[:en]After India, the timing was perfect to join one more time the lovely “Shambhala in your heart festival” in Chiang Dao.
After 2 planes from Goa to Bangkok, a night train From Bangkok to Chiang mai and a short 1 h local bus trip we arrive in Chiang dao.

We arrive 5 days before the festival with the idea that we could help prepare with them and maybe volunteer for the festival.

But who are “them”. The Shambhala festival is mostly organised by Japanese people living in Thailand and Coorganized with Thai people.
They are Hippies and artists, some living in Chiang Mai and others in Pai. But many will come all the way from Japan to attend this 10 days festival of pure calm and good Vibz.

Quickly we realised that they were already many people helping there and they didn’t need that much help.
Even though I made myself available for the entrance booth during the 4 first days of the festival.

It was a great experience shared with my new Japanese gate buddies and also with the other Chinese, French and Israeli volunteers. I couldn’t talk much with them but I had a great time.

Evening time after the live music finished. We would jam some fire with drummers and dijiridoo.

We stayed only 4 days of the 10 days festival because we had to go back to China to prepare our next trip to Bali Indonesia.

But, as it was Chinese new Year, Flight back to Kunming were really overprices. So we chose to make the way by land, and what a way !

Starting the 18th of february from Chiang Dao, we hitch hicked 5 hours to the Golden triangle.
The next morning we jumped in a special boat that runs between Laos and Myanmar toward China.
This boat is now pretty rare as it was closed to tourist the last 3 years because of killings in 2011 in the golden triangle.

For us it went pretty smoothly though
Once at China border, we still had to take a 3 hours local bus, a 12 hours night bus and a 7 hours train ride to make it Back to our home sweet home Dali !

A trip I will hardly forget but I m not sure I will repeat.

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