My December – White Temple Day

Where I went:

How it felt:

Mostly blindingly bright. Partially embarrassing. Also involved some delicious food (as usual.)

Welcome to the White Temple

On our first full day in Chiang Rai, Gianpiero and I decided to go find the glittering white building we’d seen on the bus on the way into Chiang Rai. We found out from the friendly staff at Akha River House that it was called the “White Temple”.  I suddenly heard the voice of my coworker, Sakinah: “Grace. If you go to Chiang Rai, you must must see the White Temple.”

In the morning we met at the big table by the river for breakfasts of our choice (yogurt and muesli for GP, rice porridge for me.) It was so! cold! I had trouble sleeping the night before because it must have been less than 10°C  and I was pitifully unprepared for anything lower than 18°C. In the wee hours I had to get up and  jump  around in my room to warm up, put on every single article of clothing I had packed (a pair of thin cotton pants, three t-shirts, a thin cardigan, a sarong, and a blessed, blessed thick pair of hiking socks,) and then cocoon myself tightly in the blankets which I had folded in half to double them.

When I left my room to brush my teeth I could see my breath! This is Thailand!

Our planned early departure was delayed because we started talking to Nika who was also staying at the River House. Nika is a New Yorker who’s been living in Thailand for a while now, although it seems she’s been living pretty much everywhere else too (lucky!) She had been up the mountain to stay with the Akha tribe and couldn’t say enough great things about the place. Also she’s just wildly interesting. Seriously, the stories this woman tells!

By 10:30 we were streaking south down the highway, sun already high in the clear winter sky, my sarong whipping and snapping behind us, feeling secure above our full tank of gas.  Not only was the weather warming up, but I got to play navigatrix.  (I had three different maps and consulted them frequently with great difficultly due to the wind. I love being navigatrix.) Really, there aren’t many feelings nicer than riding on the back of a motorbike on a sunny Southeast Asian day.

Thirty minutes outside of Chiang Rai Gianpiero started asking me if I was sure we were on the right track. Yes, of course we are. There’s no way we could have made a wrong turn because there were no turns. Forty minutes outside of Chiang Rai he insisted we pull over and find out where we were. There were no signs, no towns, just a few buildings on either side of the highway, so I had to approach a man near his truck.

“<Sorry! Hello!>” I brandished the wind-crumpled map with my shiniest hapless tourist smile. “Uh…Wat Rong Khun?”
“Aaaaah!” his face broke into a huge smile. He pointed west with the universal sound/gesture that means undoubtably “really really really far away.”

I returned to Gianpiero sitting all cool and collected on the motorbike with low-hanging head. I had failed.  I was so embarrassed. Gianpiero sportingly teased me for the rest of our time in Thailand but was kind enough not to look too smug.

We have arrived!

An hour later, we pulled into a gravel lot across from the glittering Wat Rong Khun. It was even whiter and sparklier up close, mainly because the temple was surrounded by a shallow pond which not only reflected the temple, but reflected the sun onto the temple’s mirrored tiles. And it wasn’t only punishingly bright to look at; the grounds were covered in momento mori and graphic depictions of Buddhist hell.

Your head will be used as a planter!

This guy will take you out.

I'm not sure what's happening here, but it looks uncomfortable.

Everything was ceramic-white and/or painted with a pearly, opalescent paint and/or inlayed with mirrored tiles. The architecture itself is very Thai — delicate swooping roofs and ornate curlicues attached to everything.

Ornate.

If cigarette smoke looked like this ...

Two different roof silhouettes.

Monks walking into the koi pond building. This building was the pearliest of all.

The temple itself was really interesting. The interior was almost bereft of the usual fancy accoutrements of a temple, but the entire back wall was painted with the strangest mural I could imagine in a holy place.  The mural depicted a few demons of in huge dimensions overlaid by a post-apocalyptic landscape and everywhere in this flaming hellhole were popculture icons. Seriously. You can spot everyone from Doraemon to Superman to Darth Vader to Keanu Reeves of as Neo in The Matrix (although I approve of Keanu being in a place of worship.) Photography is not allowed inside the temple, so you’ll have to use your imaginations.

The temple won’t be completed for a few decades, but there are lots of things to see in the meantime.  The designer of the temple even hangs around and autographs pamphlets. He seems to be some sort of Thai celebrity. Some of his other works are displayed in another building and visitors can buy prints. His paintings are mostly pretty trippy in a new-age Thai kind of way. I’m sure they’re very popular with tourists.

The temple from behind.

