About 10km out of the old city lies a well-known man-made lake called Huay Tung Tao. It's where you'll find groups of Thais sharing large platters of steamed fish and drinking beers on a sunny afternoon, and goldendoodles plopping in the water to cool off, and fully-clothed Thai children doing the same. It's a lovely place to watch the world pass by, even if that world only consists of a crisp mountain view over an enormous lake.

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It's 20 Baht to get in the park, and you drive to any side of the lake you choose. You can hire pedal boats and tubes, and the menu offers the usual Thai fare, although it is a little pricier than usual. You can bring your own beers and food although you'll have to pay 500 Baht to use the table. We have never swum there, as we've heard rumours about lake-snakes and other creepy-crawlies, and usually get a bit distracted by our ice-cold beers, dancing shrimp, and great conversation.

Here are my photos from various outings to the lake:

Late afternoon skies.

The setting sun.

Some of the other huts.

A view of the lake and mountain from our eating-spot.

Myself, my boyfriend, and our dog for the day.

Serious Teacher Martin and Playful Teacher Matt.

Some gorgeous girlfriends.

A friend squeezing water from her skirt, and fire-smoke in the background.

One weekend near the end of 2012, my boyfriend and I grew restless (as we often do in the city) and decided to take an aimless drive to see if we could get lost in some nature. In a place like Chiang Mai, that's very easy to do, and before we knew it, we were winding through breezy roads around Doi Saket, where we found a little waterfall in the jungle, a temple near the mountain, and a sprawling scene of fields just as the sun started sinking.

Here are the photos from our day-trip through Doi Saket: 

Welcome to Doi Saket.

The road up to the temple.

Wat Phra Tat in Doi Saket.

Mae Sai is a town with a bridge crossing into Burma from Thailand. It's a place people go to extend their tourist visas. Locals there sell lots of fruit wine and the other usual Thai thingy-ma-bobs. And that's really all that can be said about the town of Mae Sai.

The actual town of Mae Sai is not the interesting part about this trip. As a traveller you might have to make a visa run now and then, and many stories are less than encouraging. My own experiences with visa runs have left me running back to my temporary city of Chiang Mai. But the trip to Mae Sai can be made into a great little adventure. Here's what you'll need in your imaginary adventure bag:

• A vehicle - preferably a hired 110cc scooter, so that you can experience all that lovely plastic rattling and coughing while you drive at 80km along the highway.
• A passenger - this has to be someone who doesn't complain about having a sore backside, or not having toilet stops for several hours.
• Toilet roll - for when you actually do find a bathroom.
• A towel - you can sit on this to ease your sore backside, and use it to dry you off after splashing about in rivers along the way.
• Sunscreen - the amount of times humans have ended up looking like lobsters because they "forgot the sunscreen" must be astronomical.
• Clothes - I would recommend two shirts and a pair of pants for the more brutish of our species, and a sundress, bikini, lingerie, tank top, shorts, jersey, t-shirt, jeans, high heels and make-up, all in a Louis Vitton bag, for the more sensible of our species. Not! Go as minimal as possible - you're the one who has to lug it around everywhere you go. Plus you're weighing down that 110cc scooter.
• Camera - and the charger.
• Mosquito spray - you think you know all about mosquitoes? Welcome to the world's most incomprehensibly mean mosquitoes. I think they lacked love growing up.
• A bad sense of direction - this talent proves to be invaluable when you find yourself parked at the top of a mountain exclaiming, "I've found the top of the world!"
• An easygoing nature - you're about to eat at places on the side of the road that will put all sorts of creatures on your plate, and you're about to stay at places where the ceiling drips brown goo - into your eye. You're probably also about to drink all night in a dodgy little bar when it's election weekend, and therefore drinking is temporarily banned. On top of that, you're going to come across hundreds of people trying to sell you all the same touristy junk they try and sell you in Chiang Mai. And because you forgot the sunscreen, you're going to be horribly grumpy and sunburnt. All in all, you've got to have taken a massive dose of chill pills when you were a teenager, and they're still busy working their way through your system now. Mai bpen rai, no worries, hakuna matata.

Enjoy the (many) photos from our trip to Mae Sai:

Wat Rong Khun, aka The White Temple, in Chiang Rai. 

There's a mountain I can see from the roof of my apartment building. Sometimes it looks grey, washed out, and rain clouds cloak it with their misty pillows. Sometimes it looks dark and moody, while the sky blares orange behind its back. During the smog season, it's barely visible (we'll get to that later). Mostly it just looks like a big old mountain with bits of city scattered in front of it.

Once in a while, I'll take the trip up the mountain on my bike, and these are the sights I'll usually see:

A great place to get hollered at by people trying to sell you things.