Day 234 - White Elephants Cannot Be Trusted

According to legend, when a new Buddha relic was discovered by the king of Chiang Mai, no one could decide where to build a temple to house it. The king decided to put the relic on the back of a white elephant (sacred animal, but not too bright) and release him in the center of town. Wherever the elephant stopped, the temple would be built.

The elephant headed for the hills. Literally. He marched himself about 6km out of town before stopping on a crest overlooking the budding city. So a Wat and Chedi (Thai stupa - where Buddha relics go) were built on the spot. With the advent of automobiles, a winding road was subsequently added. And I do mean winding with bonus ups and downs.

By the time we arrived at the top of the hill all we could do was stare dizzily about and rub our roiling bellies. Dread in anticipation of the ride down did not improve moods.

We did manage to coax ourselves into the cablecar and the rest of the way up the hill to the Wat (That was one ambitious elephant!). The Wat itself was nice, but not any nicer than others we have visited. Same for the view over town - nice, but we've seen better. Furthermore, the whole complex was crawling with people, and the whole thing felt rather touristic. Of course this is probably coloured by the fact that we still hadn't completely recovered from the ride up.

We did meet this fellow guarding one of the entrances. Someone clearly had a 'complicated' relationship with their parents.

The ride down the hill was nearly as bad as the ride up. We didn't toss our cookies, but our tummies made their displeasure known for the rest of the day.

The owner of our hostel was a tourguide before going into hostelling, and so arranges outings for anyone who cares to join nearly every day. Today's agenda was to visit the oldest Wat in town, the first section of the city to be built, adn the Sunday Night Market, the biggest and best in town.

We began at the old Wat which was just as nice as the one on top of the hill, and far easier to reach. The light was perfect causing the old bricks and the saffron robes of the monks sweeping and tending the grounds to glow. The hostel owner was most knowlegeable, giving us not ony a brief history of the Wat, but of Thailand as a whole.

From there, we went into the old city wall where we learned more history, including the story of the ambitious white elephant. Once off the wall, it was only a short hop to the sunday market.

Every Sunday night, the two main cross streets in the old town close completely to vehicles and transform into a 2km by 2km open-air market. Anything and everything is on sale from crafts to mass produced goods to pirated CD's and DVD's. And food. Much of it is conventional (good) street fair - fruit, phad thai, spring rolls, soups - but some of it strays into the bizzare. When I say you can find any meat on a stick, I mean any meat on a stick. Including a giant cockroach. I should have made a video of me crunching him to bits to play in my kitchen in NY. It would be way safer to the cats than roach bombing...though perhaps it could put a dent in my social life...

After the market, we all piled into a shared taxi and headed back to our own quiet neighborhood. Where we had a lovely (and so conventional) soup and rice dinner before walking back to our hostel for another round of TV before bed.