The side of the temple.

It was a strange place to visit. On one hand, it’s a major tourist attraction equipped with a few restaurants, a cafe, and a few gift shops; on the other hand, it was a peaceful place of worship. On one hand, Westerners jabbering with delighted surprise at Keanu Reeves; on the other hand, an immensely old monk sitting deathly still in the centre of the temple. On one hand, entire clans of be(sun)spectacled, camera-slinging tourists frantically trying to organize group photos; on the other hand, the tourist clans bowing to pray.

It kind of reminded me of the Philippines where the precious town cathedral’s altar revered by all  also doubles as a stray dog rendezvous point. It’s something Alice and I talked about a lot in Korea; maybe Asians aren’t as picky about separating realms of their lives as Westerners. We noticed that Korean teachers were interacted with their students in ways that we sometimes found shockingly intimate.  I think especially North Americans tend to compartmentalize our lives. Thoughts?

I'm posting this extremely unflattering picture to illustrate the dichotomy of "heavenly" and "dirty backpacker".

After a quick lunch at one of the restaurants, we went back to Chiang Rai (I navigated perfectly this time.) We had planned to go up to the Akha Mountain House but turned out we didn’t have enough time because we were both going to Bangkok in two days.

I spent the afternoon wandering the wats of the city (many.) I encountered lots of other interesting things: a high school marching band with gorgeous brand new silver-plated instruments, parks filled with exercise clothing-clad ladies doing energetic dance aerobics, local people lined up to buy coats and sweaters. Turns out it was a freak cold front and I wasn’t the only one caught unprepared.

At night, I rejoined GP and we went back to the foodcourt and ordered the clay hotpot. Gianpiero was really excited about it.

Et voila!

NOM NOM NOM

We ate this!

We ate two servings of beef, a serving of chicken, and I think we tried a serving of pork. The beef was best. Both being huge food nerds, we created competition of who could make the most delicious soup using the raw ingredients we were given. Competition was fierce especially because I had to prove myself a competent person after the navigating fiasco of the morning. We each won once.

People. Chilling.

After dinner we wandered lazily around the night market, idly eyeing goods. It was getting cold again, so I bought a hideous $3 sweatshirt that says hilarious things about fruit in amazing Engrish that deserves its own post. We wanted sticky rice with mango, but none was to be found. Instead we found a lady selling dango with different toppings and I had the pleasure of initiating another friend into the mysterious world of rice cakes. Yummmmmm!

We went back to the hotel and I asked for two extra blankets. I slept cozy and warm in my socks, sweatshirt, and smothered in blankets.

My December – Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai

Where I went:

View Larger Map

How it felt:

***Yet again, all photos in this post are from Gianpiero. Thank you, Gianpiero!***

I had missed carefree travel so much. I didn’t fully realize how much I missed it until the morning of my third day in Chiang Mai.

I woke in my green bed. I stretched. I decided I was still full. I stretched again then I got dressed and went downstairs. A pyjama-clad Nine gave me a cup of coffee. The dog came over and sat beside my leg. I scratched his head and he wagged his tail.

I wandered into the city and realized that I was cold for the first time in a long time – over six months! I wrapped my shawl around me tighter and walked a little faster. I didn’t stop walking for 2 hours except once to buy some handmade mulberry paper for a certain mulberry paper-lover. It was 8:30 when I got back to the Green Tulip. The dog was chasing pigeons on the sidewalk.

I met a man named Max on the stairs who I had talked to briefly the day before. He is a folk artist/geologist/mountaineer and has been … everywhere. It’s a surprisingly happy thing for me to meet someone who has been to your hometown while you’re travelling thousands of kilometres away from that hometown. Not only had he been to my humble London, Ontario, but he’d been to Labrador of all places, and the Yukon. Not to mention hiking the scariest peaks of South America alone to have conversations with the hardy and hospitable people of those mountains. He was in Chiang Mai getting dental implants. Lord. Max gets up early to follow the monks around on their pre-dawn city walk. He watches them watching the city.

I put all my belongings into my backpack and came downstairs again. Gianpiero was sitting at a table with coffee and a guide book. We had decided to travel to Chiang Rai together to see what there was to see. We said goodbye to Nine, Stella, the dog, and the boy who made the coffee and crawled into a truck taxi to go to the bus station.

Buses from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai run every hour or so through a number of bus companies and tickets cost a couple dollars. There are two bus terminals, and the company we chose was leaving through the newer one. We killed the 45 minutes before our bus by buying snacky foods for the 3 hour trip. I got fried dried banana chips; GP bought sesame snaps.

