The Golden Triangle

On the Thai, Burma and Laos Borders

We load into Ken's Corolla and begin a three day journey through the Golden Triangle in the far northern part of Thailand. We stop at Hot Springs and buy some eggs to boil. Bennett says eating two eggs a day will repel mosquitoes.

Later we come upon the Wat Bang Pong temple. It is relatively modest. The courtyard is full of Thai people who find us rather curious.

The monk says that this new construction will house the monks who are associated with the Temple. It is wonderful that Bennett is fluent in Thai.


A few miles further on we take a detour onto some side roads to see the Temple of the Golden Angel (Wat Pho Chao Thong Thip). They are building a symbolic boat of some sort on the river.



Carol and Bennett shake out numbered sticks which lead to fortune papers. Carol is not to expect a baby soon.

We have lunch in a little restaurant constructed of sticks and a thatched roof. The toilet flushes by poring in a pan of water. The food is very good and spicy and inexpensive.



The Wat Wrong Koon Temple (Muddy Corner is Bennett's translation) is our next stop. Garish means excessively flighty. This temple is garish, white and airy.

A rich businessman built this temple. He only accepts temple donations up to 10,000 baht. He makes no offerings to monks or other good works. Bennett suspects he built the temple to earn merit.

One must live a good life or end up in something like Buddhist purgatory.

This Men's Room sign is fairly explicit.

Temples ahead!



We go to the Excellent Opium Museum at the tip of Northern Thailand. You begin by walking up a long tunnel with eerie music and tortured images.



Burma is in the upper left over the river. Laos is to the right over the Mekong River. We're standing on the tip of Thailand. This is the Golden Traingle according to the Thai Tourism Bureau.

Finally in the evening we visit a "Short Time" hotel in Chiang Rai. It is called the Red Rose. The rooms all have themes. This room is the "Little Mermaid" room. Disney would be annoyed if they only knew.

Most of the rooms are occupied. We go into one very steamy room called the Herbal Sauna room. Insects of some sort, possibly fleas, bite Mrs. Phred.

Occupy the Tiger's Cage

Somewhere North of Chiang Mai

This post was delayed  from December 9 until I could work out some issues with the a new sim card.

We are moving up into the Golden Triangle this morning for three dayswith Bennett and Ken (our driver and guide). Yesterday we took a long ride on an elephant and Mrs. Phred spent 15 minutes in a cage petting a very large tiger.

Ken is our driver. Bennett arranged for us to hire him for a week to see the more remote areas of Northern Thailand. He's doing a great job.

We stopped in an orchid farm.

We stopped to see some butterflies and settled for a tub full of scorpions.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

We catch a ride 400 miles north from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. We fly Bangkok Airways. It's about an hour flight.

Bennett is waiting at the airport to greet us. He has arranged a car and driver (Ken) for the week.

They play Christmas songs on the A-300 speaker system. Christmas is big here, Bennett says, however, that they tend to mix up Santa and the elves with Snow White and the seven dwarfs, so you may see Snow White and Grumpy in department store displays. A happy time to give gifts.

We see three temples before lunch. One is in the mountains in a jungle setting. I talk to a young monk in a red robe. I say "good morning" and he laughs and says "good afternoon". It's 2PM.

The monk asks How I am, how I feel and where I'm from. I answer as carefully as possible. He says the temple complex is a year old when I ask how old it is. I ask how old the buildings are and he says about 600 years.

We vistit a more formal temple called Wat Phra That Doi Sutep. It was commissioned by King Kuena who ruled from 1367-1368.There is a Hmong village near the temple where cars park and many stalls that sell fruit, drinks and souveneirs. We take a cable car to the top. The temple has a great view looking down to Chiang Mai.

The temple has a lot of tourists, but also a lot of local worshippers. They burn candles and incense and offer flowers to the Buddhas. You can buy a bowl of coins and drop one in each of 108 bowls, .representing the 108 different auspicious characteristics of a Buddha.

A mountain stream.

Ken takes us to a very rustic mountainside restaurant. It's down an unlikely dirt road. Sleeping dogs wake up as we pass and move out of the road. This is not a restaurant you would be likely to find without an excellent local guide.

I order snakehead fish sausage and snakehead fish soup. They are both spicy hot and delicious.

This Christmas tree is in the lobby of our hotel, the Royal Princess.

We put the Deet bug spray in 4 ounce plastic bottles to get it through TSA. It melted all the bottles into a smelly, sticky plastic goop inside our backpack. Very strange. I thought plastic was indestructible. No wonder mosquitoes hate Deet.

I lost my memory stick with all my usernames and passwords. Spent most of the night online changing passwords. We even made one call to the States over the hotel phone system. In the morning we found the memory stick on the floor. I think I'll add "5" to all my passwords listed on the memory stick to foil hackers in case I lose the file again. For example, the password Phred666 will now be listed as Phred671 on the memory stick.

A mountain temple in the jungle.



The Emerald Buddha

Bangkok

There are big crowds at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. You can't take pictures inside so most of those on the floor gazing up in rapture are not tourists. I get a shot of the Emeral Buddha from outside the Temple, through a doorway, with an extreme zoom.



I like the way the Buddhists concentrate on virtues rather than sins, turning philosophy inside out.

Some of the virtues are:
Danam (giving)
Silam (righteous conduct)
Pariccagam (personal scacrifice: material and spiritual)
Ajjavan (honesty and freedom from pretence)
Maddavam (gentleness and humility)
Tapam (concentration of effort)
Akkodham (freedom from anger)
Avhimsa (freedom from malice)
Khanti (patience)
Avirodhanam (avoidance of wrongdoing)

The Solid Gold Buddha

The connection here is flaky. It's getting late and I keep losing my work. Therefore the commentary on this blog will be brief.

We walk all day and visit some of the most famous and amazing temples. The city has grown an astounding amount since I was last here in a flight suit 45 years ago.

I could write a book about the ways I've been conned by tuk-tuk drivers in only two days. It is best to stick with metered taxis which are very inexpensive.

After breakfast we start out walking north, then grab a tuk-tuk to the Golden Buddha when the heat and traffic become overwhelming.

The Golden Buddha is solid gold and weighs about eight tons. It was covered with plaster centuries ago because of an invasion and pretty much forgotten as time passed. A few years ago it was bumped by a crane and the monks were very surprised to see what was beneath.

I love these three pink elephants outside the palace complex on the island that contains the old city.

The Reclining Buddha in the Wat Po temple complex is about 135 feet long. We pay off our tuk-tuk driver and hoof it from here to the palace complex, which contains the Emerald Buddha temple.

Yawn...Goodnight world...signing out at midnight. Off to Chiang Mai in the mountains in the morning. Hope it's cooler.