Mel and Matt on the Move

Rounding out our northern Thailand chapter, Matt and I ventured next to Chiang Rai , a provincial capital with a population of about 70,000 known for its eccentric temples and quintessential Lanna tradition. Though Chiang Rai often serves as a launching point for further outdoorsy tourist experiences, we spent just two days in the city itself, bopping around local top sights before returning to Chiang Mai for our flight to Vietnam. Our shuttle from Pai to Chiang Rai included a 30-minute stop at Wat Rong Khun , or the White Temple, located on the outskirts of town. To be quite honest, a single picture of the White Temple in the Lonely Planet guidebook is what convinced me to add Chiang Rai to our itinerary in the first place. The most popular attraction in the city, the White Temple is actually a privately-owned contemporary art installation that opened to visitors in just 1997. The artist’s modern take on Buddhism was a refreshing and fascinating departure from the more historical...

Hello, dutiful readers of Mel and Matt on the Move. As part of the Faustian bargain undertaken to relieve me of any responsibilities for room and travel bookings, I’m here to provide some guest commentary on my two weeks joining the Levines in Southeast Asia. Melanie nailed down a lot of the nuts and bolts of the trip in previous posts. So, I will instead use this space to break with the format, and offer a culinary ranking of our five stops in Thailand. I’m realizing now I perhaps should have taken even a single picture of the meals I ate, but that would’ve required forethought, and so there will be no photos. Number 5: Krabi Krabi comes in last, largely through no fault of its own. One can only eat so much of a cuisine, even a very good one, before they develop a sort of cabin fever. For me, that fever set in in our second to last stop of the trip. Part of this is due to eating many of our meals at the restaurants within our resort. There, even the Thai food...