Needing a break from recent business Boon and I took a relaxing ride up the River Ping today.
Starting at Lamphun we headed south with no particular destination in mind.
My friend Ally had mentioned that you can go all the way to Chom Tong by Doi Inthanon, but we had left to late in the morning to think too much about that.
Having left at around 11am it wasn’t long before we were on the look out for a lunch stop.
Continuing past the up market looking riverside restaurants close to the Lamphun city moat, we crossed the nearby intersection and took the first left soi that appeared to follow the river.
Straight away we spotted a large Thai restaurant bar and turned in for a riverside lunch.
It turned out to be a slightly surreal lunch as I sat at this very Thai establishment, eating a very good panaeng curry and listening to…John Denver!!!
Taking advantage of their location the restaurant appeared to have its own fisherman, who popped his catches into a holding net in the cafe pond.
As with my recent riverside ride with Ally, it was simply a relaxing ridealong a beautiful waterway and lots of fun doing our best to keep to actual riverside roads, which invloved some guess work at times.
I can report that we only got lost once, ending up in a lam yai field.
After a lot of riding in baking hot sunshine we spotted a large riverside restaurant that looked over the river towards a small Doi that turned out to be Doi Lo.
From our resting point we could see the Chedi of the Temple on the Doi sticking out between the trees.
Starting to get a little fatigued from the heat, we decided to make this our destination, before heading home.
And I am so glad we did. Not that the Temple itself was much to shout about, but the views were fantastic.
The Wats grounds do appear to be under refurbishment and there was a stunningly beautiful Buddha Shrine and imagine that there may be a huge difference in a few months.
We didn’t stay too long as there seemed to be something going on with the local community, possibly a funeral and we felt a little like we were imposing.
Just long enough to get some great shots of the views and the obligatory ‘cute pose’ from a group of local boys who followed us everywhere practising their English.
From Doi Lo we dropped down to the 108, back towards Chiang Mai, crossing over to Lamphun at San Pa Tong, and home for around 5pm.
For more photos from this trip visit our photobucket album here.
