A tour of temples

Seriously, you can't throw a shoe in Chiang Mai without hitting a temple.  :)

Today was our first day in Chiang Mai.  We spent about half the day doing the Lonely Planet walking tour of Chiang Mai, and stopping in any interesting stores we saw along the way.  The walking tour is in the Old Town section of Chiang Mai, and we visited a lot of beautiful temples.  I came prepared with a light shawl I could stuff into my purse and take out when I wanted to walk inside a temple; they all require shoulders and knees to be covered.

Wat Phra Singh.

Wat Phra Singh is under renovations. :)

The back of Wat Phra Singh.

Wat Tung Yu.  I liked the colorful roof.

Wat Phan Tao, made of teak.

Wat Chai Phra Kiat.

Wat Chedi Luang.  Funny thing about our visit - we actually missed the main
reason to visit it, which is the ruins of a chedi behind it that is said to protect
the city.  Oops. :)

Gavin tried to sneakily take a photo of these young monks with their
cell phones, but he obviously got caught.  :)  I found it amusing that women
have to cover shoulders and knees to visit the temples, but if these guys have
internet on their cell phones they can look at all the shoulders and knees
they want...  :D

On our way to Wat Chiang Man we saw this
electrician working on the powerlines with his
bamboo ladder leaned DIRECTLY ON the
power lines!

Wat Chiang Man.

The inside of Wat Chiang Man.

After visiting (or at least snapping a quick photo of...) most of the temples on the walk, we had lunch in a local noodle kitchen; we were the only tourists in the place.  We were trying to find one listed in Lonely Planet, but they spelled it out in English and all the places only had the names of their restaurants in Thai.  :)  I had some kind of fish ball and other processed meat noodle dish, and Gavin had the same in a soup.  I accidentally dumped a bunch of fish sauce into my noodles thinking it was soy sauce, but it still tasted pretty good.  :)

Gavin was feeling tired and cranky (he caught a cold), so he went back to our hotel to take a nap, and I went to get another massage from Blind Massage, where they only hire blind massage therapists; they are supposed to be better because of their heightened sense of touch.  I am still a little scared of Thai massages after my first two were pretty intense, so I asked for an oil massage.

I was quite surprised by a couple of things starting the massage.  A.  I had to share a room with another woman, AND I had to be in my undies since it was an oil massage, and not even a curtain between us!  B.  It was a GUY massaging me!  Not that I have a problem with that, but all Thai massage therapists I have seen are women.

The massage itself felt good, but it was the most repetitive massage I have ever had. He just did the same stoke in the same place about 20 times, then moved to another stroke or another place and did that 20 times over my whole body.  It felt nice, but it was pretty boring.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll get brave and try another Thai massage.  :)

After the massage I went back to the hotel and woke Gavin up from his nap, then we headed down to  for dinner in our first túk túk ride (a little open-air taxi on three wheels, powered by what felt like a moped engine).  There happened to be an art/crafts fair going on, so we wandered through the stalls and did a little shopping.  Then we had dinner in a restaurant called After Nine, which was on a balcony a story above Thanon Nimmanhaemin. We both ordered dishes labeled “spicy,” and we definitely had our hottest but also one of the tastiest meals we have had here in Thailand.  After dinner we walked a bit farther down Thanon Nimmanhaemin to Warm Up bar, where we were for the most part the oldest people in the entire place.  From our cozy seat near the door we had great people watching. We got to watch all the 20-somethings coming in, and we noted this must obviously be the place to “see and be seen.”  People were dressed to the nines and it is WEDNESDAY; I was giggling at the ones trying too hard and the ones with ridiculously high platform heels, especially since I (in flat-as-you-can-get Vibram Five Finger shoes) still was a good 4 inches taller than any of them.  :D  There were two live bands playing in two different sections of the bar.  I had an absolutely amazing cocktail with fresh strawberries and limes muddled in cassis and other tasty stuff, and Gavin ordered a beer that was served like white wine with the bottle in a bucket of ice, and any time his glass of beer ran low somebody would come pour more beer for him from the bottle.  Fancy.

The ubiquitous túk túk.

The art fair at Thanon Nimmanhaemin.

Food stalls at Thanon Nimmanhaemin.

Gavin at our balcony dinner restaurant on Thanon Nimmanhaemin.

After our drinks we caught a tuk tuk back to our hotel, then went to bed.  Tomorrow we will try our own hand at Thai cooking!

PS. I skipped 12/8 because it was not at all interesting – fully an in-transit day.  Hour ride from LaLaanta to ferry, ferry to Koh Phi Phi, transfer onto ferry to Phuket, hour ride in taxi to airport, flight to Bangkok then to Chiang Mai, cab ride to our hotel De Chai!  Yikes!