Wat a day
Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Saturday, October 26, 2002
Today was Wat Day. The day to try out a bit of Thai religion. We went to Craig's Top North Guesthouse and he was still asleep so we had to wait for him to get dressed before going to Rose Guesthouse for breakfast. I ordered a pancake and lemon juice and when a Coke, Lime Fanta and Sprite came out to our table I assumed she hadn't understood me and started drinking the lime Fanta saying "Funny lemon juice". I obviously didn't hear Nicole and Craig saying that it was Craig's and was very embarrassed when my lemon juice came out! This was followed by my heartshaped pancake!
We first visited Wat Chedi Luang which was quite large and had a huge tall straight tree outside. My first barefoot step into the wat was with reverence as I did not want to offend anyone. And so I also didn't want to take photos of the Buddha images inside. Behind the wat was an ancient half tumbled down chedi with buddhas in all four sides of the pyramid shaped structure. Part of it had been restored and there were naga (serpents) at the steps and elephants half way up.
The second wat was Wat Pan Tao, a teak wat. After this we negotiated the footpath and kerb construction along Thanon Ratchadamnern to Wat Phra Singh. We had to wait outside the wat as there was a congregat;^n of monks inside. They soon began to file out whilst the voice was still coming over a loudspea,.zr. They moved towards various forms of transport. Some old monks hung around the entrance and pulled mobile phones out of their monk bags and proceeded to speak on them. It was quite an interesting scene but unfortunately I couldn't get a candid shot as I would have had to ask them to take their picture and they would have put the phone down.
Thoroughly bored with looking at wats, they are quite spectacular although once you've seen one you've seen them all, we went to an internet cafe before going back to the hotel to relax before meeting up with Craig for dinner and a visit to the Night Bazaar.
We went to a French/Thai restaurant, the White Elephant, for dinner and I chose the kebabs which were so huge I could only eat one. It was very average. After this we went to the Night Bazaar as it started to pour down. I was out to buy lots of gifts for people but had to get to an ATM first. After doing one side of the road we agreed to catch up with Craig at the end of the street or he would come and find us. This was to be the last time we saw Craig - something that didn't bother either of us. Craig just disappeared amongst the stalls, obscured by stall holders aiming for a sale.
