Return to Three Kings
- By Jane Henninger
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- 10 Dec, 2023
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Early to rise and two more wats.
After our now standard noodle breakfast, we engaged a local taxi driver to take us outside the ancient city walls with their protective moat to both Wat Umong, the Tunnel Temple, and Wat Sri Suphan, the Silver Temple. After breakfast there were two other Wats I wanted to see. One was the silver wat and the other was outside the old city in caves on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. We got a cab to take us to the cave one and had him wait so he could take us to the one in town.
The Wat Umong literally means Tunnel Temple. It was built over 400 years ago but abandoned for a long time until rediscovered and reopened in the 1940s. With all the ornate buildings comprising other temples it is refreshing to see one so simple with natural vegetation surrounding it, which date back many centuries.
Our second temple or wat of the day was the Silver Wat or Wat Sri Suphan which is coated in silver and maybe some aluminum, but the color is silver. It is quite striking. The detail of the façade is amazing. One problem I had with this temple was that women were not allowed in. This was not the first one we visited that had that restriction. It is because of women having menstrual cycles which is considered unclean. I haven’t had one for years, but still could not go inside. I waited outside on a bench under a tree.
We decided to walk back to our hotel and discovered the Saturday night market just a block from the wat. It ran for blocks with stalls of all sorts of wares from clothing to produce to souvenirs to fish or anything you could want. We managed to get through it without spending a Baht.
We made it back to our hotel with a stop for dinner at a Thai restaurant.
Time to relax before our adventure continues on our next day with a cooking class.
A composite of several encounters in our first 6 months of this yearlong adventure.
Therefore, we are changing out postings to almost exclusively show photographic images with short captions while seeking to post more days to make up for our almost 2 month backlog.
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I had bought a birthday card for him that I actually knew where it was and had it for the trip, but it was about camping and it was supposed to be when were in New Zealand or Australia. I bought it a good year before the trip. At least I had a card for him.
Today we are taking a Thai cooking class at a farm where they grow some of the produce. We are going to a market before to learn what the local products are. Don loves taking pictures at markets so this will be a good start to his day.
We cleaned up after playing with the elephants in the river and went to check out several local Buddhist Temples of interest.
On the way back to the hotel yesterday, July 20th, we had discovered Wat Inthakhin Sadue Muang almost in the middle of the street, but Don had been too tired to appreciate it and he did not take any pictures, then.
I had been looking forward to this day for at least a year, when we started looking at experiences along our chosen route! We had an early morning pick-up for the tuk-tuk trip to the elephant sanctuary. We seemed to be the only guests for this morning visit since no others were picked up from nearby hotels. An hour and a half drive into the jungle-covered mountains and through hamlets of a few huts brought us to the sanctuary camp. We crossed the small stream on a rickety bamboo and cable footbridge, took a right turn at a small, local wat, and walked about a half a kilometer to the small discovery and rehabilitation center. We were given tunics to wear over our clothes, as protection for both us and the elephants, before we met our first pachyderm BFF’s (Best Friends Forever.)
