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Chiang Mai, Thailand
In Chiang Mai we visited a lot of temples and villages. Our guide, a friend of Niramon's whom I apparently met years ago, was named Poon. His last name is far too long for me to pronounce or remember. The first place we went was a Monk School with a shrine by it of course.
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Here we see one shrine/temple (I don't really know the difference). The elephant is a major part of Thailand's history. The building on the left houses a few golden Buddhas. The pagoda on the right marks something. I forget. There was a craftsman making these really cool hammered images of elephants and what not. Liz and Renea bought one and paid like 1,500 Baht for them, which I could not afford. I bought a few later for less than 100 Baht and felt great, only to realize when I get them home they are plaster and then painted.
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These are the authentic ones that are not rip offs. Oh well, such is life. Liz got a really cool one that is round and symmetrical with small elephants on it. The ones I got were small, and fake, but still cool, were they not fake. Argh.
Then we moved on to a Zen like temple in the woods with all these cool Zen sayings scattered everywhere. I usually don't see these Zen sayings around, but they were all over the place here. I snapped a few pictures of them as we went in.
Then we explored the tunnels around the shrine and found a pagoda and more Buddhas and more Zen like sayings. There were also several pictures of women around dogs, I assume men are dogs since all the images involved pleasure sins of some sort.
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Then we loaded back into our transportation for the day, which was a truck type thing owned by the father of Poon, as pictured below, and off we went.
From left to right we have Liz, Ben, and Renea. I am taking the picture and therefore, not in the picture. Plus I am in the witness protection program and cannot be photographed. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that.
From here we went to the King's Winter home. Winter still being 80 degrees, I would think they would come here in the summer when it is too hot in Bangkok, but nope. This was only mildly interesting. Their winter home(s) weren't really all that amazing. Just several nice big places scattered around some hill. Of course there were gardens and tons of pictures of the King himself as well as a sign that said Kids and Thais get in cheaper than foreigners.
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Sadly, as I mentioned before, I have lived in Japan for 16 months and can't recognize the Emperor, but after 9 days in Thailand I can easily identify the King, and even from several different angles and ages. Even his wife. They love their King there, and I think he's more than a figure head. I heard he stopped some riots once by meeting with both warlords. It's actually illegal to disrespect the King. I wouldn't want to anyway, you'd be killed before the cops came.
Later we visited some Hill Tribes, though these were far richer than I wanted to see. I wanted the dirt poor living in the woods type, but these had SUVs and all sorts or other stuff. They were having some festival this day so we stopped by briefly and then headed to another temple.
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| Who is Poppy? | |
Our final temple for the day was the coolest of them all, excluding the Grand Palace. This was on top of a hill that had a sacred 300 steps. I opted to pay the 50 cents to ride the diagonal elevator up there. I filmed a lot of it but no pictures. I took pictures of the shrine temple, but not the elevator. Whatever. I'll just upload one picture since I sure you are getting templed out, like the rest of my group.
After that we went to this really cool, touristy place for dinner. It was a huge outdoor place where you sit on pillows and are served a buffet style dinner while watching a Thai-show. It was pricey for Thailand, coming in at 350 Baht or about $10, but it was well worth it. They would fill up each bowl as it got low. My favorites were the red chilli looking thing on the right and the veggie thing at the bottom left. The pseudo-guacamole dip on tip was tasty as well.
After dinner as we were leaving, they were doing this really cool, and seemingly dangerous, thing in the parking lot. They had big clear bags like the type that are on your clothes after going to the cleaners. At the bottom were big candles. The heat from the candles acted like a hot air balloon and raised them in the air. I mean they went up fast and high. Then we looked in the distance and saw a few dozen way out there. It seemed dangerous, since they might land somewhere and catch something on fire. I guess if they landed either the fire was out or pretty low so maybe it's safe because they are so high.