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Chiang Mai
The Famous Night Bazaar Chiang Mai
After the relaxation of Mae Hong Son & Pai we moved onto the City of Chiang Mai.
A place jam packed with culture (and wats!)
We spent 4 days here enjoying the sites and walking around the colourful streets of the city.
One of the cities most famous tourist attractions is its Night Bazaar, where it seems half of the city is opened up each evening into a giant market selling produce from the local hilltribes, lights, paintings, tourist t-shirts and knock off watches as well as great food stalls that fill the air with a great aroma as you wander through the stalls.
We visited many temples (wats) in the city and ventured to the the Nearly Doi Suthep temple (1500m above sea level) one day to enjoy the great views to the city below and a great walk in the nearby Doi Suthep National Park through thick forest to a waterfall we weren't sure we'd ever reach (let alone return safely from!) due to the barely visible path through dense jungle.
We also visited 'the wat in the forest' an ancient wat that contains a tunnel system through the hillside which ws once colourfully painted. The grounds
Chiang Mai
What Phan Tao at this wat were beautiful including a large lake full of terrapins and large catfish.
Chiang Rai
We moved next to Chiang Rai known as the 'Gateway to the Golden Triangle' (an area covering Thailand, Laos and Burma that until recently relied mostly on opium growing and trading for income, this has since been made illegal)
This is more of the most Northerly towns in Thailand and has a large number of Hilltribe Villages in the surrounding hills creating an interesting cultural mix in the town itself.
We visited Wat Rong Khun, a temple which is still being built and is expected to take another 60 years to complete, it loks very much like an ice palace out of some kind of fairy tale, a fact that Laura was very excited about! The place was amazing and the murals inside that are still being painted are fantastic and unique (combining images of buddha, space travel and The Matrix in one image for example!!).
This is likely to become a major tourist draw in Thailand i would think so it was to see it now before the novelty wears off.
From Chiang Rai we travelled to the hills to spend
Monk Chat!
A Chance to chat to the monks at Wat Suan Dok in Chiang Mai 2 nights in an Akha hilltribe village. The village was a beautiful place set high in the mountains and made a perfect base for some great walks in the area to hot springs, waterfalls and Chinese green tea fields.
Our bungalow had the most incedible view out across the valley below fro the large terrace at the front and we spent much time sitting and soaking up the surroundings.
The walks we set out on in between these periods however did make the rest seem well earned. I for one did seem to cause some localised flooding due to the amount of sweat poring out of me! Laura was so proud. Even so, If you are looking for great scenery to do some walking in you'll be hard pressed to find somewhere better than the mountains of Northern Thailand, they are fantastic.
We did find a lovely waterfall with a swimming hole at the bottom which we thought would be the perfect way to cool off after the trekking earlier in the day. However, when i envisaged cooling off i had images of timotei adverts etc when in fact the moment you touched the water your legs froze solid so
Chiang Mai
Wat Chedi Luang swimming became pretty much impossible!
We have since returned to Chiang Rai where we are currently.
Tomorrow we head off to Eastern Thailand To Ubon Rachatani, from where we will visit an angkor temple, actually in Cambodia but easier to reach from Thailand. Apparently its on the top of a Mountain and offers views across Cambodia that are meant to be fantastic. The temple will give us a taste of Angkor Wat before we visit it in a couple of months time. After that its off to Laos and that should be a great adventure.
Thats all to come in the next Blog,
Take Care.
Steve & Laura. xx
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GH
non-member comment
Hope you guys are both ok