Huay Tung Tao Lake, Thailand. Then and now

After my trip to Bangkok last year, hubby joined me for a few days up north to Chiang Mai. On one of those days, I met up with a few other Steemians Hivers, and we went for lunch out of town. Actually I had no idea where I went as it was organised by @helgalubevi who was staying in Chiang Mai at that time. I only managed to find out the location as @waybeyondpadthai, the only local present posted about it last year. It's not easy to find a post on Hive, yet it only took me one minute to find it. Scroll down to the end if you want to know how I did it.

SONGTHAEW TRUCK

Back to lunch. The place is called Huay Tung Tao Lake about half an hour away from Chiang Mai city. There was about 8 or 9 of us so @helgalubevi got a songthaew truck to take us there. These truck have two benchs on either side and sits around 10 -12 people, it was perfect for us. This is what it looks like from the inside, don't worry about health and safety, you won't fall out if you sit down 😀

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HUAY TUNG TAO LAKE

Huay Tung Tao Lake is a man made reservoir and you can swim, fish, or even ride a pedal boat there. But what we, or at least I found most fascinating are the bamboo huts dotted along the side of the lake. They look so beautiful and and the whole place was so peaceful. It was also quite quiet for a Saturday. Not sure why as I thought such a nice place would get more visitors, especially its pretty near to the city. Perhaps the locals don't like to be out in the heat, and it's only us tourist who don't mind.

Each of these huts are built on stilts and have a short gangway leading into it. They're pretty close to each other, but because they're quite big, you don't feel like you're close to your neighbouring hut. They use a low table and everyone sits on the floor, so it's shoes off for everyone.

After wandering around for a while and taking a bunch of videos and photos (yes, that's what happens when you dine with a bunch of bloggers) we choose a hut. It seems each batch of huts belong to a different restaurant, though I couldn't see any signs or anything. They all looked indifferent.

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THE VIEW AT LUNCH

And look at the view from the hut, looking out into the lake. All the huts have pretty much the same view as they all face towards the lake. That's really something, right?

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FOOD

Who doesn't love yummy Thai food? None of us!

As soon as we sat down, someone appeared out of nowhere with a menu. I looked around and couldn't see a building that looked remotely like a kitchen. Sometimes, it's best not to think about how and where your food is cooked, and concentrate on the food in front of you. We each choose a dish off the menu and ended up with an interesting selection on the table, shared of course in the typical Asian way.

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THEN AND NOW

It's been an interesting year since. Who would have thought we are where we are now?

There was a good mix of people at lunch, Thai, Brazilian, German, Philippines, American, and myself from UK/Taiwan. For most of us, we only met each other for the first time a few days before, yet it felt like we knew each other so well from the chain. Since then, the chain has changed, another thing that no one saw coming. Thankfully it has changed for the better. Most of those present have come over, but maybe they're still on the old chain. Who knows, and who cares? Not me for one. Others have taken a slightly different path or gone dormant. That's all part of life. People come and go in your life, yet life still moves on.

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HOW TO QUICKLY FIND A POST ON HIVE

Have you ever tried to find a post on Hive, either your own or someone else's and find it takes you ages to scroll down the blog? Frustrating right? The good news is, if you do travel posts and pin them on Pinmapple https://pinmapple.com/, it only takes you a minute, or even less to find a post.

When you first go into Pinmapple you'll see the screen on the left, eleven thousand pins. You'd be thinking how are you ever going to find anything? Actually, that's not all the pins, it's only what's been curated. The full map has fifty five thousand pins and that's what it looks like on the right. Impossible to find anything, right?

Not really, because you can filter the pins by clicking on the Filter the map button. If you know the author name, enter it in the top box, and you'll see the pins have reduced by a lot.

Then you can scroll around the map to find what you're looking for. In my case I scrolled into Chiang Mai and quickly found the post. It took me less than a minute. I wish finding all posts on Hive was this easy.

You can checkout all my travel post on the Pinmapple here or click on Mr Pinmapple below