Transportation:
We decided to take the Green Bus VIP from Chiang Mai to visit Chiang Rai for 4 days. The 3-to-4-hour bus ride cost us $11 each. The VIP bus was a couple of dollars more than the regular bus, but it was a much nicer, and more comfortable option. After taking an uncomfortable minibus on the windy road to and from Pai, we didn’t mind paying a little bit extra. Some benefits of the VIP bus include the seats being bigger, more legroom, the AC working so much better, there’s TVs, reclining chairs, and the driving was much more pleasant.
*If we went to Chiang Rai again, we would’ve cut it back to 3 days instead of 4. Although the extra day was helpful for our trip, Danika did have an allergic reaction to food, so we spent most of that day at the hotel. Under normal circumstances, 3 days would’ve been perfect.
Accommodations:
Once we arrived in Chiang Rai, we took a Grab to The Palm Garden Hotel, our home for the next 4 days. We found this place on the Agoda app for only $20 a night. It was no 5-star hotel, but for that cheap of a price, we really couldn’t complain. It was nicer than the hotel we paid $45 for in Pai. The room was bigger than expected. We had a mini-fridge, king-sized bed, table, and two chairs. The one negative, two of the nights we had very slow / barely any Wi-Fi. Since we do most of our work in bed at night, uploading a blog, answering emails, posting to Instagram, or planning what we are doing next, it was very annoying not having Wi-Fi. Oh and no Netflix. 🤬

What to do:
We got in late in the afternoon, so the first day after checking in to our hotel, we went to one of the local night markets. On day two we went to a motorbike shop to rent a bike for the next few days. We paid only $18 to rent the bike for a little over 2 days. After testing out the bike, we went right to the immigration office to extend our visas. About an hour later, we were approved to stay for another 30 days. This means we can stay in Thailand for 6 more weeks. We will be posting a blog soon to give more info about how to extend your Visa.
Day three was a tough day Danika woke up sick. Something she ate either had cross-contamination or had gluten in it. So, we took it easy for most of the morning. Once she started feeling better, we took the motorbike out to the Blue Temple. This is the second most popular time to visit in Chiang Rai. As you can imagine it’s entirely blue. After taking some photos and seeing the different statues and temples on the grounds, we went to a food stand that had about twenty people around it to see what they had. The answer is… freshly made coconut ice cream stand. We got two bowls for only $1.25! After leaving the Blue Temple, next on the list was the Baan Dam. This is a museum with uniquely shaped buildings. We left after about an hour because we were soo hungry. We were lucky enough to find a gluten-free pizza restaurant right across the street. The pizza was delicious. They put the fried egg under the cheese 🤯. This sounded a little strange, but we tried it (Danika got no cheese of course), and it was easily an 8.2 out of 10 on the pizza scale.

After falling right to sleep after all that pizza, we woke up the next day at 6:30 so we could get to The White Temple by 8 am when it opened. I’m so glad we got there at 8, yes it was still crowded, but nothing compared to the crowd that comes mid-day. This temple is a lot like the Blue Temple, but as expected, it’s white instead of blue. We wanted to drive to a nearby waterfall but decided the hour-long motorbike ride wouldn’t be worth it. Instead, went to the mall down the street to get lunch. There was a movie theater there, so we decided to see if they had anything in English. We had three movies to pick from, all at the same time. We decided to see Aquaman. It turned out to be a much better movie than we expected. After the movie, we checked out the Saturday Night Market, before heading back to the hotel for our last night of sleep in Chiang Rai.