a recent history of sightseeing around town

disclaimer: i think my videos were too big...the only one working is the re-shoot of the apartment...


so in the past couple days we have been doing more walking and exploring and sightseeing after a few days of relaxing.
sunday was wat day. we took a pickup truck taxi (you sit on benches in the bed of a truck inside a cap!) to the biggest wat in town, wat phra sing. it turned out to be community monk day there and they were having a get together of sorts. lots of young monks, little baskets where you attach money to a stick and stick it in the basket as an offering, and music and dancing. it was very hot in the sun. this wat seemed really neat because it was more like a community center atmosphere instead of just a pretty place where tourist go. there were tourists and people praying as usual, but there was also food vendors and such. below is a video of the music and dancing.



then we adventured to a couple other wat's in the area, where amongst other things, a lady was selling some paintings on cloth (i bought a small one with elephants) for very cheap, and an angry wat dog was barking its head off at us! inside the one wat there was this really cool grid-like web of string that all went to the front and tied to the buddha's thumb. the web was about 1 foot over our heads.

luke and i got our second thai massage of the trip after lunch. amazing. and $4.50.

then the moment we have been waiting for - the sunday walking street! sunday is the popular market day here and they close off a large street in the old town along with a couple of side streets. it is absolutely filled with vendors. anything and everything and bargining and junk and handmade stuff all pretty cheap compared to prices back home. i bouught and adorable hand made purse that i love and we got some stuff for the apt. lots of food everywhere too for about 30 cents a stick! many pictures of this are posted, including an amazing rooftop view that we had. we went to this super rasta bar (the outside is painted yellow, green, and red!) it is called thc - tribal heritage conservation. we got there earlier than most so we had the best seats near the edge of the roof. soooooo cool!!!! when it got dark you could see a little light on the hill for the temple and all the umbrellas of all the vendors were lit up below! then it started to pour and they closed the retractable roof for us - yes that is correct, retractable roof!!!! the only down side is that most of the people there were foreigners. the rainstorm was amazing though. it was our first real downpour here in chiang mai and we got to watch it from the roof. people were riding their motorcycles with ponchos! there were also bats flying around the street lights. and i made my way through the spiciest dish ever - luke was proud of me!
here is a view from the roof:


monday morning we took a truck taxi to the river and went on a scorpion tail boat tour up the river. we had a very funny and very friendly tour guide. after seeing the sights up the river we stopped at this little bungalow and fruit farm for a snack of mangoes, sticky rice, and lychee juice. so good! our tour guide showed us around the garden, showed us handmade toys, cobra whisky (yes, there was an actual cobra in the bottle!!!) and snake traps. the snake trap is like a chinese finger trap made out of bamboo leaves. the snake can get in but when it tries to get out the trap tightens on it. so clever! their very nice dog rode back with us on the boat.

then we sat through another thunderstorm in a cafe. after it cleared up (the weather changes very fast here) we went in search of this very tall ruin that we saw from the rooftop bar. after much walking, we found it. it is a huge old stupa which houses buddha relics. in the 1500's an earthquake destroyed some of it.
at this same wat, there is a thing called monk chat. monks hang out at these tables and as part of their english language training they chat with you. it was very cool. it is nice to feel like you can approach them and just talk. not that they normally snub you or anything, but they are so high up on the social ladder that sometimes it seems unclear how to approach them. so we chatted with a monk for a good while, and it was like a philosophy lesson. he had a way of not directly answering questions that seemed to fit his role well and shed so much wisdom and calmness on the situation. we are going to go back there for regular chats.

we have an address now, so email me if you want it. this is what our place looks like:


tidbit for the day:
in thailand it is the year 2551, because their calendar follows buddha, not jesus.