The bus was air conditioned,comfortable, and quiet. Across the aisle from us, a small boy of 5 or so grinned at me fearlessly from behind his sleeping mother. We began a game of peek-a-boo in earnest. He positively squealed with joy every time I hid or reappeared until his mother woke up and gave him a smack for being so noisy. He just giggled and hugged her and tried to engage her in the game too. What a sweet kid. I pretended to sleep so as not to get him in more trouble.

Bus

We had a pit stop halfway to Chiang Mai. The small boy from the bus saw me as I was waiting for a toilet stall and actually ran to me and pressed his face into my pant leg. Everyone in the washroom laughed, including his mother.

Just before we got into the city, we saw a glitteringly white building. “What is that?” we exclaimed. “We need to get to that!”

After a short while of indecision and hot wandering in the city, we finally got ourselves rooms at the Akha River House. It’s about a km north of the city centre (totally walkable) which means it’s also far from the (pretty disgusting) backpacker digs. Apparently there are some decent places to stay right in the city, but the ones that still had rooms were so gross that even my past super-cheap-Euro-trip incarnation would’ve passed up on them.

The River House, though, was lovely and had large grounds by the river. I got a double room with shared bathroom for 200B  a night and GP paid a little more for a private bathroom. Almost all the employees are Akha – a distinct ethnic group of Northern Thailand – and full of interesting conversation. They had a wide variety of breakfast food too including my favourite: rice porridge Thai-style with lots of garlic and vegetables. And coffee! At night, they built a fire by the river to stave off the terrible, terrible cold. It dropped to around 6°C in the nights, a temperature for which I was unprepared.

After settling in, GP and I rented a motorbike. After seeing that glitteringly white wat on the bus this conversation ensued:
“…Gianpiero?”
“Yes?”
“Can you drive a motorbike?”
“…Yes.”
“Great! Let’s rent a motorbike!”
“…Ok.”
Hooray for Gianpiero! I can’t really drive  a motorbike myself; at least, not with any degree of trust. I declared my role: navigatrix.

We scooted into town and parked near the nasty dorms we had seen earlier, ate a gross meal at one of the super-touristy restaurants along the road out of desperate hunger, and walked to Chiang Rai’s Wat Chet Yot.

Wat Chet Yao's guardian handrail dragon says: BLAAAAAARRRREEGHHHH!

There was a large white stupa behind the main temple where two sets of stairs lead to the top. I’d never been on top of a stupa before and rushed forward only to have my way blocked by a terrible sign: “NO WOMAN UPSTAIRS”

Curses!

Fortunately, GP is a dude, and he went up and took pictures of what he saw:

The lion-dragon has something against womankind maybe.

They want to keep lovely sunset views from the ladies?

We then went back to the bus station area where every night there is an extensive night market.We tried some “Chiang Rai coffee” (which turned out to be Chiang Mai coffee) at a guidebook-recommended coffee shop. Honestly the coffee at the Green Tulip is better – but I recognise that I’m laughably enamoured with the place and so am biased.

The night market seems to be divided: a part for tourists; and a part for locals. The goods are mostly for the tourists: “silver” jewelry, hill tribe headdresses, wooden carvings, etc. There’s also an ornate stage by some expensive tourist-directed restaurants where cover musicians playing Thai instruments sing nightly.

I got them mad Akha styyyylllllezzz

Far more interestingly, in my opinion, is the yellow-seated food court further east of the bus station. I think I ended up there all three nights of my Chiang Rai stay and each time it was abuzz and busy with mostly locals.  That first night, we sat down in front of the stage in the food court watching some cute young Thais dancing Thai dances.

The locals part of the night market selling yarn for knitting hats and scarves. (It was truly cold.)

Gianpiero noticed that many people around us were gathered around clay pots over coals and were busily stirring and adding food. He wanted a picture but didn’t want to bother any of the people. No problem! I grabbed his camera and approached the lady sitting alone with a clay pot directly in front of us.

I knew three phrases in Thai at this point: “thank you”, “sorry”, “hello.” I also knew that women generally end sentences with ka while men end sentences in khrap. I smiled at the lady in an apologetically friendly way and said in Thai:

“Hello ka. Sorry ka,” then brandishing Gianpiero’s camera, I mimed taking a picture and pointed at the clay pot steaming merrily over the coals. She nodded happily and smiled back at me with double my smile power (Thais really know how to smile.) I took a few pictures then used my third phrase, “Thank you ka!” and returned triumphantly to our table.

