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Published: July 15th 2008
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Doi Suthep
Worth the hassle to get there and the 306 stairs to the top! Although also hanging out and spending another weekend in Chiang Mai...
Last week we started visiting the villages in the sub-district where I'm working in Phrao. We managed to get to 9 of them; the other two are located in the hills about an hour away. I've attached a few pictures that show some of the local water systems. For more detailed information, you can go to the blog on the
Warm Heart Website where we have more detailed accounts of the work here.
For the weekend, we caught yet another ride to Chiang Mai on Friday night, this time squeezed into the cab of a pickup truck. At least we were protected from the rain! After a half hour search of completely full guesthouses, we finally ended up at the VIP Guesthouse. At only 300 Baht per night for 3 of us, we couldn't turn it down. We were exhausted enough that we slept pretty soundly sans A/C.
We found a great restaurant across the street for breakfast, then Ronn, Laith, Andrea and I caught a ride to Wat Umong to explore a forest Wat. It was a nice change from the city Wats, which have started to get
a little repetitive. We spent a few hours exploring tunnels and houses and even a "zoo path" where we found some deer and cows and cats. We had some tasty northern Thai noodle soup next door, then split up. Andrea and I tried to get a ride to Doi Suthep with little success. Finally, a very nice monk with great English language skills stopped us and explained the trick to getting there. A short ride later we were at the stop for the rides to Doi Suthep. We waited for a few more people, and when we had enough to make the fare affordable, we caught a ride up the mountain to an amazing temple. The main chedi was gold, and even though it was under renovation, it was still an impressive sight. All in all, worth the 306 stairs we had to climb to get to the top and look around. Andrea and I have had trouble remembering to circle the main chedi clockwise, so after our first trip around we had to turn around and go back the other way for fear of bad kharma or whatever it is Buddhists worry about!
While admiring the views of
all of Chiang Mai, my friends from school who are interning in Bangkok called. After a harrowing 15 hour train ride they had finally arrived in Chiang Mai and were off to a massage at the women's prison. We gave them good directions and promised to meet them there. I'm sure no one else has ever gotten down the mountain as fast as we did, and we managed to catch David and Liv only 15 minutes into their massages. Which meant that we had time to get one too! Once everyone was relaxed we had our first real american food - a tasty Hawaiian pizza! From there we moved on to a photography exhibit to meet our friend Zoe, a journalist that is writing an article about Warm Heart. The photographs were impressive - and all taken with a disposable camera by a local professor. On the way over we stopped at a bookstore for Thai language books, and managed to score a free bag of home grown papaya after buying not one, but two copies. :-) We finished out the night at the Saturday Night Walking Market, where we shopped until we closed the place down, finally getting back
to the guest house around midnight and unable to walk another foot.
Sunday was lazy and slow. We met Liv, David and Liv's sister Claire for breakfast (mango and sticky rice! Woo!). When we split up for the day, Andrea, Jessica (who had spent most of the weekend sick in our room) and I went for the beauty treatment. I have to say, it was by far the best $4 haircut I've ever had! I need to get pictures from Andrea before I can show it off. Then it was a 2 hour bus ride through Chiang Dao and back to Phrao, and a lazy evening at Aomdoi.
Yesterday a number of us went to visit one of the hill tribes in our district. They were ethnic Lisu, and very welcoming. My group collected information about their water system, and got to see the mountain spring distribution system first hand. They are probably drinking cleaner water than most of the villages at the foot of the mountain. The area was gorgeous, with twisty roads frighteningly reminiscent of that near fatal trip in the Bolivian Andes I took 10 years ago. Thankfully none of us fell out of the
back of the truck. :-)
I'm off tomorrow to Koh Samet for the holiday weekend, then to Bangkok to pick up Wes, so I probably won't be online much for another week or so. Sorry Billy!!!
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