ฤดู ร้อน ของ ฉัน: Journey to the North

As explained in my earlier post, this past Monday+Tuesday was a holiday, allowing us to have a 4 day holiday weekend, in which we ventured off to... Chiang Mai!

After riding an approximately 10 hour bus, which ended up being REALLY nice (a little expensive by Thai standards, but very reasonable for us! It had VERY nice reclinable seats, foot rests, neck pillows, snack + drink service by the bus attendant, movie, air conditioning, and even a stop at a station in the middle of the night, in order to enjoy a MEAL of various veggies, meats, porridge, etc.!) , we arrived in Chiang Mai at 7:30 AM, took a red-truck (more on this later!) to our hotel to drop off our things, and then... go on our tour for the day that picked us up at 8:30 AM!

Although the bus was very nice, we were a bit groggy getting off of the bus, but the excitement of just being in Northern Thailand, with its noticeable abundance of greenery, lack of sky-scrapers, and not to mention... WAY cooler and more maneageable climate, and the fact that we were just about to embark on our tour definitely got our adrenaline running and woke us up for the adventures to come! :)

Day One - Here's where we went on our tour...

1. Orchid Farm! - beautious~

2. Elephant Camp!

Watched the elephants come out onto the river and take a bath~

The elephant trainers would get into the river with the elephants, scrub their backs, climb all over them.. splash water... so cute!

Approximately 1.5 hour roundtrip elephant ride into the jungle to visit a Lisu (very colourful cloths and whatnot!) tribe~

Lunch on the river... which, apparently... was one of the scene shots in 'American Gangster'!! Supposedly a lot of the scenes in this movie were filmed in Chiang Mai, since 1. Bangkok has changed quite a bit since the 60's, and I guess that Chiang Mai looks more like the past Bangkok? and 2. Chiang Mai is in the North, near Chiang Rai (famous for the Golden Triangle!) and still has some opium growers, apparently mainly to continue tribal traditions, which you CAN experience if you spend a night at a tribe... hmmm!!

After having lunch, we then bamboo-rafted down the river, which was definitely very relaxing and just.... surreal. We were seriously just, sitting on these super-FLAT rafts, with a guy standing on either the front or back of the raft, stearing the raft with a POLE. So... I guess it was basically a Thai Gondola (minus the singing, of course!). It was just so nice to just, float so calmly down the river, hear the water, see the GREEN on both sides of the river... perhaps see some cows or elephants on the river bank...

Day Two -

Because we were pretty happy with our tour guide (Wit? Vit?) from

the day before, we took his offer of using the van for the entire day

for 2500 baht total. Vit was a pretty cool guy with really good English

(after apprently having studied abroad in Australia when in college, to

study environmental design!), and was originally from Bangkok, but

decided to come to Chiang Mai +get a tourism degree after basically falling

in love with how much calmer and laid back it is compared to Bangkok,

there!

One interesting thing about Chiang Mai is that it's kind of a city within a

city! The older city portion is basically a square in the center of every-

thing, and is surrounded by a moat, which (in the ancient days) used to be

accompanied by brick walls, some of which still remain, but mostly in ruin

form! Sky scrapers are apparently not allowed to be built within the

Ancient City area, and the more modern parts of the city just kind of

spread outwards from that.

Wat Chedi Luang - one of the bigger temples within the old city walls, having the biggest 'stupa'

This was apparently the temple that used to house the Emerald Buddha, and after being discovered there (hidden within the temple, due to all of the tensions between Burma [Myanmar] and Thailand), was taken to the Grand Palace of Bangkok.

And... there's some noticeable Hindu influence, here, too! :)

Wat Suan Dok - apparently used to be the gardens of the royal family, ) and..the Chiang Mai king decided to make a temple in his garden. The grounds contain a ton of white jedees housing the ashes of the old Chiang Mai royal family.

Lunch! - Khao Soi, which is a Northern Thai dish of egg noodles with coconut curry over it, with toppings of pickled veggies and onions! And of course, chili flakes, vinegar, and sugar if necessary... :P

Haha... just thought this was cute and random :)

Doi Suthep - probably the most famous of temples of Chiang Mai, which is actually located on a NW mountainside about 30 minutes away (windy and uphill!) from Chiang Mai city. Apparently a white elephant carrying Buddha's relic (bone?) was on a journey, and died right at the location of this temple, which.... is why the temple was created, here?

So, there's approximately 8-9 different Buddha figurines, representing the different days of the week, which correspond to some actions/events that Buddha took on his way to Enlightenment! So, people usually give donations to the temple, in particular to whichever Buddha figurine corresponds to what day they were born on!

Maybe you should check what day you were born on??

For example, this is Friday - where I think he's collecting alms?

And.. I was born on a Tuesday, which is of Buddha lying down on his right side. If I understood correctly, it means that even when Buddha is asleep, he is not completely asleep, since he is meditating/pensive at ALL times..