 PM. Yes, 5:00 PM on a Saturday.

The dentist had good news and bad news. The good news was that the work of tooth "planing", that she did last month, was of some help. If I do what she shows me to do I can keep infection away.

The bad news is I need to spend more time each day cleaning two of my teeth with some special brushes to keep the area under the teeth clean. If I don't I'll have more trouble.

The other good news was no charge except for the special brushes and tips, 330 TB ($9.90 USD).

Dinner and a good nights sleep as it is onward to the City of Chiang Mai tomorrow.