On The Road From Sukhothai to Chiang Mai

Today we travel by car from Sukhothai to Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand, and fondly called "The Rose of The North." Before we reach Chiang Mai, our guide stops at a market and I am excited to find new treasures for my suitcase. Live frogs, fish, mushrooms, crickets, grubs are not what I had in mind as treasures.

Our first stop in Chiang Mai is Wat Doi Sutep Temple. As we pile out of the van we are swarmed by vendors selling temple bell replicas, paintings and all manner of tchotskis. The entrance to the temple is a 290 step stairway straight up the mountain with a nasty looking dragon balustrade.

The center of the temple is a spire pagoda which contains relics of the Buddha. As I understand, when Buddha died, he was cremated and his bones and pieces of hair were taken to pagodas all over Asia.

The complex is large and filled with the sound of bells and chanting.

As we enter one of the temples, a monk is seated giving blessings to those kneeling before him. We kneel with the others. My joints are not working well, so I am not able to bend as low as others. The monk is putting a brush in sacred water and flicking it over all before him. I feel a few drops of the water and it is refreshing in this 98% humidity with temps running in the high 90's.

I look up and the monk is staring right at me. He lets loose with a full brush of water and I get a faceful. What?? Does he know I am not a Buddhist? Does he think I am being disrespectful for not bending lower?

I try to make amends for whatever I did to deserve the faceful of water by putting a handful of bahts in the donation box and crawl out of the temple.

The last stop for the day is the Chiang Mai Night Market, shoppers paradise selling everything one can imagine. There is luggage, silk everything, clothes, jewelery, furniture, lamps puppets,plants, wood carvings, astrologers doing their readings and food courts. This melee takes place every night from 6-1PM. After three hours I feel like a whirling dervish and decide to take a tuk tuk back to the hotel. This is an experience in itself. The road is congested with tuks, cars, bicycles and masses of people all moving in a helter- skelter motion.