Behold! My spoils!

Five minutes later, three young women joined the lady who seemed to tell them what had just happened. They all laughed, then went and got two more bowls and insisted that we join them at their meal. Yes, please!

I was so so so delighted. The clay pot turned out to be hot pot and was filled with delicious spicy meat broth to which our new friends added some vegetables, and various types of meat. Using their limited English vocabularies, phone dictionaries, and charades, we were able to learn more about each other. The younger women were sisters, and the older woman was their neighbour — all are Chiang Rai natives. The youngest was the most enthusiastic about trying English and the two of us had a loud and merry game of “point to an object and say it in your language and then the other tries to imitate the word.”  We are now facebook friends (obvi.)

"Eat more, eat more!"

As the night wore on, and their bottle of whiskey emptied (those women drink!) the one who was introduced to me as “Elephant” fetched more food court dishes including a big plate of fried silkworm larva. Oh silkworms larvae, you bring me back to my Korean days and the deceptively nice-smelling stewed silkworms (번데기) they sold in ice cream cones along the street. I always liked the smell, but never had the guts to try them alone (Alice refused to touch them. Maybe it had something to do with a 번데기-auntie stewing them right under her window so that her entire apartment was often filled with silkworm-smell in the cold months.) These were fried though, and admittedly looked pretty tasty.

Eenie-meenie-minie mo...

I choose you, silkworm larva!

They were good! Kind of nutty-tasting (as well as oily...)

We left the ladies to their whiskey and insects. They refused any offers of monetary contribution to the meal which made me vow — in a moment of full bellied warm-fuzzies — to pass the favour on to tourists in my own city of residence (wherever that may be) someday.

 

BONUS PICTURE: sweet and crispy egg pancakes spread with sugary egg cream and topped with shredded egg yolk. “Would you like some egg on your egg and egg?”

Any extra egg?

 

My December – Siam Rice of Chiang Mai

Where I went:

How it felt:

…I didn’t eat again for 24 hours.

An accurate depiction of how it felt. (Clockwise from the shallots: cilantro root, Thai garlic, ginseng, kafir lime peel, lemongrass, turmeric, galangal, and fish paste in the centre.)

Chiang Mai Day Two

***All photos in this post are by the heroic Gianpiero. Thank you, GP!!***

I ate breakfast. What a huge mistake.

Stephanie, Gianpiero, and I paid our “discount price” to Nine and piled into a truck-taxi where we met a couple from the UK who were on a honeymoon sort of trip around the world.  They had roadtripped across America and got married in Vegas. So badass. We were shortly thereafter joined by four Utah natives (3 sisters and a husband) also staying at the Green Tulip. We were all giddy with the promise of cooking and eating delicious food all day long. Once we were all in, the truck drove us to a wet market, much like the one Gianpiero and I had visited the day before.

To market, to market, to buy a fat ... bunch of lemongrass?

At the market, an adorable Thai lady gave us the low-down on Thai ingredients and taught us how to choose good specimens for cooking. A lot of the ingredients are the same as Cambodian cuisine. I did a cooking class in Phnom Pehn back in June, so I looked smart because I could name many ingredients. My favourites: kafir lime leaf, cilantro root, baby thai eggplant, and lemon basil (mmmm…)

She let us wander around the market for a while, and Stephanie noted that there was a shockingly large amount of pork crackly. Maybe Chiang Mai Mueng is famous for pork crackly? It smelled so! good!

CRACKLE! CRACKLE! PORK CRACKLE!

Apparently, Gianpiero spent this time taking lots of pictures of delicious produce some of which I will now share with you. Don’t salivate too hard, dear readers.

Typiecal Thai ingredients.

Another type of eggplant. They look like grapes, eh?

These are actually called ear mushrooms. Still salivating? (You should be.)

Beautiful!

Gorgeous: purple and white eggplants, and on the left from the top: a type of bitter gourd, ocra, and MYSTERY!

Turmeric, ginseng, and galangal.

Mmmmm!!! Kafir lime leaf and lemongrass. Yes yes yes!

For my carnivorous friends: sausage. Want.

On our way out of the market we saw a white dog with blue pen eyebrows drawn on its face. Apparently it’s “a thing”.  It surprised and delighted me.

We drove about half an hour out of the city into the lovely, sunny countryside where the cooking school is located. We were met by jolly Nancy who was both hilarious and really good at making delicious food. Secret Nancy tip of the day: “move your body!” Apparently, stirring is not effective stirring unless your hips are also gyrating.

