Today we enjoyed coffee in the garden of the hotel chatting to the owner. He was explaining some of the local attractions. The elephant sanctuary was 30km away, the wat on top of the mountains was also about 30km away and the national park was also pretty far away. Lampang is definitely in a good spot for out of town excursions.
We decided to go into the more commercial district of Lampang to see what we could find. We wanted to change some of our older looking US dollars to brand new, crispy shiny ones with 'no folds, no marks and no wrinkles'. Why? In Myanmar, our next stop, they are very fussy and don't accept anything other than ''brand new, crispy shiny ones with no folds, no marks and no wrinkles!' After several banks and a money exchange we only found new 100 US dollar notes and we were a little nervous about getting a note of such high value because that is probably hard to change too!
We gave up as lunch was calling. A small restaurant full of people caught our eye. We ordered a fairly standard Thai meal off the menu with the usual sticky rice but once we had finished it we became interested in what everyone else had. We decided to try some ...
First we tried something wrapped in banana leaves that was on the BBQ. We thought it was rice but were told no, it is pigs brain. It sounds terrible but was actually quite nice. Next we tried a huge sausage filled with Thai herbs and spices. It was absolutely delicious. We washed it all down before settling the bill and hiding in our room, out of the afternoon sun.
We did some research on Japanese transport options with intermittent coffee breaks followed by the really interesting job of reading up on border formalities. Before we knew it, it was evening and starting to get dark. When the sun sets that means it must be time to eat!
We had investigated a really cute restaurant yesterday that sold food at street food prices. We decided to give it a try. Wow, we were not disappointed. It was a really funky place. There was great music playing, no free tables and a great atmosphere. All this and the food was excellent too. We think its claim to fame may be a 1 BAHT dish of rice soup. That is around 2p!
We left feeling pretty happy and treated ourselves to a bag of local caramel rice crackers. We also spotted a night market selling fruit and veg. On one of the stalls we spotted hot soya milk. We were just about to part with our money when we got a whiff of ginger. The stall holder gave us a taste of a syrupy ginger drink she had in the next pot. We were sold!
We were looking for bananas for breakfast but all of the ones we found were green. We decided to go for a fresh pineapple instead. The lady selling it chopped the pineapple up with a razor sharp knife and it smelled so sweet. We are certainly looking forward to eating it for breakfast tomorrow!
Bed ...
