Monks, palaces, and hill tribes

We visited three attractions today in the mountains near Chiang Mai, an ornate Buddhist temple, the King’s Palace, and a hill tribe village. Lek drove again for us (David and Miriam, Yong and Toy, Toy’s dad, Miriam’s nephew, Lek, Phillip and me) on windy, narrow mountain roads. The roads reminded us of Ecuador but with guardrails and better paving this time.

After Lek parked at the temple site, we climbed the 306 steps to the actual temple in the mountains. The location had an electric car to the top that Toy and her dad took, but the rest of us hoofed it up the steps. Once we started up, we came across the cutest kids, hill tribe members who were decked out in their traditional dress. A mother hovered nearby to keep an eye on the children. The practice is to take the kids’ picture and give them a few baht.  This little cutie got several baht from us as we had to take her picture. There were others along the steps, speaking in Thai. Miriam said they were saying, “You are handsome, you are pretty, take my picture for a few baht.” We donated over twenty baht to the kids just walking up the steps.

At the top, the people were a mix of locals who were there for religious reasons and sight-seeing tourists. The large gold-colored structure was the main temple, but various other religious areas circled it. Some of the locations Miriam could tell us about, but since she was raised Christian, she only knew what she could remember learning in school.  The floral arrangements around the altars were beautiful. The one on the left looked like strawberries from a distance, but it was made of small red flowers and tightly rolled banana leaves. A lot of different versions of  Buddha in the statues, such as the ones on the right. Real monks were also present, holding ceremonies in some of the structures or just sitting like the ones on the left. The people who were there to attend to religious matters didn’t seem to mind the non-Buddhists at all. Sometimes they would stop and smile so we could get a picture. Miriam said that Thais like to have their pictures taken. This lady smiled at me holding my camera before she turned to use the ladle to pour oil into the jar that held a wick. We didn’t feel like we were infringing upon them as we took pictures. Miriam was right.

After the visit to this very popular wat, we traveled another few kilometers to the Royal Palace. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, so they have a king, but the actual government is run by an elected body who chooses the prime minister. The king, however, enjoys even more popular support in Thailand than the Queen of England does in her country. The Thai king has a palace in each of the regions of the country. When he is not at a palace, it is open to the public. The grounds of this palace were landscaped exquisitely. Flowers, ferns, shrubbery, all beautifully arranged.  The building above on the left is for one of the princesses. The one on the right, which was huge, is the actual palace. We couldn’t go inside, but we could walk around. Walking from one building to the next sometimes involved a brick path thru the fern garden, shown on the left.

After the walking tour of the palace grounds, we drove to Doi Pui, home to a Hmong hill tribe that turned their town into an area for people to learn about them. The government encouraged this, to provide income to the villagers in lieu of their former means of income: growing poppies for the opium trade. Thatched roof houses, a museum, a pavillion where the king once came, and locally made crafts for sale. At the museum, Lek and Phillip did their imitation of Hmong warriors. Elephant statues, mossy with age, adorned the pavillion. The climb to the pavillion was steep, but it gave an excellent view of the village with its thatch roof houses, flower garden, and waterfall. And the pavillion was adorned with statues of elephants, mossy from age and the humidity. The kids in the village were friendly. This one posed with Phillip, then spent ten minutes talking to David and Miriam, telling them about learning the Thai language in school, so she now speaks two languages.

The local women were all working on crafts. These two were drawing with wax on fabric which would then be dyed. The fabric would be boiled, releasing the wax. The resulting material had the pattern on it that the women had drawn. The lady on the left was 80 years old!