Temple Tour of the Old Walled City
05 November 2009 | Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand
DAY 3
We had a lazy start to the day today and woke late before ambling down to a cafe for a leisurely breakfast in the sun. The temperature here is lovely after the humidity of Langkawi. We pulled out the Lonely Planet and began to plan our day, after the previous afternoons adventure we realised you could actually walk around aimlessly without seeing anything, we needed a plan!
There is a walk in the Lonely Planet that takes in the temples of the 'old walled city', so we decided to do that. We looked around for a tuk-tuk to take us to the start of the walk which was a fair distance from where we were, at that moment a tuk-tuk driver called Dam pulled over and offered to show us 5 temples for the equivalent of $2.80. Plans for walking were shelved and we jumped into the tuk-tuk eagerly. We negotiated a rate for the day not wanting to be rushed and Dam happily agreed to show us around for the day for $10.
First stop, photo op outside the walls of the old city. Dam pulled over and ran out into the road to stop the traffic for us, we quickly ran across not wanting to get him killed. Dam insisted we have our photo taken together, took our camera from us and proceeded to snap off some shots. He turned out to be a very good photographer. Once he was happy we returned to the tuk-tuk and headed to our first temple.
Unfortunately, as sometimes happens with unofficial tours, there was a communication problem with our driver and I have no idea of the name of our first temple, I just know that it was beautiful and that I felt terrible that I wasn't prepared with my shawl for covering my shoulders. Dam assured me it was fine but it is very rude in Thai culture to go into a temple uncovered. Of course, I'm sure the Thai's are so used to rude tourists here in Chiang Mai, they are just too polite to say anything to us! There were a lot of young monks wandering around and we were told by a Thai man, (who had learnt his English in Sydney), that the young men are sent to the monastery to further their education as where they are from there are no high schools. He was there to teach English to the novices. We walked around taking photos of the amazing architecture and statues. We were unlucky to arrive a day too late to enjoy one of the many festivals they have in the area. The festival of lights or Yi Peng is held on a full moon, the festival lasts for 3 days in which time boats shaped like lotus made out of banana leaves are floated on to the canals with candles in them and the festival culminates on the last night when they launch thousands upon thousands of huge paper lanterns into the sky. We saw some of the photos of it and it looked amazing, apparently they have problems with the airport and planes nearby with so many lanterns in the sky. We are sorry we missed it, it would have been a beautiful sight.
We moved on to the next temple, Wat Chedi Luang. The temple complex is huge and encloses a large lanna-style 'chedi' which dates back to 1441. The 'chedi' is believed to have been damaged in 1775 by the cannon fire of King Taksin during the recapture of Chiang Mai from the Burmese. The architecture is incredible. There are many different statues depicting Buddha, fat ones, sitting ones, reclining ones, you name it they've got it. There are also a couple of smaller temples in honour of some of their more revered monks. The freaky thing about these temples were the life-size lifelike wax models of the monks. It took a few minutes to realise they weren't real and looking at them closely I still expected them to blink or say 'boo!'
From there we moved on to our 3rd temple, Wat Lok Molee. The temples name first appeared in historical texts in 1367. The sixth Lanna King of the Mengrai dynasty invited a group of 10 monks from Burma to bring their study of Buddhism to his kingdom which is present day Northern Thailand. The monks stayed at this temple. The chedi was built in 1527 and the main hall in 1545. The temple houses the remains of members of the royal Mengrai Dynasty. That's some old buildings!
On to the 4th temple, Wat Ou Sai Kham, the name means 'Temple of the Golden Sand', it is more than 300 years old but there is evidence that it may be even older. The monks abandoned it many years ago because the size of the local village could not support the monastery. They have since returned though and upon entry Jay and I found a young monk battling with a Rubik's cube. The drawcard for this temple are their jade Buddha's. They searched extensively for the jade to carve them and had literature available to explain the differences between the different types of jade. You are invited to inspect the jade and touch it, but my favourite part of this temple was a large, smiling Buddha, a sign below the Buddha instructs you to place both palms flat on the Buddha's belly and make a wish, which Jay and I both did.
After 4 temples we needed a break, Dam took us to an umbrella making centre. He tried to tell us that it was Bo Sang, the umbrella village and kept saying, 'same, same!' but I think he was just telling us that because he must get some kind of a commission for taking us there. It was interesting to look at all the same, the workers are in the open so you can see every stage of the process. They make cloth and 'sa paper' umbrellas. The 'sa paper' comes from the bark of the mulberry tree, first they boil the bark, then clean it, beat it with a huge mallet, put the fibre into a tank which they then sift, the sifting trays are then placed in the sun and when dry simply peeled off the trays. There were some characters there and they didn't mind having their photos taken. Having bought up big and sent some gifts home to our families for Chrissy we took off again. We stopped for a beautiful lunch of noodle soup before Dam whisked us away again.
Regrettably Dam had gotten the wrong idea about us and proceeded to stop at all the tourist spots, 'Thailand's Biggest Jewellery Store', 'Thailand Best Lacquerware' all the big factory warehouses where you can see how things are made but are shadowed everywhere and then led into a big display store where they try and get you to part with your hard earned tourist dollars. I don't blame him for trying, if you were making a few bucks a day you'd try and get a commission where you could too but I don't like being shadowed when I shop or feeling under pressure to buy things. We finally managed to stop him before he dropped us at a carpet making place!
We decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and arranged for him to pick us up the next day at 10.30am for another day of fun! That night we ventured into the night market in search of a feed and with our shopping mojo securely in place!
THE PHOTOS FROM DAY 3 ARE NOW UP IN THE PHOTO GALLERY.