On Sunday Reid, Kelly, Ginny, Kanako, Rachel and I went to Doi Sethep, which is a mountain with a little village somewhere on it. As I've been told by the ethnic minority class that had a field trip there, the village is named after the mountain. We walked around and I saw a little bit of the houses but I mostly followed the others who have been there as they walked through the market. There was a lot of jewelry, clothing and food, but at the end of the winding streets (which I normally had to double back through as they lead to dead ends) there was a beautiful beautiful garden. At the last fork in the road you could either go left, and pay to see the poppy museum, or right which lead to the garden. Seeing as a I would spend a lot of money that day, I went to the free garden.
There were tons of flowers that I had never seen before, and a tall but lightly flowing waterfall that had bamboo pipes that spat the water out in a more concentrated burst so that those who walked by could cool themselves down. Ray ran into one of her ajans from last semester who she really liked. He was playing in the waterfall with his kids when we found him. We worked our way back through the market eventually where Pii Ju was waiting in his song tao to take us to our next stop; Bhubing Palace.
Bhubing Palace is the king's summer palace (one of his summer palaces?) that tourists and I suppose Thais can go to when the king is not there, of course. (I asked Ploy about the name when I got home and she gave me a much longer one) We had to cover ourselves up: no short skirts no shoulders exposed. I was wearing a dress that went down to my knees, nothing short, and Kanako who was wearing shorts down to her knees, but she was told that she had to rent a long skirt before entering, I however was not. Apparently its more modest for a female to wear a skirt than shorts.
None of us realized that the palace itself would be an all day event. There was a water reservoir were we spent most of our time, and most of our time getting to, some giant bamboo, a fern garden and a lot of flowers everywhere. The weird thing was, at the kings palace I saw a lot more flowers that I recognized opposed to the garden at the market where I recognized none. Regardless, it was all still quite something to look at.
Although the palace is closed to visitors at four fifteen, so we had to cut our visit short in order to get down to the exit in time. Our next stop was Wat Pharthat Doi Suthep. I have no idea why this Wat is/was important but it was huge, intricate, and had more icons of Buddhas and monks than I cared to count. I should really ask someone about that...
There was another market at the foot of the Wat. A lot of good food and a lot of shiny things for tourists to stare at. We eventually started to walk up a set of very long, very steep stairs to the actual Wat. There was a sign that says "foreigners this way" with an arrow pointing toward a ticket booth. We got to the booth and told them, in Thai, we were Payap students and they let us in for free. This is one thing that keeps coming up. I am in Thailand, I am a student here, I am a farang, yes, but I am still a student here. As much as I know that I have to haggle down the prices at street markets, I always walk away wondering what they would charge a Thai for whatever I was trying to buy. There is a part of me that enjoys just going to the Carrefour because I know that we are all paying the same fixed price. But this is all a side note. So the Wat:
On our way up Ginny and I got asked by a university student to take her survey about tourism. It asked basic questions like age and gender and what we were doing there and how satisfied were we with everything. In the purpose of visit section of the survey the options were tourist, pilgrimage, religious, art and other. Around the Wat there were people making merit and donations while others only took photos. There were monks roaming around and a few novice monks laughing loudly and knocking on the bells.
There was a gorgeous view of Chiang Mai that was covered by the thick air which made it hard to see. There were flowered trees and a lot of statues of something my mother has told me the name of many times, but I forget what they are called, again. They are the protectors of the wat though, and they look rather fierce.
We returned to PIH exhausted and full well after dark.
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