Driving holiday - where to visit in Chiang Rai, Phayao, Nan, Phrae, etc

[Bredbury Blue]

Hi Guys

 

School holidays coming up very soon and after planning on taking the family to Hanoi area the wife through me a curve-ball that she'd quite like to visit the northern areas of  Chiang Rai, Phayao, Nan, Phrae, etc. 

 

We usually (4 of us, including 2 teenagers) take our fortuner and go on driving holidays (such as Mae hong son loop including Chiangmai, Aranyaprathet border to Mekong, Isaan many times, Loei and north of it) but this time we are thinking of flying up from BKK, hiring a car, driving around and flying back.

 

1. So if we want to hire a car, would that be possible from Chiang Rai or better from Chiangmai?

 

2. If we have say 10 days, where/what would you recommend we visit/see? 

 

3. Any route you'd recommend?

 

The wife wants to visit her friends tea plantation in Chiang Rai and i'd like to visit Nan. 27 years ago i visited Thaton, Chiangrai, Mae Sai and i'm ok to visit again if recommended. We like quiet, country, border-towns, stuff like that.

 

So any ideas/recommendations?

 

[Flustered]

Pha Soet hot springs. Down market and not many tourists but a very cheap and enjoyable day relaxing in the hot tubs or pool and a chicken BBQ afterwards. Plenty to see and do in the area around it.

 

And if  you want somewhere nice but cheap to stay, see my mate Willi (owner) at Huen Chan Thip (8.9 Booking.com). You cant go wrong with this place, parking for your car, small swimming pool for the kids, manageress Kung speaks good English and knows just about everything there is to know locally.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Flustered

[ripstanley]

If you are planning for March or April then the smoke haze may ruin your plans

[Bredbury Blue]

I'm hoping that the 'enforced' ban may mean it's not too bad

https://www.asianbreakingnews.net/2017/02/haze-looms-over-chiang-rai-as-burning-continues-despite-60-day-burning-ban/

Edited February 28, 2017 by Bredbury Blue

[Deon Cloete]

I am trying to find out when the summer holidays actually start. Nobody from the school in Klaeng, Rayong....where my two children are attending, can tell us? We have to book flight tickets, but cannot. According to the teachers/head of our school they still dont know when the 2017 summer holidays start. 

 

Can you perhaps assist me in this? Thanks

[Flustered]

Do not know about individual schools but the following may be of assistance.

 

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/thailand/

[Bredbury Blue]

^Have the same problem with my kids school every year. Their school holiday commences this coming Saturday to sometime in early May (no idea of May date).

[ripstanley]

On 2/28/2017 at 9:43 PM, Bredbury Blue said:

I'm hoping that the 'enforced' ban may mean it's not too bad

https://www.asianbreakingnews.net/2017/02/haze-looms-over-chiang-rai-as-burning-continues-despite-60-day-burning-ban/

 

I live near Phayao.  The mountains behind us are today covered by the smoke haze. 

[hakancnx]

- If you want to see rea plantations and mountains, Mae Salong is a must. 

- Phu Chi Faa, also mountain and beautiful scenery.

- A must: The new Opium museum in Chiang Saen = Golden Triangle. 

- Boat from/to Tatoon. 

- Black Temple in Chiang Rai

[joecoolfrog]

I did a very similar trip last year , do include Mae Salong , Nan and Phayao.

I think Chiang Rai town is a mess and nothing much of interest in Phrae once you have seen the teak houses.

[bazza73]

The temple about 5 km past the Doi Chang coffee shop on the main drag between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai - much better than the White Temple and Black House in Chiang Rai. Charin Garden has an awesome collection of cakes for the sweet-tooth. The Garden of Hell in Phayao. Santiburi Golf Club is the best in Northern Thailand. Also the Samoeng loop and San Kamphaeng Hot Springs close to Chiang Mai. Singha Park near Chiang Rai.

 

You can hire a Honda City for 800 baht a day in Chiang Mai. That might not be the car size you want if you drive a Fortuner normally.

 

Oddly, with Air Asia it's cheaper to fly Bangkok -Chiang Rai than Bangkok-Chiang Mai, even though it's 200 km further.

[lychee]

Recently did a motorcycle trip around Phayao Provence. I would recommend drive down thru Chiang Khlang to Pua and over the mountains to Bokhlua. 

It will be hot and hazy but the Bokhlua valley is a gem.

Enjoy your journey.

 

[rijb]

https://www.thailand-business-news.com/tourism/56505-northern-thailand-three-days-chiang-mai-chiang-rai.html

[Bredbury Blue]

Thank you everybody for your advice, contributions, etc. Based on the burning we have been put off visiting. Kanchanaburi, Sangkhlaburi, Pilok, etc, is now likely to our destination at the end of the month. But we expect to visit this Northerner area at a later date.

 

Cheers!

[Spaniel]

Just saw your post so maybe this info is to late.    In Feb wife and I drove from Bangkok to Nan and highly recommend a visit to Nan which would be a easy trip if you fly into Chiang Rai.      In Nan city either the Dhevaraj Hotel or the Nan  Lana Hotel would be good choices,  both within easy walking distance of the main attractions in Nan.    Driving north of Nan (city) visit the Nan Riverside Gallery before you get to Pua.    For a great lunch stop at the Huanam Mushroom Farm ( 081 0051533) near Pua.    They also have rooms.    Boklua is also interesting with its salt processing area and the Boklua View Nan hotel has a great restaurant as well as cabins for rent.

Edited April 6, 2017 by Spaniel
add additional info

[Bredbury Blue]

So in March we planned on going to the north but visited Kanachanaburi province instead but in the October school holidays we finally made our trip to the north.

