The Most Beautiful Temple in Thailand

I've been very bad at keeping up my blog lately... So, the biggest news is that I've extended my trip in Asia for another few days.  I thought that a week wasn't enough time in Laos, so I added on another week to my trip.

Last time I wrote, I had just left Pai and was heading to Chiang Rai.  In Chiang Rai, I saw the most beautiful temple in the world.  After that, I went over to Laos.  We took a slow boat for two days down the Mekong River to get to Luang Prabang in Laos.  From Luang Prabang, I went to Vang Vieng and finally down to the capital city of Laos, Vientiane.

Here are some pictures of the most beautiful temple in the world - The White Temple in Chiang Rai (also called Wat Rong Khun).  It's a very modern (and somewhat cryptic) temple, and it's still being built.  They estimate that the temple will be finished in 80 years.

It's beautiful, right?  That's me and Dan in front of the temple.  Dan is from Manchester, and I met him on the bus from Pai to Chiang Rai.  He wasn't exactly the nicest of people... In fact, he actually couldn't say anything nice at all.  When I asked him to say something nice for once, he was silent for something like 20 minutes because he couldn't think of anything to say.  That being said, we ended up hanging out for close to 2 weeks and became pretty good friends.  Everyone has their quirks.

These are two more pictures of the hands reaching up from the ground in front of the temple.  There seems to be a pretty morbid theme here.  There are skulls everywhere, and the paintings inside the main temple (which you aren't allowed to take pictures of) are pretty amazing criticisms about materialism and our consumerist culture.  When someone first told me that there were paintings of spiderman inside, I was pretty disgusted.  However, the paintings really are beautiful.  There are gas lines and blood dripping into open mouths with the burning twin towers in the background and spiderman crouching in the corner wondering if he should come save us yet.  This temple is a really powerful place.

This man stands at the entrance to the walkway up to the temple.  He's pretty viking-like and powerful-like, don't you think?  I like how the artwork in this temple pulls figures and symbols from so many different places.

 This is me with one of the White Temple Buddhas.

This is the little knob that you use to open the gate on the fence to leave the white temple.  There were skulls everywhere.  There were even trees with screaming skulls hanging off of them.

This is the part of the temple that's not finished yet.  There are no shiny mirror things on it, and the inside is entirely empty.  I'll have to come back in 80 years to see it...

This glorious place, my friends, is the bathroom.  Most other places in Thailand just have you pee in a hole in the ground.











OK, internet here in Laos isn't very fast, so uploading these pictures is taking forever.  I'll just put up this post for now, and I'll add stories from Laos once I get back to Bangkok (which will be in only 12 hours!).  So, here I go aboard the lovely sleeper train to Bangkok... let's hope all of my things don't get stolen - I've heard some horror stories about these sleeper trains.

Would you like some coffee with your Pai?

Pai is a place where you can go to a coffee shop, sit down next to an Israeli stranger, and have the most meaningful conversation of your life.  Pai is a place where the sun is shining, but it doesn't burn you because you've been out traveling for so long.  Pai is a bustling town of 2000 people surrounded by hills and rivers that smile at you and sing "welcome to your new home."

In Pai, the most commonly used word is "love."  Signs everywhere say "Pai is in love."  Souvenirs are covered in hearts and smiley faces.  What a change from the vagina ashtrays and marijuana posters that are the top-selling items in Bangkok.  What a welcome change.

Pai is a place where a Muslim woman in a full burka sells the best blueberry muffins in town.  Pai is a place where an old man - completely white from his hair to his toes - can say "this is my home now."  Pai is a truly international town where people come for the rumors and stay for the truth.  People find trivial reasons to stay in Pai: They like the ice-cold mountain rivers splashing against their backs on hot, rainless days.  They like the rain when it finally comes and the warm Thai father figure who says "Sawatdekup.  Come sit here - it's too wet out there."  They like how the geckos change colors and how the dogs sleep in the middle of the main road.  They like Pai (and coffee and icecream and papaya salad), and they find no reason to be anywhere but here.

But really - How many times do you look at your life and smile because you're truly happy?  How many times do you lie down because you want to, and not because someone pushed you there?  How many times do you let a mosquito bite you because, well, this is their world too?  How many times have you lied down on a warm rock in the pouring monsoon and thought "actually, thunder has a very nice sound."  For me, Pai is a special place because it gives me these things.

I left Pai yesterday.  I guess I'm on a schedule now - I have to get through Laos and catch a plane from Bangkok on June 13th.  Where did the last 5 months go?  When I bought that plane ticket to leave Thailand, June 13th seemed so far away - like it would never come.  Now, I'm becoming that traveler who gets to say "I'm going home soon."

