We drove north through lots of interesting country. Went to some caves, supposed to be the largest in Thailand, they go back 10 km into the highest mountain in Thailand. Very impressive, we had a guide with a lantern so we ended up crawling through tiny openings into huge caverns filled with stalactites. The opening to the caves was a Buddhist temple and inside they had a bunch of shrines also. Temples everywhere!!
We couldn't find a place to stay the first night, we never saw anything that even looked like a hotel or guesthouse and definitely no signs. George went up to a street vendor who spoke no English and down a driveway came a nice young Thai girl who was an English major at the university in Bangkok. Talk about luck, she jumped in the car and took us to a beautiful Thai resort on a river.
Next day onto Chiang Saen and a visit to the Hall of Opium, it was a couple hours of very interesting information on the history of the opium trade. That night we were in the middle of a huge festival, locals from all the surrounding villages come in for music, and to launch hand made floating shrines in the river and burning hot air balloons into the sky. We launched our own good luck balloon and enjoyed some street food along the river.
We picked a guesthouse with a 1 cent mark in Lonely Planet, we learned a lesson. Nice old Lanna style house but nothing worked.
On to Chiang Khong driving through the hills along the Mekong. Stayed in a great little hotel with balconies overlooking the river and arranged to have the car rental place send someone up from Chiang Rai on the bus to pick up our rental car. That night was the peak of the Leon Kruthong festival and it was a wild night with parades and parties going most of the night. Constant fireworks, float launching and ballon launching. They were trying to launch 4,000 balloons that night, we launched a couple balloons and a couple floats. It's supposed to release all your problems and let you start fresh.
Next morning it was off to Lao.