She gave us beverages, and let us choose 7 dishes each to learn to make including a soup, an appetizer, a noodle dish, a stir fry dish, curry paste, a curry, and a dessert.  I chose to make spicy basil soup, papaya salad (som tam), drunken noodles (pad khee mao, no alcohol involved,) cashew nut chicken (kai pat med ma maung),  penang/phanang curry, and sticky rice with young coconut. *eyes roll back in bliss*

Nancy's capable hands and delicious ingredients.

Ingredients for different curries. (Mine had peanuts!)

We went out to a table outside with wooden chopping boards and cleavers covered with tiny dishes of different ingredients while Nancy managed to teach us all (with all our different dishes) at the same time. Just beside the table was a set of gas stoves and woks, each with a set of glass jars filled with salt, palm sugar, palm oil, and fish sauce. We made one or two dishes at a time, then went back into the house to eat. Repeat. We became fuller and lazier as the day wore on.

Green curry: final product.

The curry paste involved a lot of manual labour. We had to manually pound the ingredients into a fine paste using a mortar and pestle. It took the better part of half an hour. It was really satisfying but there may have been longing talk of food processors.

Freshly pounded green curry paste with other ingredients going into the curry.

Nancy teaching us the stir fry dishes. See how attentive I am?

The best part was eating and getting to try everyone’s dishes. Particularly good: GP’s coconut chicken soup (omg), Stephanie’s red curry with pineapple (srsly), and all desserts. I could only manage to eat a single half-forkful of my som tam because we made appetizers last and I was just ridiculously full.

The papaya salad no one could bear to eat.

Sticky rice with mango *dies*

The famous coconut chicken soup with ... something else.

Before the last few dishes, we were led to a little gazebo-type structure where adorable lady from the market handed us each a chunk of carrot and informed us that she would be instructing us in the ancient Thai art of vegetable carving. We lolled about agreeably, everyone too full to do much else.

Step one: cut a circle into the centre of your carrot, 1cm in diameter. We went to it with all the lazy determination of a toddler: tongues sticking out the sides of mouths, self-deprecating humour all around. Stephanie turned to me, “I think I made my circle too big.” It was … almost the entire carrot in diameter. She decided to start again and picked up one of two extra carrot chunks.

Step two: cut 8 radiating lines from the centre of your carrot. Stephanie turns to me again, “I think I did it again.” The circle was even bigger this time. She picked up the last carrot chunk.

Step three: cut the petals around the radiating lines to form a flower. Adorable lady (whose name means “banana” in Thai – SO CUTE!) showed us her finished product. It was beautiful. We looked at our crooked and hideous carrot flowers in glee. Stephanie finished her flower.

Stephanie's try one, two, and three next to Banana's work of art. We were almost peeing with laughter.

The groups' carrots. Mine is top left. So proud. (It's really HARD TO DO!)

After trying to eat our appetizers, Nancy printed off a little cooking class certificate and gave each of us a cook book.

We win at cooking! Front R-L: Anna of UK, GP, Kelly from Utah, her two sisters, Nancy Back R-L: Kelly's husband, me, Stephanie, Richard of UK

 

BONUS FOOD PHOTOS: 

Dessert from the walking market the day before. Trust me, I didn’t eat again until noon the next day.

Sticky rice desserts. Mmmm!

Coconut on the outside, coconut on the inside.

My December – Wats in Chiang Mai

Where I went:

View Larger Map

How it felt:

One important detail on the Jaya that I failed to post: my brand new camera broke then miraculously came back to life after four days (the entire dive trip.) The only problem with its resurrection is that the LCD screen refused to work and my camera does not have a viewfinder. Also it only turned on 30% of the time. Also the flash suddenly wouldn’t work. And then sometimes it couldn’t turn off.

Essentially, it was the worst camera ever but I was so relieved that it had come back to life that I didn’t notice this for another few weeks.  I’m still reeling from the shock of it. (Cam update: got a new one.)

Because there was no way of telling if it was actually taking any pictures besides listening very, very carefully for a tiny shutter click, I was really excited to get home and go through what I hoped was a memory card full of blindly-taken photographs.

Lo: FEAST YOUR EYES ON THESE MIRACLES! Among the many pictures of my face looking concernedly into the lens and horrendously tilted and artlessly off-centre shots, some of them actually turned out! A few even turned out the way I imagined they would. Another skill I will add to my MANTA QUEEN resume. They’ll want me for sure now.

