Northern Mists and the White Temple

Thailand

New Years 2012/2013

December 26 - 29

Chiang Mai, Doi Mae Salong and Chiang Rai

After the whirlwind Bangkok stopover, we headed north to Chiang Mai for a 3 day mini tour. On the plane Gemma, Sarah and I were in a line, and Alex was off by her own in a different part of the plane!

Hey over there!

When we got to Chiang Mai we walked into the hotel room, that was hands down (for me) the best of the trip. Inherently Thai, the beds were so pretty, and the walls were hand painted with Thai images and these huge princess headboards and a great open plan wooden bathroom. Each room had different colours, also, Alex and Gemma's room had an orange theme.

Wheh we had unpacked, we headed to a Thai-Mexican fusion (!?) restaurant to plan the day and I managed to talk the others into TIGER KINGDOM.

Lunch!

Now before you ask - none of the tigers were chained or drugged at all. The company uses the proceeds to fund programs to turn around the rapidly declining tiger population in Thailand. They had a lot of information around, talking about the way they train the keepers and the tigers and do not use any kind of tranquillisers. While we were waiting, some of the biggest tigers were growing restless, and the keepers shut the gates and played for about ten minutes with the big cats, waving huge branches for them to chase and letting them play in the big pool inside the enclosure. By the time we went in they were happily snoozing in the sun.

My face before I went in...

Touching a big bad tiger!

Om nom nom nom....

Hanging out with the stripy dude - you can see Alex on the safe side of the fence with all of our bags hanging off her.

Rawr!

After the tigers (squee!), we got down to some serious shopping, spending over an hour in the first shop we stumbled upon - a shop over-flowing with beads, mainly made from natural stones.

Modelling my new purchases - haha!

....THE COLOURS!!

OMG...

The next day the tour started in the best possible way - with elephants.

An elephant painting a tree! - Well I just had to have one of those! ($20)

Feeding the little ones

Riding a 50 year old nellyphant with Gem.

Alex and Sarah in the distance.

Alex and Sarah, so excited about their elephant going potty. Heheheh - they had no idea.

Our mahut earned his tip by stopping the elephant and showing us this hole, right at eye level of, yes, a wild tarantula. If you look carefully  you can see 3 of the 8 hairy legs, and you can feel the malicious intent to murder me. Move on, please! Shudder.

Sliding down a very steep, muddy slope on a several tonne animal. Whee!

After lunch we headed into the Chiang Dao cave system, which is estimated to consist of over 100 caves that go about 10 km into the mountains, 5 of which we were allowed to visit. The legend behind the caves is that they were developed by a hermit, who lived in the caves for over a thousand years, conversing with the Buddhist angels that also dwelt there, creating sculptural masterpieces out of the rocks. The caves have an eclectic array of Buddhist statues precariously attached to the rocks and strings of electrical lights affixed to the delicate, dripping cave walls, creating one of the most contradictory scenes I have seen.

An ancient shrine outside the cave.

The first chamber. You can see stone statues dotted on the walls, all they way to the top.

On the road to the caves, this adorable little old lady was selling natural medicinal remedies, with her mottle kitty.

The next morning, we left Doi Mae Salong and the beautiful mountaintop hotel we stayed in and went to a famous tea plantation "101" and woke up amongst the mountain morning mists with some oolong, green and rose tea, prepared by a lady-boy with impeccable skills.

After our tea tasting, we hit the Mekong River - right at the northern tip of Thailand, by the Myanmar and Laos border, and I crossed "being in three countries at once" off my bucket list.

Standing on a long tail boat on the Mekong River, territory that is the common dominion of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.

We headed over to Laos for about an hour to check out the fake handbag collection on the other side of the river. Technically I can cross it off my countries list, but I might try to see a bit more on a return journey in the future!

This was the day we all matched. From the left - Gemma wore red, I wore red with white polka-dots, Alex wore white with black polka-dots and Sarah wore black. It was like a dotty shading bar.

At the river side golden Buddha, there was a donation strategy which I just loved - so kitch. You walked up these little steps and threw a coin in this cone, while a speaker played "Hap-py. Budd-ha. Ha-HA-HA!"

Then the coins would tinkle down these skinny metal pipes...

And into Happy Buddha's tummy button!

That night we had a great time at a night market with a huge square lined with food carts and a craft market.

The atmosphere!

Maggots, and crickets.

Gemma chewing her cricket, while I contemplate mine. It was fully tasteless and quite brittle. Luckily i could not discern different body parts, and found the experience fairly satisfying.

The next day we were flying to Phuket at a quarter to ten at night, so we filled in the day driving back to Chiang Mai amongst the horrendous New Years traffic and we stopped off at a few sights.

First up was the 'White Temple' or 'Wat Rong Khun'. This contempoary Buddist temple is still being constructed by artist/achitect Chalermchai Kositpipat. It has been his pet project since 1996 and it's completion is not expected for some 70 years. The designer maintains that the white is a more pure and contemporary colour than the traditional golds used in other Wats. 

He has personally painted the inside the main temple - with an intriguing and intense mural on the back wall depicting a massive red demon consuming the world. The demon has George Bush in one eye and Osama bin Laden in the other, and is supposed to represent the "killing of the innocence" by major world players. Included on the "evil side" is a snaking petrol pump, the burning World Trade Centres, Freddy Kruger, the greepy doll thing from the Saw movies and the bad-guy Terminator. 

On the side of the goodies there is Neo, Anakin Skywalker, Spiderman, Harry Potter, a Na'vi from Avatar and a whole bunch of other pop-culture characters, even a few Angry Birds!). The whole idea is to get children excited about coming to the Temple and to modernise the ancient concepts the religion is founded on, and make them more relatable. I thought it was pure fantastic-ness. We weren't allowed to take photos inside the temple, unfortunately, but I filched a few off the internet to show you:

Neo, Optimus Prime and a Na'vi, with part of Anakin Skywalker's Pod Racer in front of a lesser demon on fire.

The Two Towers, with the petrol pump/ two headed snake and Spiderman at the top, and some weird blue bubble-like dude. You can also see the missile shapes blending in on the right - so clever. In the eyes of the Demon, instead of veins, there were guns.

A Predator sinking into the grass.

The temple wasn't all graphic imagery and pop culture references - the facade and surroundings were purely spectacular. 

You walk over these groping hands from below on an arched bridge.

Chalermchai Kositpipat is in the middle! OOoo we saw a celebrity!

An unfinished part of the temple - none of the decorations have been added.

To raise funds, you could buy these wee silver leaves, and you wrote a message about love on it and hung it on these towering trees, to "stand for eternity". Awww...

The toilet block!

For lunch we dropped into Cabbages and Condoms. I had to get our Thai guide to say it about 5 times before I was satisfied that it wasn't her accent which was making me hear that. It turned out to be a non-profit charity project aimed at birth control and STD awareness. There were signs promising that eating their food would not get you pregnant, and even some clothes and flowers made out of condoms. After the Middle Easts taboo attitude to anything remotely sexy, this was awesome.

Gemma's new title! Look at the streamers above her head - heh!

After Sex-Ed, we went to see the tallest gyser in Thailand. Unfortunately they had commercialised the natural spring to the point that it was just a sulphuric water fountain gushing all over the car-park. That being said, they had this cute little bubbling pool with a lady selling quail eggs in baskets, and you put them in to cook for a few minutes, and then scarfed them while soaking your feet in slightly cooler pools. Quite nice!

It was a long day, and we weren't going to get to our fancy hotel in Phuket until about 1am, but I had had a fabulous time in the north. On to luxury digs, and the beach in the summertime!