Day 2 (revisited) in Pictures

My day started off at the Chiang Mai Cultural Center:

Center of statue is the King and the two people next to him are his close advisors

The 7 signs that made Chiang Mai a good place to settle

The red of the temple decorations represents blood, meaning life. The gold represents the purity that surrounds the Buddha.

Tou posing with the creepy models of early life in Chiang Mai

huge gong 

OUR TOUR GUIDE WAS A LADYBOY. We were SO excited when we met her- she was a fantastic tour guide- completely hilarious and had an excellent grasp on English!

After the CM Cultural Center, we were given an hour to walk around and get lunch

spicy noodles with fish balls

green tea coconut ice cream

We also stumbled into our first temple

Wai in the temple

Afterwards, we reconvened only to discover we were going to more temples! We headed to Chedi Luang, which means "Great Pagoda."

These are prayer slips- you write your name and family name on the back then the monks hang them on the rafters of the temple for good luck

This was really cute! This Dad was trying to sit his sons down cross-legged so they could meditate before Buddha- this family was so cute!

The old temple in the back was structurally ruined by an earthquake, but parts of the old were taken to make the new! This shows the two together

The monk that we had our "monk chat" with. The conversation was entirely fascinating- hopefully I'll have more opportunities like this while I'm in Thailand!!!

After Chedi Luang, we headed to Umong Temple. The Temple has tunnels that led to safety hundreds of miles away and was used to protect the monks.

outside of the tunnels

inside of the tunnels

"Behold this beautiful body, a mass of sores, a bone-gathering, diseased and full of hankerings, with no lasting, no persisting."

With the edicts of Buddhism

After a little rain shower, we headed back to the hostel. Emma, Katie T, and I visited the Airport Plaza Mall (biggest in Chiang Mai) and were completely overwhelmed by the amount of stores! We took a tuktuk (or rikshaw) back home!

After the ride, we went to a concert with one of our Thai Buddies Malisa!

Afterwards, we headed down to the old outer wall and got dinner in the street food market... all 12 of us. (fitting huge groups into taxis seems to be a recurring theme here). For dinner, I had a bag of lychees and some spicy chicken kebabs!

playing taxi tetris

spicy chicken kebabs.

Can't wait to see where the adventure takes me next!