When the Jaya returned to Khao Lak, I was reluctant to leave my new friends. Anneke ended up inviting me to stay in her posh rented bungalow at Phu Khao Lak. I was especially happy to accept her kind offer considering my body seemed to have swapped my usual (and suspiciously absent) seasickness for a new and terrible landsickness. The world was spinning wildly and I didn’t relish the thought of a 15 minute walk to my dingy, empty dorm room at Tiffany’s Cafe. Phu Khao Lak is very nice. It built bungalow-rooms on an old palm plantation and even has a pretty little pool.

The stage. You can just make out a be-tututed child behind the sea salt smudge on my lens.

The town was celebrating the beginning of the high season and had set up a party of tents consisting of food stalls and stages along the main stretch. We saw some bizarre performances, particularly, four-year-old girls dressed in fishnets and tutus dancing inappropriately to Thai pop, and a man and woman singing in Thai so convincingly that everyone was very surprised when we found that two tall, alabaster-skinned farang of Nordic origin were the singers. The local high school even had a tent where teens were carving watermelons into floral bouquets and entreating passers-by to “Please, enter tent. Welcome very much!” in adorable, giggling English.

I booked myself a flight to Chiang Mai for the next day, feeling very fancy-free indeed on my first unplanned trip then Maria, Kathryn, George, Anneke and I walked away from the noise and bustle to eat at Maria’s friend’s restaurant.  My favourite was the massaman curry and the gorgeous, melt-in-mouth roast fish. Kathryn successfully identified it (I forget…) We talked about how it’s kind of a turn-off to eat whole roast fish after having spent five days swimming around with its cousins.  Similarly, I feel guilty about eating octopus and squid because they are so amazing. I tend not to eat cuttlefish — it’s like when I was faced with the opportunity to try dog in Bohol and Korea and I couldn’t do it because I felt like other dogs might somehow know and be upset. (Rationally, I know that this is bananas.)

The next day Kathryn, George and I saw Anneke off which was sad and I spent my last day in the south wandering the beach and drinking coconut water. Also: I saw a grasshopper larger than I could have ever imagined.

Khao Lak Beach

It was too high up for me to put in my hand as a size comparison, but trust me when I say that it could probably have torn my thumb off. It was easily as long as a tube of toothpaste.

In the late afternoon, I returned to Wicked Divers where a taxi was picking me up to bring me to the Phuket Airport. I was happy to see Colin who was leaving that evening for the next Jaya tour and Kathryn and George even passed by before I left.

The taxi driver was around my age and we had a warm conversation about why Thais look so young — because they smile all the time because they aren’t burdened with problems because they share all their problems with their friends. He said that farang (non-Thais) don’t share their problems because they don’t like opening up. I disagreed with him: this particular farang won’t often share problems with her friends because she doesn’t want  to burden them unnecessarily. Taxi Driver said that if he kept problems from his friends, they would ask, “Why not? Don’t you love me anymore?” We spent a good 5 minutes in silence, each thinking our friend-thoughts but he was full of interesting talk and we ended up talking the entire hour drive.

CHIANG MAI DAY ONE

The plane landed in Chiang Mai at around 10pm. I asked my flat-rate taxi driver to take me to Green Tulip House to find one of the managers, Nine, waiting up for me. I chose Green Tulip because it had a super high rating on Trip Advisor and it did not disappoint. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. If you go to Chiang Mai, stay at Green Tulip House. My room was just a simple fan room, but it was quiet and immaculately clean, as were the shared bathrooms. On the top floor there is a sun deck and an adorable stone garden with reclining chairs and a nice view of Chaing Mai city. Fruit and toast breakfast is included, and best of all, the staff is wonderful in all sorts of ways. Also, there’s a dog.

I'm a messy person; I don't apologise for any aesthetic displeasure caused by viewing my unmade bed strew with travel debris. The lime green sheets solidified my love of Green Tulip. Also: they were CLEAN!

The next morning, when I came down for breakfast at around 8 the seating area was still empty.  Nine was up though and fussed over me until I was settled in an appropriate seat with an appropriate amount of Chaing Mai travel books to look through. Breakfast  was a plate of fruit and coffee. They also brought me bonus toast and orange juice for unknown reasons and I took it to be a good omen. Good vibes abound in Chiang Mai; I don’t know if it’s the cool mountain weather, or the inordinate number of temples in the city but everyone I’ve ever talked to about Thailand has raved about Chiang Mai.

