September 14th, 2019
Today, after we got up we had the hostel’s free breakfast with the new friends we took the slow boat with. We rented three scooters and the six of us went out to explore some temples in the area. We first went to the iconic “white temple” in Chiang Rai. It was created by a very eccentric artist who wanted to attract visitors to his home town. We arrived there and it was stunning! Definitely the most beautiful temple I have been to.
B and I with Ellen from England, Greg from Hawaii, Nitay from Israel, and Tiara from Singapore.
It was amazing and had very elaborate detail. On the inside of the temple we were not allowed to take photos but the artist had many mural paintings with random pop culture references.
There were religious paintings with a random Batman or Spiderman hiding somewhere. He had things from the Matrix, Kung fu Panda, Hello Kitty, and all kinds of weird stuff! He is such an incredible artist though. He also had a gallery there featuring a lot of his other work. He had one painting that was George Bush and Osama Bin Laden on a nuclear rocket together that was titled “Love’.
The temple was truly amazing and definitely worth our stop in Chiang Rai. After the white temple, we proceeded to the “blue” temple. I don’t think any temple can really rival the white one as far as what I have seen, but the blue was cool too. After walking around there, the group of us went to lunch before making our way back to our downtown hostel. We all got on the afternoon bus to Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is the largest city in the North of Thailand. We have been to Southern Thailand already on this trip, and have traveled a big circle and looped our way back around to hit the North. Being back in Thailand, we are excited for the cheap fruit smoothies, 7-Elevens with toasty sandwiches, and the amazing cheap food. What we could live without are the really hard beds that seem to be common in Thailand. They are literally the hardest beds I have ever felt. Several times I have had to check under the sheet to see if it was indeed even a mattress or just a slab of concrete covered with a sheet.
We arrived in Chiang Mai and got checked into our hostel. We went back out on foot to see some of the city and get some food. It was Saturday so we walked to the “Saturday” night market. There was a huge amount of food, and I found the best food stand in the world! Gyozas have always been my favorite and this place had cheap, homemade, vegetarian gyozas that were awesome!