"Home?  Like, to your bungalow?"
"No, I'm leaving Asia."
"Good for you, dude.  Good for you."

I know that this traveling life isn't a sustainable thing, but it's hard to let go of something so great.  Pai is an especially hard place to let go of.  However, I guess that one of the best things I learned on this trip was how to let go of the people, places, and possessions that become very special to you.

OK, enough sentimental stuff.  Here are some pictures from Pai.  This is the Nam Tok Mo Paeng waterfall with some American boys swimming in it.  The waterfall actually continues into a bigger waterfall after this little pool.  The little waterfall that you see in this picture is a perfect natural waterslide.  You can actually even jump off the rock above the waterfall into the pool - it's pretty deep.

This is the Chinese Village right outside of Pai before you get to the waterfall.  It was a really cute place, and everyone there actually speaks Chinese. 

This is more of the Chinese Village.

The Chinese Village has a man-powered Ferris wheel.  This picture is a few of us on the Ferris wheel. It's a really difficult project to get on and off of it, but it's a blast once you're on.

This is the main temple in the Chinese Village.  It's really nice and clean, and it has a good view of the valley.

This is the view from the Chinese temple.  It looks much better in person.

This is one of the American guys (Mike) shooting things with a crossbow.  It's much harder than it looks.

This is me on my motorbike riding around the Pai countryside!  I've gotten really good at riding them, and I think I might even get one once I'm home and I've made a little bit of money.

This is a lovely Irish man named Will/Steve.  When I met Will/Steve, he had this brilliant idea that we should all just pick random names for eachother, since we're just travelers and would forget eachother's names after a few days anyway.  The German girls and I decided that he looks like a Steve, but I found out later that his real name is Will.  He and the American boys decided that I look like a Sara, so that's what I was called for my week in Pai.

This is another waterfall right outside of Pai.  I can't remember the name of it for the life of me. 

Here's me under the waterfall.  I've always wanted to stand under a waterfall.

This is me at the Pai canyon.  It wasn't too impressive of a canyon, but at least it had a nice trail that you could walk around.

Here's Will/Steve at the canyon.

This is the trail that goes around the canyon.  It was kind of fun to walk on these skinny little paths - it makes you feel pretty hardcore.



These pictures don't even show half the beauty of Pai.  I was so excited about being there that I barely took any pictures.  I guess I'm also a bit behind on writing my blog, because I've now been in Chiang Rai for 2 days, and I'm leaving to go to Luang Prabang (in Laos) tomorrow morning.  Compared to the schedule I made while I was planning my trip, I'm only 1 day behind for entering Laos.  Not bad, I'd say.  Throughout my trip in Thailand and Malaysia, however, I've been visiting many fewer places than I initially planned on and spending more time in those places.  I hope I have enough time in Laos!

Oh My, Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is the biggest northern city in Thailand with about 174,000 people.  Even though Chiang Mai is a relatively big city, it's a nice place to be and it isn't terribly busy.  Chiang Mai has a nice, relaxed feeling to it compared to Bangkok.

This picture is me at one of Chiang Mai's millions of Buddhist temples.  The temples here are mostly bright, new, and beautiful.  Most of them are plastered with gold and have these lovely dragons flanking the entrance. 

This is a pile of catfish in the little pond at one of the monasteries.  They sell fish food at the monasteries, and you can go into their pond to feed them.  The result is this squirming mess. 

 This is one of the less new temples in Chiang Mai.  This place is called Wat Chedi Luang, and one of the monks who was walking around here told me that it is the biggest stupa in Chiang Mai.  Apparently it used to be overall the tallest building in Chiang Mai a long time ago.

 These are some of the people I met at the guest house I'm staying at.  Of course, every now and then you have to take a break from temple tours to hang out in one of the nice rooftop restaurants.

This is me hanging out with some holy people at the temple.  That's what we do in Thailand.

Guess what - another Buddha!  This one is way different from the ones in Sukothai, though.  He's new and colorful (and absolutely enormous).

This is the inside of one of the temples.  Later this day, we went to another temple that looked similar to this.  I was sitting there talking to an American guy named Will about this and that, and then a monk came in to ask us for help in translating something in English.  We talked for a few hours about all sorts of things, and then he asked us to stay for the chanting that the monks do every evening.  He gave us a sheet of paper with their chants written on it, and he showed us the proper ways to bow during the chanting.  So, we stayed, chanted, and meditated.  It was fabulous.  These chanting sessions are a really great way to clear your mind and energize yourself.

