The Hills are Alive

Being in Chiang Mai Old City is always a treat, and there is lots to do and see- with the occasional rest over a cuppa, and when you can get out of the city and into the hills, there are delights awaiting. Needless to say, everyone else is scurrying out to see those delights too, so the 3 places I visited were also full of tourists.

Any of the Red Cars- which are modified utes really, with benches under cover in the back, make them little buses, advertise that they will take you to the main tourist attractions....I went to 3 of them in one day, but in a taxi.

The first place is Doi Suthep, which is an ancient temple atop of the hill that overlooks the whole of Chiang Mai, The day I went was beautiful and warm, but the view of the city was clogged with smoke or smog and my camera wouldn't have picked out the view at all. To get there, you wind up the mountain through jungles/rain forest which is extremely pleasant. Many people were walking or cycling up the hill-which I found admirable. Not sure how long the walk would be, but I am sure that up and back would be a day's worth. 

To get to the temple, one has to navigate through a Hillside Thai shopping mall, consisting of stalls selling- well, basically-crap. Once you get passed that, there are 300 steps to the temple to navigate, guarded by two extremely long tailed dragons on either side of the steps. 

Once at the top there are several small temples and one big one. Inside the main temple are Buddhas from all different ages, stories of the life of Buddha around some of the walls, and several stations where people light candles, or add flowers, or dip oil into cups with a flame kept alive by adding oil.

I always find it inspiring to see Buddhists in the process of devotion, and several were circum-navigating around a cheddi, so I joined them. [This is what I saw Buddhists do in Bodgea when I was in India]. I think one is meant to go around 7 times in one direction, and 7 in another, though here everyone seemed to go in the same direction.

Some of the Buddhas were obvioulsy hundreds of years old, with gold flakes pealing off of them and fluttering in the breeze.

There are many more of these, but for some reason right now I am not able to access the Camera card on this computer......

to be continued