 

We didn’t really have a plan for the holiday. We had thought of flying up to Chiangmai, hiring a car and driving around the Golden Triangle area and Chiangrai (wife wanted to visit her friends tea plantation) but the day before we were supposed to go we decided to drive north in our car and just see what happens. The kids wanted to go revisit their ex-schoool drum teacher and his see his new private after-school music school in Lomsak (the drum teacher is responsible for getting my kids in to playing music and i blame him for my front room of drum kit, guitar and base guitar), so we decided to go first to visit the nice town of Lomsak at the bottom of the high plateau called Khao Kor (Khao Kho) and stay in the latter which is very nice place. 

 

First day was a long drive, rained all the way which didn't help and we arrived at sunset. We stayed at a hotel the teacher had picked for us for two nights, it was ok but like most hotels in Khao Kor expensive for what you get (the worst hotel on our trip). 

 

For us Khao Kor was very cool – about 20c night time – lots of rain and cloud, some sunshine, but the weather didn’t really affect us. Lomsak was flooded at that time (lots of areas of northern Thailand were flooded). It was our 3rd trip to Lomsak / Khao Kor – it’s a nice area.

 

Visited the teacher (my two kids and the teacher jammed on ‘sunshine of your love’ – we ended up buying a bass guitar from him for our youngest), visited a wind farm and we just drove around the nice hilly area. 

 

We left on our 3rd day to the very small province/city of Uttaradit we’d never been to before. Part of our plan was to visit some of the small off-the-beaten-tracks provinces.Nice drive from Khao kor to Uttradit.  

Lots of flowers out at this time of year, and many are the same as the UK with Khao Kor being a high-up cool area.

 

EVERYWHERE in Thailand was covered in marigolds in honour of deceased King Bhumibol...it looked very beautiful.

 

Khao kor:

 

 

 

[Bredbury Blue]

It was a lovely drive to Uttaradit, nice enough small city, lovely old renovated hotel (very good value) smack in the middle of town but there really weren’t too many sights around the town, so we drove out to the Sirikit Reservoir / Queen Sirikit Dam, an embankment dam on the Nan River, a tributary of the Chao Phraya River. It was nice enough but probably not worth the hour each way journey just to walk on the embankment and look at the water. We stayed at the Seeharaj hotel - very good value, recommend it to you. We found a great cheap restaurant called XL Burgers, which is in a soi right opposite the hotel so very convenient – we later found out after we’d ordered that XL was the size of the huge burgers we ordered (very cheap and tasty, but to big for us to finish). 

 

We decided to try the even smaller Province/City the next day of Phrae which we found to be a very interesting place; we really liked Phrae. Back in the early late 19th century to WW2 Phrae was the centre of the teak trade run by a handful of British companies which had the teak concessions ..the ‘teak wallahs’. Some of the old teak houses we visited (without our kids who decided to stay hotel - hallelujah!) were very lovely and interesting, lovely town. We’d now moved properly in to northern Thailand, slightly different food with a Burmese influence, very nice. Huern na na Boutique Hotel was a good find.

The next day we moved on to a remote province/city of Nan, which borders Laos.

 

Phrae:

 

[Bredbury Blue]

Another nice drive through hills from Phrae to Nan, both ancient Thai kingdoms, Nan being bigger but more remote. Nan turned out to be quite a find as I had been expecting – been trying to get there for years. The city is small, split by the river, we were on the side of the river just outside the City but 5 minutes drive to the centre it’s that small. We did quite a bit of site-seeing in the centre then thre wife noticed a city tour (very unusual for a Thai city) we jumped on which turned out to be a great idea as it went round all the sights and stopped off at a few wats we wouldn't have seen. In the evening we found a cracking restaurant (Huan chao Nang) on the river bank and watched the long boats practicing racing for the upcoming city races. Wiang Kaew hotel was also nice but more of a motel. 
 

Nan:

 

[Bredbury Blue]

The drive from Nan to Chiangrai was probably the best of the journey, especially 30 minutes out of Nan and then for the next hour – reminded me of being on the very twisty roads on the mynmmar border near mae hong son – it was exciting but a bit scarey at the same time – unbelievable that one of my kids slept through the best bit. 

 

We got a brilliant deal on Le Meridien hotel in CR – 53% off – the two adjoining rooms were so comfy ( easily the comfiest bed / pillows ever for me ); the hotel right on the river in a very quiet part of CR was so good so we stayed for 3 days. 

We visited the wife’s friend's tea plantation (one of the main tourist sites in CR), the golden triangle and the opium museum there (the most expensive musuem we’ve visited in thailand  but it's very modern and excellent – the kids learnt a lot), we drove up Doi Tung mountain to the King’s Mother’s villa and gardens and the old temple up there which for the most part we were there was spookily in the clouds (the road to it was a worry, very steep, in the clouds so poor visibility with evidence of very recent landslides).

 

On the way back we had a 12 hr drive so we drove to the hotel we’ve stayed in twice in sukhothai (the one next to Sukhothai airport - lovely hotel; great base to stay for visiting one of my favourite places, Si Satchanalai) the first day and then from there to home the next day.

 

2,500 kms round journey!
 

 

 

[sceadugenga]

Great posts, thanks very much.

[XJ650]

Yes, very interesting and many beautiful photos! Thank you very much. 

 

Here in http://mkcrtour.com you can read more about Chiang Rai and see if you have missed some interesting places that you can visit next time! 

[Randell]

I can only add the I agree with  XJ650 and sceadugenga.  I am certainly glad you had a great trip as your wonderful photos show. well done come again.