This is part of one of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai.  The temple is called Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, and it's a huge temple on top of the biggest mountain in the area.  I went up here with a nice Danish guy named Hendrik that I met at my guest house.  The next few pictures are all of the same temple.

This is the Chinese Buddha.  There is a lot of him around Chiang Mai's temples.  That's probably because we're so far north and closer to China.

Hendrik and I decided to take a long walk down the road away from the temple, and this is what we found.  It was a really nice Chinese-style thing with a pretty garden, and it was sitting way up the hill with a beautiful view of the valley.  In this picture, you can see that there's also a dog there.  We started following this dog around, and he took us to some pretty nice places.

 This is Ban Doi Pui - a little mist-covered town up on the mountain.  (This is another place that the dog lead us to.)  It was a really little town, and it showed me that Thailand does have nice places where people are actually living their lives - like, not everyone is stuck in the tourism industry.

This is me in a really great garden in Ban Doi Pui.  This garden was amazing.  It was right next to a waterfall, and there were flowers all over the hill next to the waterfall.

This is a fountain at that garden.  I keep seeing this statue everywhere, and I have no idea who she is or what she stands for.  I'm guessing that she's involved in Buddhism somehow?

The Dawn of Happiness

 From Ko Phagnan, David and I made our way north to Sukothai spending one night in Bangkok.  Sukothai means "rising of happiness," and it was the capital of Thailand a long time ago.  Now, Sukothai is a big historical site with really impressive ruins.  David and I took a day to rent bicycles and ride around the Sukothai ruins.  The next day, we went to another set of ruins in Si Sanchanalai (about 50km north of Sukothai).

 There are tons of Buddha statues in these ruins, but most of them are pretty burnt and weathered.  This is probably the most in-tact Buddha that we saw.  Unfortunately, the signs at Sukothai don't really explain much of the history of the area.  However, David and I came up with a theory that everything was burnt down at some point or another, because most of the ruins look pretty black.  However, that might also just be how this kind of rock weathers... no idea.

 This is a really big Buddha and a really little me.

 David and I played hide-and-go-seek here.  He ended up having to come look for me, even though I was supposed to be the seeker.  There are a lot of ruins to hide in...

 This is a pretty cool place, right?  Being the lazy person I am, I spent a lot of time just lying around by the ruins and thinking about life.  It's a great place to waste some time.

 This is David looking Buddha-like.

 This is David with our bicycles.  They give pink ones to the girls and ugly ones to the guys.  My bike also had a really nice bell that I used as much as possible (even though there was no one around to ring a bell at...).

 I knooow you might think that all the Buddhas look the same, but I think they're all really great.  Keep in mind that I'm only posting a very small fraction of the Buddha photos I took...

 This is me and David standing in front of the main Sukothai ruin site.

 This is where the photos start from Si Sanchanalai.  Si Sanchanalai is an hour bus ride north of Sukothai and it is much quieter than Sukothai (if that's even possible...).  There were basically no other people in the whole park while we were there.  Si Sanchanalai also had much more impressive ruins than Sukothai.  This was probably one of my favorite places that I've visited so far.

 I like to call this guy the Blank Buddha. 

 From what I understand from the signs (written in pretty bad English), this is a cheti in the khmer style.  I'd like to have one of these at my house when I grow up.

 We climbed up into an old stupa ruin that gave us pretty good views of the ruins nearby.  This is me sitting at the top of the stupa thing.

 This is David at the entrance to a little room on top of the stupa.

 This is what it looked like inside.

 Guess what... More Buddhas!  These are newer ones that were inside a temple.

 This was my favorite ruin out of all of them.  This one has a lotus style cheti thing, and it was located off in the forest before you got to the main site.  It sort of reminded me of a fairytale.

 This is the main stupa of the Si Sanchanalai site.

 This is me chillin with the buddhas.  I think I fit in quite well.

This is the last Buddha we saw.  He's located at the top of the Si Sanchanalai hill, and you have to go up 144 steps to see him.  Every step was definitely worth it.















These pictures were all from yesterday and the day before.  Today, I left David and took a bus farther north to Chiang Mai.  The bus took 6 hours, and I'm pretty exhausted, so I haven't seen much in Chiang Mai yet.  However, from what I have seen, it looks like a pretty amazing city.  I haven't been in a big city for a long time (besides the day in Bangkok), so I'm pretty excited to hang out around here for a while.