After five great days in Bangkok, we flew to Chiang Mai a smaller city in Northern Thailand. We stayed at a wonderful hotel called The Inside House, which was one of our favorite hotels on the trip. They spoiled us with high tea every day. This beautiful boutique hotel had spacious rooms with beautiful private pools, and an elegant breakfast was included each day.
Chiang Mai is a great city for walking. There are small restaurants and bars throughout the town. There is also lots of unique shopping. We found a very special ceramics store, Mengrai Kilns, where we purchased quite a few items and had them shipped home. The elephants were our favorite.
And of course, there are many Buddhist temples. In Chiang Mai, many of the Temple's house statues of famous monks. They were sometimes quite eerie, but also very unique. One interesting thing we learned was that the dragons depicted at the entrance of temples are there to protect the temple. The more heads a dragon has the more powerful they are, the most powerful have 7 heads.
The next day we decided to go and visit Doi Suthep, it’s the main temple in Chiang Mai which overlooks the city. There are multiple different temples within the walls of this temple. There are all kinds of statues, and carvings, and ancient bells to ring. Many of the locals come up here too pray to the many Buddhas. There are 300 steps to walk up to get to the large temple at the top of the hill. But there is also a lift to take up if you aren't up for the walk.
We really enjoyed our time in Chiang Mai and its wonderful people, the land of 1000 smiles. Here is a little video of some other moments we had in Chiang Mai.
Comments