Everybody Chiang Mai tonight!

We are officially approaching temple overload. Seriously. It's just like old church overload in Latin America, only worse. There are only so many temples you can see without them all starting to seem the same. Chiang Mai tipped me over the edge on this one. There are over 300 Wats here, all glittering gold and beautiful and ornate. That's as many as Bangkok! I'm going to have to start pacing myself, since we are heading to a new region of the world next week (Nepal), and I want to enjoy the new styles of religious buildings we'll see there.

We've spent the last couple of days enjoying Chiang Mai. This is a city that is set up for tourism. There are so many restaurants, bars, and guesthouses it's ridiculous. This of course means that there are great cafes and coffeeshops, too. Visitors come here to go on treks, elephant rides, rafting, etc, so pretty much everyone and their dog offers these sorts of tours. Since neither Sarah nor I are interested in doing these things here, we're off the hook on that one. Instead, we've been enjoying the wats and markets and whatnot. Last night was the huge Sunday market, with streets full of vendors. We tried all sorts of goodies (edamame beans, waffles, passion fruit juice, etc) and enjoyed the chaos for over two hours -- that has to be a record for us. It was a lot of fun. Sarah even went out on a limb and got a dumpling, the first of these since China. She opted for the BBQ pork bun, though the Pao Rabbit Cream flavor came in a close second. =)

We also found a great coffee shop here, so we've had a required couple of hours each day to read the paper, eat desert, and drink some great coffee.

Today we hooked up with a taxi driver named Long (pronounced Lawwng) who couldn't have been older than 16. He was a funny kid, and took us around to several wats and a bunch of craft factories for an obscenely low price. He was definitely getting a commission for bringing people to some of the shops (I mean seriously, how many Persian rugs shops can we NOT buy something at?), but since he gave us such a good deal and he actually took us to a couple of great places, we humored him by going into each store. The highlights of the day were the big gold and white wat in the pictures below, and the silk-making factory where they actually spun the thread off the cocoons. Really amazing.

We're heading out tomorrow to little Chiang Dao for what I hope will be a couple days of good birding. I'll write more when we return!

Later-
-matt!

ps- Sarah wanted me to mention that I drank beer out of a straw the other night... I felt like a local doing it!


Wat with elephant, Chiang Mai


Hello Piggy Lady -- she sells mini pork balls.


Young monks, Chiang Mai


Suan Dok Wat, Chiang Mai


Suan Dok Wat, Chiang Mai.


Some of the offerings at a wat, Chiang Mai


Sarah and a Naga guarding a temple.


A silk weaver.