Temples of the North

(August 25-August 27)

After leaving our dear friends in the hills of Chiangmai, we only had a few days left in the north before Cambodia, where we had to sneak in a trip to Chiang Rai. Pong and Charin treated us to a lovely northern dinner of sticky rice, pig skin, papaya salad, sausages and a bunch of sauces I could never attempt to name. We helped Charin pick out our dinner items at the market down the street from their home, having street whisky shots and road beers on the way, in true Charin style. Who knew that there were vendors in the street markets that just had a couple stools to sit on, and whisky! Charin was so excited for us to try a street shot, so we all got a shot of the generic whisky, as the guys sitting at the table joked about us Fralang. That woman does love her whisky. After dinner, we treated Pong and Charin to drinks at one of the local riverside bars, which are quite posh, and very popular in Chiangmai.

In the morning, we caught a very early bus to Chiang Rai, about a 3 hour bus trip north. If we had more time, I would have loved to see the border between Laos, Burma and Thailand, but because time was short we had to skip the golden triangle, and focus on the temples in Chiang Rai. We found a very cheap guesthouse (100 bhat a person), rented motorbikes, then went exploring. Since we had a large portion of the day left, and really no agenda, we explored Chiang Rai in a very lackadaisical manner. We had missed Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, so we made it a point to see the Wat Phra Kaew in Chiang Rai, home of the “Emerald Buddhe”. The whole story behind the Emerald Buddha is kind of comical. The original Wat Phra Kaew was built in Chiang Rai. In the 1400’s, the temple was struck by lightening, and the Emerald Buddha was exposed. They then took the Emerald Buddha to Bangkok, and built the new Wat Phra Kaew that everyone visits in Bangkok, to see the original Emerald Buddha. They restored the Chiang Rai temple, and made a fake Emerald Buddha out of Canadian jade to replace the original. What’s funny about the whole story is that no guide book or brochure explains why the Emerald Buddha is so precious, except for one sign at the temple that shows a timeline of where the Emerald Buddha was smuggled to over the years between Thailand, Laos and Burma. I still don’t know why. So we walked around the gorgeous temple grounds (best grounds I’ve seen yet, maybe because of the pond of turtles and coy fish), then ascended the dramatic stairs to the main temple where the Emerald Buddha lies. What an odd disappointment. The Buddha was 4 inches tall! And the interior of the temple was lit with green neon lights. Totally bizarre. I’m glad we missed out on spending the 350 bhat to see the original in Bangkok. I bet tourists in Bangkok are frequently disappointed with a huge temple dedicated to that tiny little Buddha (I guess unless they read the description in the guide book, where it clearly states the epic statue is 4 inches tall. I missed that detail). What was really cool was that the temple was lined with paintings showing the stealing and warfare around the Emerald Buddha over the years. Each frame told a short sequence from the story of the silly little Buddha, where it would be stolen, then worshipped, then fought after, then stolen again. If you “read” the painting, it has multiple stories within one painting that are shown chronologically from left to right. So each painting would have two or three Emerald Buddhas, because it was showing different parts of that story. That was the coolest.

After Wat Phra Kaew, we drove outside the city on a search for Buddha caves when we saw signs for waterfall, 11 km away, in the opposite direction of Buddha caves. We said why not, we're on motorbikes, let's give it a whirl. And it was probably the coolest thing we would see all day. This park was hidden away from the rest of the world, and we found ourselves wandering through winding paths with no one else around. Though we had just seen a ton of waterfalls in Chiangmai, waterfalls never really get old. After our secret waterfall, we went back to find these Buddha caves. Even though our guide book said it wasn't really worth making the trip for, who wouldn't want to see a temple that had been carved into a cave?! So we did it, and loved it. It was totally eerie, because once again there was nobody around, and we walked up to this cave with bats, that smelled like rat droppings, and was pitch dark. The only way we could navigate around was with the light from the candles illuminating the Buddha statues. So creepy, but so cool. The funny thing about Chiang Rai, and the reason for us being the only tourists there, was that the wet season makes all these cool spots so hard to get to. At this temple and Ta Thum, we had to walk through pretty much a river from all the flooding. Ta Thum was just as cool as Buddha caves, but even creepier!! There were some monks hanging out, and a beautiful Buddha that had been carved out of the cliff, and, no doubt, a creepy cave to explore. We had to wind up through a flooded staircase that led us through the trees into the cave. Unlike Buddha caves, there were no candles lit. It was just pitch black except where some sun peaked through holes in the ceiling. We could barely see the Buddha hiding in the depths of the cave, so climbed further along another set of stairs that took us to a lookout of the grounds. We couldn’t see much, since the trees blocked most views, so we headed back down to our motorbikes, passing decrepit buildings on the way out, that we guessed had been used as monks’ living quarters in the past.