My good times started immediately. I struck up a conversation with a girl who turned out to be my new role model. Stephanie from Australia went on an 8-week trip to Europe a few years ago, got to Turkey, realized it was just starting to get really interesting, and then phoned home to tell them not to wait up for her. She spent the next EIGHTEEN MONTHS travelling down into the Middle East, hitting up such amazing places as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran. Her stories! Are! Unbelievable!

Stephanie was in Chiang Mai finishing up some papers for uni before her beach vacay in Bali. While we were talking, Nine came over and said in her forward way, “Tomorrow, you do cooking class.”
Stephanie replied, “Right! Sure!”
Nine turned to me, “You too.”
“A cooking class?”
“Yes, Thai cooking class. You do it tomorrow. Whole day. I give you discount.
“Ok!”

And suddenly, my tomorrow was filled with food and good company! Chiang Mai, ahoy!

WAAAAAAAAAAT!!!!

Before we continue, I want it to be known (especially by Nada) that the pun in the title of this post was unintentional.

I left Stephanie to her work, and headed out to explore the ubiquitous Thai wats that I had yet to see.  On my way out, I bumped into another traveller who had come in on the same Phuket flight as myself and whom I’d met the night before. We were both headed to do some wat-seeing and very organically became travel buddies.

Enter Gianpiero.

Gianpiero and I ended up travelling together for over a week and if I could recommend people as travel partners in the same way I can recommend guest houses, I would do so with many a superlative and hyperbole. He had just finished a PhD in microbiology in Utrecht and was on a 2 month Asian adventure. Ah! I hear you say, but “Gianpiero” is not really a Dutch name. And you’re right, he grew up in Sicilian village, population 300. He remembers when they installed hot running water into his house. He used to work the fields with his father. And he ended up in Utrecht with a PhD in microbiology. And he thought his stories weren’t very interesting!

We spent the entire day wandering the streets of old Chiang Mai. The walled city is full to bursting with temples and stupas. You’d have a hard time finding a place to stand that isn’t within sight of one. We couldn’t travel from one guidebook-recommended wat to another without finding three or four or five smaller temples along the way. It’s nuts. In a great way.

(Some of the following photos are GP’s, and are marked as such. Thanks, Gianpiero!)

I would like to remind you at this point that all these photos were taken blind. I expect you to be duly impressed.

Stop number one was Wat Phra Singh, a previous home of the famous “Emerald Buddha” and the most famous of Chiang Mai’s wats just a 5 minute walk from the Green Tulip. It was a nice introduction to wat-seeing. Wat Phra Singh is a wonderland of sloped roofs covered in gold filigree and painted mirror tiles and Estruscan-smiling figures and fantastic beasts (like naga!) all set upon a backdrop of a deep burgundy paint.

A copy of the Emerald Buddha in a building separate from the largest temple.

A detail on the ...plinth(?) of the copy of the Emerald Buddha.

The prayerful.

The buildings of the wat are surrounded by lovely treed pathways punctuated by large stone urns housing lotus plants and occaissionally, a bit of advice.

A meditation park-garden in the grounds. You can see a man tutoring a little boy in Buddhist teachings at the stone table. There are sayings on all the trees. My favourite one said, "Today is better than two tomorrows."

Behind the main temple is a great white stupa. When I was there, there were people cranking a wheel which pulleyed up a small cylindrical vessel to the dome of the stupa. When it hit the stupa, it broke open and spilled water onto it. When it did, people cheered. I still don’t know what it meant: can anyone shed some light on this?

A couple about to crank the water up onto the stupa. (GP)

A place for prayer outside the stupa. The wheel for the water-breaking is on the far end.

Background music of Wat Phra Singh: bells.

I think I mentioned in a post about Cambodia that I was fairly obsessed with Thai aesthetics when I was a kid because of King and I. I felt the same feeling of dream-fulfillment looking at the Lanna architecture and painting that I did from watching Cambodian dance.

I remember looking at this gorgeous painting on the inside of a window shutter and having one of those, "OMG I'm in THAILAND!" moments.

One of the more serious characters in Wat Phra Singh.

The walls of one building are covered in unbelievably detailed painted murals. They were done sometime in the 19th century by an ethnic Chinese painter (or so I read … somewhere…) and depict the daily life of people in Lanna. The faces and gestures of the little figures were endlessly fascinating to me. I spent a long time nose-to-wall, frequently taking out my poor camera and forcing it to take pictures of my favourite bits.

Now be a good human, and do as you're told.

They're totally just having a regular conversation. Awesome.

FORBIDDEN ROMANCE! I just know it.

