Friday was a day that had seemed like a good idea while sitting in the Richmond travel agent's office. Yes! A 12 hr trip up to the Golden Triangle! How interesting! What fun! I'd become more and more doubtful as we got closer to the day and came close to pulling the pin on it several times. It seemed like it would be less like a holiday experience and more like a test of endurance and family relations.

It turned out to be one of the most interesting days we'd had and was broken up well by both fun & challenging stops along the way. I can happily report that the whole family seemed to enjoy it, not just me! Our first stop was to an area with natural hot springs and despite the already baking heat we happily sat with our feet in the nearly-unbearably-hot water.

The next visit was to the White Temple in Chiang Rai. This was an unexpected part of our trip and one that I was really happy about as it was on my 'really want to see but can't quite fit it in' list. The White Temple is fairly self-explanatory! It was just such a contrast to all of the other temples we've seen thus far. It is being built by a famous Thai artist and while honouring the country, king and Buddha it had such fantastic comic touches that we couldn't quite manage to reconcile the lofty spiritual intentions. Inside the temple was the only part that was not white and instead we enjoyed looking at a bright & beautifully coloured mural with Kung Fu Panda, Spiderman, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Lightning McQueen and Batman to name but a few.

After another long spell in the van we finally made it to the Golden Triangle, where the Mekong River flows and the borders of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. It was wonderful sailing along the Mekong and looking to Andrew and Emerson with Myanmar behind them and then Milla with Laos beside her. Again unexpectedly, we were able to enter Laos in its special economic zone and therefore not need our passports so long as we didn't stray past the zone. If we'd brought our passports they would have stamped them, so it was a bummer that we didn't have them with us!

During lunch our family disgraced itself again by using the wrong toilets (this time Andrew used the ladies) and he couldn't quite figure out while everyone in the filled-to-capacity restaurant laughed at him when he came out.

We then visited Mae Sai which is the town of the official immigration entry/exit point between Myanmar and Thailand and the northern most point of Thailand. Living in New Zealand where any visit to another country is so obvious because of our location, it was odd just knowing another country was metres away. This won't be odd to anybody who has ever travelled before of course, just us sheltered S-Ds!

After that was our visit to a 'hill tribe'. I had talked about this with the agent in Richmond at length - I knew there would be a touristy aspect but was wanting reassurance that it wouldn't be exploitation. It was the desperate poverty that was difficult to bear and the only thing that made me feel better was that the people in this 'industry' would at least have (hopefully) marginaly more dignity than those involved in the other 'industry' that Thailand is well known for. Not that that made it okay. After the effort I'd put into ensuring such a good cause for the elephants I felt disappointed that I wasn't able to do the same for humans! A lesson for me in the realities of Thai tourism.

The long drive home was marked by possibly the Guinness World Record breaking longest game ever of Would You Rather between me and the kids. For example: if you lost the ability to walk Would You Rather get from A to B for the rest of your life by cartwheeling or by doing the Running Man dance? Would You Rather have to live for the rest of your life with Dad's cooking or Mum's cooking (consensus for both was Running Man and Dad's cooking).

The morning had started at 7.00am and we didn't get back to until around 9:00pm so Saturday has been promised to the kids as a day of swimming and reading. Not that the adults are doing that unwillingly!