Day Off!

We had six days of class this week, so Richard and I wanted to make good use of our one day off. We decided to hike to Doi Suthep, a Wat on top of a mountain that we can see from our hotel. On the way out of town, we ran into Adam, a guy in our program, so we set off together. Things started off well. We came upon Wat Phai Hin within five minutes. It was a beautiful Wat, and there were about a dozen young monks playing in the yard.

We kept walking, and found ourselves on the grounds of a fancy restaurant for tourists. There was a waterfall! We climbed up it for a while, but it didn't seem to be a faster route up the mountain.

There's Richard and Adam at the waterfall. Things got a lot more difficult from this point forward. Every direction we went. we ran into an entrance to the Chiang Mai Zoo, and no one seemed to be able to tell us how to get to the Wat. Finally we backtracked a ways, started out again, and found a trailhead! We followed a trail up the mountain for about half an hour and then found the Wat Palat. This isn't the Wat we were looking for, but it was really cool! In addition to the normal assortment of beautiful Buddha statues, there were also old, stone figures wrapped in orange cloaks, and other statues of various people and creatures. I need to learn more about the stories behind these statues.

We decided that to try for the other Wat another day. We went to the Sunday Walking Market in the afternoon and I spent too much money on pretty things. We really liked this market, though. The night market in Chiang Mai turned out to be really touristy and kitschy, but the Walking Market was pretty laid back.

You have to barter for things, and its really easy to get caught up in the moment and spend more money on something than you're planning on. I think I still managed to get a couple decent deals. Anyway, enough of these rambling posts about pretty things. Next up: Thai Boxing and Lady-Boys.