Look at all the different faces. They all have their individual lives going on. Whole little worlds.

Shirtless chores. The best kind of chores. I think they're collecting flowers to make tea.

These men are wearing different outfits than the Lanna people and they have very distinct facial hair. Where could they be from?

From Wat Phra Singh, we turned down Ratchadamnoen - one of the main avenues in the walled cities – and had a look at every wat along the way. It’s all one golden blur to me now, and even that day I couldn’t keep track of which temples we visited and where they were and what they looked like. Here’s a smattering of images from the ones in which my camera would turn on.

A very Hindu-looking blue deity.

A temple.

A particularly lovely buddha. (GP)

I don't know what it means, but it's pretty. (GP)

I took special joy looking at the guardians of the different temples. I like the beasts that seem to be a mixture of a few animals or the beasts that aren’t native to Thailand so the artists’ renditions of them are skewed. It’s like looking at medieval European depictions of lions and elephants: close, but so very far.

The guardian lion-dragons have bum holes! Some of them are also daintily seated on little stools. Maybe the idea is they're supposed to be scary on from the front, and if you make it past their fearsome faces you ... get ... to see ... nevermind.

A particularly ornate handrail dragon. They're not supposed to be handrails. It's just how I think of them.

A shiny gold handrail dragon. Now pay attention to his "body" ... (GP)

... it's not its body at all! It's A SECOND DRAGON REGURGITATING THE FIRST LEAVING VISITORS IN DOUBT AS TO WHETHER THE FIRST WILL ALSO START VOMITING OTHER SHINY GOLD DRAGONS! (GP)

An unintentionally adorable lion-dragon-teddy bear. (GP)

A scary many-headed naga at Chedi Luang.

Some notable temples were Chedi Luang, a crumbling and moss-covered monolith; and my favourite (so far), Wat Phan Tao. Wat Phan Tao is just north of Chedi Luang and is made of dark finished teak wood and isn’t as covered in gold and mirrors as the other temples. It reminded me of the unpainted Korean Buddhist temple in Jisan that I loved so much.  Inside the main prayer temple were hundreds of round pots for donations, and a little corridor of banners hanging from the ceiling behind the big buddha. Tiny bells were tied to the tassels of the banners so that it sounded gorgeous too. A special place.

Chedi Luang. It's a good thing I haven't been to Angkor Wat yet, because looking at this was enough to awaken my inner Indiana. (GP)

Inside Wat Phan Tao. (GP)

Offering bowls (?) in Wat Phan Tao. Look at that dark wood! (GP)

The banners of the North Thai Zodiac in Wat Phan Tao. The zodiac is the same as the Chinese one but the year of the pig is replaced with an elephant, and the new year starts in the fifth lunar month.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that my new travel buddy and I started feeling hungry, and at that point I was delighted to find out that foremost among his many excellent travel buddy qualities is his love of food and eating. Hooray! We found a little noodle place before we went to find something marked on our map as “Sunday Walking Market”.

Delicious! (GP)

We couldn’t find the market, so we walked along the east canal of the old city, finding a wet market and an archaeological dig of part of the old wall along the way. Eventually we found our way back to Ratchadamnoen Road and sat down for a coffee. An hour later, we looked up and realized that the walking market had materialized around us as we chatted. It stretched the entire distance of Ratchadamnoen Road and spilled over into neighbouring streets too.

Stalls and Thai flag at Tha Pae gate.

There were stalls for everything: from the ambiguously “ethnic” gifts (coconut purses, anything gecko-shaped, bone earrings, sarongs), to Thai art of all price ranges, to Thai pop culture items, to handmade Indie goods made by the university students, and everything inbetween. And let us not forget the food stalls! Heaven!

Early on in the market. As the evening wore on, suddenly the streets became flooded with tourists from Bangkok who were in Chiang Mai because of a long weekend. It was so crowded that we were often in gridlock for minutes at a time. On foot!

We braved the street one last time for dinner just as the crowds were the thickest and managed to find a tiny table in a very noisy, busy, chaotic restaurant (good sign.) We ordered whatever caught our fancy: fried dried pork, Chinese cabbage with soy sauce and garlic, morning glory made Thai-style with lots of chili, and the most delicious tom yam soup I’d ever tasted.

Mmmmmmmm

When we finally returned to our guest house, I wanted to ask Nine if Gianpiero could also do the cooking class, but she found him first and invited/told him to join too.

That was a really monster post, but to be fair, it was something of a monster day too. What a day. Wat a day. (I’m sorry!)