Thailand 3

Thailand 3 - More Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was really amazing, so it deserves more "air time" in terms of pictures!

One of the highlights of Chiang Mai is its downtown open night market. We got to go twice and had a great time both times! Once was mainly for Claudia to get her Thai silver beads, and Steve basically wandered around a bit while she "haggled" over pricing. The other was to just wander around and take in the various items for sale. Here is a colorful shot of a food stand. Many of the photos of the night market didn't come out well because IT WAS NIGHT! Thus, you will just have to trust us that it was totally cool!

One of the Wats we visited was a drive up the hill behind Chiang Mai - Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep. This is the site that apparently a white elephant had "chosen" to put this particular Buddhist temple by circling 3 times and then dying. The elephant was carrying a piece of Buddha's bones that is the center of this temple. This Wat has a dramatic entrance (shown above) with a huge stairway lined on either side by ornately colored, multi-headed nagas.

Here's another colorful Wat we saw in Chiang Mai.

This is a dramatic structure within Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep. Gold is clearly the chosen color for Buddhist temples! In some temples, you could purchase a little piece of gold leaf (I don't know whether it was REAL gold or not?) and then place the leaf on one of the statues to color it gold. That was not the case with these outdoor sculptures, though. You can see some of the worshipers who circle the structure with their hands clasped, and often they are carrying a single lotus flower.

This was a unique Wat that had mostly open sides and a HUGE ceiling.

At one of the temples we visited, there was going to be a big celebration the day after our visit. You can see in this picture how colorful even things as simple as the awnings for events are in Thailand!

This is one of the ancient temples that was right in downtown Chiang Mai. If you look closely, you can see the plant growth on the outside of the structure.

This is the last Wat we visited in Chiang Mai. It had a large outdoor Buddha (shown behind us) and was up on a hill overlooking Chiang Mai.

So, one of the coolest things about Thailand was of course the food. When we were first eating all that great food, we both thought, "wow, maybe we can better handle REAL Thai food than we thought?" We had always heard how HOT Thai food was in actual Thailand, but when we got food at restaurants, it was hot, but not INSANELY hot! Well, after our last Wat visit, we met up with one of La-orsri & Niwat's friends that lived in Chiang Mai and he took us to a seafood restaurant and ordered up a feast! I guess it turns out that La-orsri was making sure that the cooks didn't add too much chilis to our meals when she would order for us because when this guy ordered, the food was INSANELY HOT! This is a shot of one of their specialties - snakehead fish. It was good, but did I mention that it was HOT??? (note the little dish of chili sauce in case it wasn't HOT enough for ya!)