A fairly early start this morning to the airport for the 10-30 flight, pretty painless 70 minutes up to Chiang Mai, and 15 minutes to the hotel. Good!
A quick check-in, and off for lunch in the city. Thai of course, but they managed to find some chicken noodles for me that I could eat so I was happy.
Fron there a couple of hours at a temple (Wat Phra Tat Doi) to the west of the city, on the top of a hill. Chiang Mai is 300 mtrs up, (1000 ft), and the temple is at 1000 mtrs,(3500 ft), so the trip up was on a very steep and winding road. Unfortunately the view of the city was obscured a little by low cloud, so I was unable to photograph what could have been an excellent view.
I think I have previously said that most Thais are Buddhist, in fact 95% of them, with just 3% Moslem and 2% Christian. So there are a lot of Buddhist temples here, and this one is one of the more important ones.
Once again there are a great number of steps to climb, (although we could have taken the lift!).
Anne & I joined a couple of others to climb the 300 steps to the top, after lunch it was not easy! Anyway it was certainly worth doing, the temple was quite beautiful, with a golden Stupa.
We were blessed with Holy Water by a monk, who we had to approach on our knees. It is very rude to point one's toes at either Buddha or the priest, and one's head should always be lower.
I took the lift down as there was no rail on the steps, and I did not feel safe.
Afterwards the schedule called for a two hour visit to a massage parlour, however Anne & I just wanted to go back to the hotel to unpack and have a swim, so we relaxed while the others had what they told us was a great experience with the local massage experts.
In the evening we all went out to a Thai dinner and dancing show, it was very good, but unfortunately I had forgotten the camera. There will be a next time!
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