We’d had one more temple on the agenda for that day, but gave up trying to find it with no map and dinnertime approaching. We had gotten very lost and ended up approaching the hill tribes. We started seeing signs for Karen Village, the village we had stayed with in Chiang Mai, so we knew we were really lost, though hopeful of maybe running into Joe again. On the way back to our guesthouse in Chiang Rai, we took a brief tour of the city (really we just didn’t know where we were going so drove around until we found something we recognized). We found a cute little night food market, with fruits, fried chicken, skewers, fish, and sticky rice galore. Since Chiang Rai is so far north, they say there is a lot of great Chinese food in some areas of the province. I don’t know if this is the case for the actual city, but we did find a mediocre dim sum restaurant that we tried out for a before-dinner snack. We got the usual dumplings, but it was not as good as Philly’s dim sum. From the restaurant, we had a great view of the clock tower that marks the center of the city. The thing is so ornate and gaudy, and gets even better at 7:00 when they have a light show, illuminating the clock tower with neon colored lights. What a tacky, yet pleasant, surprise to our dim sum snack. After returning our motorbikes, we headed to another night market, this one dedicated to souvenirs, clothing, and other useless collections of goodies. I am still so impressed with these massive markets that set their stations up every day or night, with their huge array of items. After thoroughly browsing the market, we looked for dinner. The night market options were obnoxiously boring: tempura, sushi, hot pot, or French fries. Where were we?! Definitely would never know Northern Thailand. So we hit the streets in search of something more Thai, and found a great street vendor with chicken noodle soup. I think it was the best noodle soup I’ve had in Thailand, with a dark broth and parts of the chicken they usually leave out for tourists, like the feet, and the proper arrangement of spicy condiments.

In the morning, we had to head back to Chiang Mai to spend one last day with Pong and Charin before our next destination. We sat at the bus station, playing Thai Rummi, keeping our eye on the Swedish bakery Jillian had found, waiting for it open. Finally, 15 minutes before our bus was to leave, the bakery opened and we ran to it ready for coffee and pastries. We filled a bag with chocolate croissants, cookies and danishes, got three coffees to go, and ran back to the bus station. The bus driver glared at us when I knocked on their door as he had just put the bus in reverse to leave, and we ran to our seats, giggling like kids with our load of delicious smelling pastries. I think everyone on that bus hated us.

When we got back to Pong and Charin’s house, we found them terribly hung over from Pong’s high school reunion the night before. Charin had made rice soup, the perfect hangover cure, which we had a small serving of as they told us how much money they spent playing cards last night. They napped while we packed up our things, then Pong was nice enough to take us to the bottom of Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai’s most sought after tourist temple, that shares a name with my dad. I was determined to see the temple that had my dad’s name! We had to hire a driver to take us up the hill, because Pong said the drive would make him sick. I can see why. The taxi took us up these winding paths that made us want to throw up, I can’t even imagine how that would feel with a hangover. At the top of the mountain, we had to climb a hundred-something stairs to the temple. From the top, you can see all of Chiang Mai surrounded by mountains, clouds casting shadows over the city. Entering the temple is blinding from all of the pristine white tiles and the shimmering gold chedi. There were prayer rooms on two sides of the chedi, one with a monk reading a newspaper as people would come in, kneel down to pray, and exit. I’m still very curious about the monks in Thailand. Our trip to Doi Suthep was short lived, and we headed back down the dragon banistered stairs, having more questions about the temple than answers, as was common on our temple tour. I wanted to know how the heck people got to this temple before the scary windy road was built in the 40’s.

That night we had our overnight bus ticket to Bangkok from Chiang Mai. Charin cooked us our last Thai meal, Northern style fried noodles and fried rice, before we got on our first bus on the long journey to Siem Reap in Cambodia.