So far crossing the Central Plains, views have been of farmland as far as the eye can see, mainly rice, but also fruit, vegetables and flowers, punctuated with the odd building and town but mountains started to loom all around, covered in trees and scrubby undergrowth. We had already been given a curry lunch and then a cup of tea and a custard bun at 4pm and the journey continued. Then the train stopped and we waited for 30 minutes or so with no explanation. Another engine was attached to the front of our train and we were off again, gradually climbing. We then went through the tunnel, almost 1.5km long that took some 10 years to build. Some time later we came to a halt again and the engine was removed and after a fair wait we were off again. Another stop, this time at a station, another engine was attached and the staff returned with curry and rice in a takeaway carton for each of us .... again not sure if this was planned, or if they thought we needed feeding as we were delayed. Our train left 40 minutes late at 2pm and rather than arriving at 7.30 as scheduled, we rolled in at almost 10.00pm. Fortunately that is the last train trip on our itinerary!
The old kingdom of Lanna was unified into a northern state by King Mengrai who built Chiang Mai, in 1296 and a period of prosperity enabled its own style of art and architecture to flourish. The Burmese captured the city some 200 years later and controlled Lanna through puppet rulers but when Burma sacked Ayutthaya in 1767, the Thais managed to drive out the Burmese and the ruined Chiang Mai was rebuilt. At the end of the 19C, The British, who had control of Burma and also logging rights in the north of Thailand were seen as a threat by Rama V who took measures to integrate the north more with the centre, helped by the arrival of the railway from Bangkok in 1921. Today 80% of Lanna's population are subsistence farmers, finding it hard to earn a living although there is prosperity in the towns from tourism.
We stayed for a week at Banjai Garden, a guesthouse tucked down one of the lanes within the moated old quarter of the city. It had a lovely lobby area overlooking the shady garden to relax when sightseeing became too much!
The main sights of the city were just a short walk away, more wats, but definitely living working wats rather than ruins. We started looking round Wat Meun Ngun Krong because we looked through the gate and the lions on guard enticed us in! The viharn or hall is more squat than the ones we had seen in the south and had beautiful red and gold decoration. Several of the wats we visited had a row of Buddha in 7 aspects, one for each day of the week, and it looks like Tuesday's child gets the best deal, napping on the job!
Then onto the Wat wat we were looking for ... Wat Phra Singh, with a huge array of buildings including a modern viharn, a 14C wood viharn containing Phra Singh with lovely red and gold mural work behind and pictures on the walls from ancient stories. We walked into another hall and saw four praying monks in front of a Buddha ... and it took a few moments in the gloom to realise they were not real ... spooky! Being a lover of all things sparkly, I had to include a close up of this fabulous naga. There was also an old scripture hall, decorated with stucco angels.
The oldest Wat in town in Wat Chiang Man which houses two very special Buddhas which we could barely see. We were more interested in the request that we donate money to fund the purchase of new vacuum cleaners for the monks, and the red and gold murals. As we wandered round the breeze got up, and all the little bells hanging from the eaves tinkled. There was also a chedi with elephants round the base and a hall with beautiful murals showing the life of Buddha.
Next door, Wat Pan Tao was all dressed up ready for Chinese New Year to welcome in the Year of the Monkey and while we didn't realise till we got closer, the blossom was synthetic and attached to the real tree with plastic branches! This maybe is a Chinese New Year theme as we saw a stall in the market selling New Year necessities, like packs with paper clothes, jewellery and mobiles phones as well as stacks of fake money which are burnt by the Chinese so they go to their ancestors for use in the afterlife ... Shame great granny can't phone home! We stopped off in Chiang Mai's very modest Chinatown, to have a look at the celebrations, but apart from a huge night street food market and a beauty pageant decorated with red lanterns nothing much seemed to be going on. Also worth mentioning my custard bun wrapper here as we were bemused by the expiry date till we realised that in Thailand they use the Thai Solar Calendar counted in the Buddhist Era which began 543 years before the Christian Era so we are now in 2559!
One afternoon, we took a tuk-tuk up Doi Suthep, the mountain that rises steeply to the west of town, to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, the north's holiest shrine. It has a good story with a magic relic that miraculously self-multiplied before being enshrined elsewhere, so another home had to be found for the extra relic. King Ku Na put it on the back of a sacred white elephant to see where it took it and the elephant climbed the mountain, trumpeted three times, turned round three times and knelt and died indicating the spot and the Wat was built. First we had to climb 300 steps, flanked by nagas on each side ...
From the lower terrace there are views to the city 300m below, hardly tranquil though as ringing the bells round the edge is said to bring luck.
Entering the upper terrace, the central golden chedi surrounded by ceremonial gold umbrellas is breathtaking and worshippers walk round three times in prayer.
There are plenty of opportunities to gain merit through donation by writing a prayer or message on a gold cloth to be draped round a Buddha, on a bell to tinkle from the eaves or a new tile for the roof. And thankfully, the walk down is a lot easier.
This makes it sound like the city is filled with them ... well it is, but they are spread about, and far more noticeable are the streets filled with tourist services, such as accommodation, restaurants and cafes, offices able to arrange tours, trekking, elephant experiences, cooking classes, zipwiring and tubing, souvenir shops, massage shops and even fish spas! There are also lots of schools and colleges here for the 60,000 students in the city ... all parked down this road maybe! Some catering students had set up shop outside one school and were eager to sell us ginger tea and have their picture taken.
See our second Chiang Mai post to see which of these opportunities we chose!
Yet More Wats and a Moat in Chiang Mai
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Chiang Mai, Thailand
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