Chiang Mai - Part Three

Ugh.......I was in bed for two days with a cold, still recovering from the heavy congestion part of it, but my energy level is much better. Now Nancy is trying to avoid coming down with it.

We've been real tourists these last 8 days what with Terra here, and her agenda to see this and that and go here and there. Oh, the unheralded sacrifices parents make for their children. Really though, this is far from the sort of thing I would choose to be doing. Including the driving required. But what are you going to do?

Doi Suthep, a large temple complex up a mountain just outside of Chiang Mai, where we went yesterday, was crawling with the most people per square foot I think we've encountered anywhere thus far. This is clearly “High Season” for tourism in Thailand, and this major tourist attraction demonstrated what that might look like.

We also went to the “Sticky Waterfall”, Bua Tong, a few miles outside Chiang Mai. This is a real waterfall, but the difference here is that one can walk up it, because the rock surfaces are covered with (mostly) algae free grippy limestone deposits, which make them walkable up through the cascading downward flowing waters. Huh!? I only fell down into the water at the very top, where there are in fact algae deposits on the rocks and it is in fact slippery. Terra had no such trouble. Hmmm.

A few days earlier we went to the famous White Temple, near Chiang Rai, farther up north into Thailand and very near the Myanmar (Burmese) border. At least I didn't have to do the six hours of driving for that outing, because our new friend Barry took us all in his big Toyota Hilux truck. There were an awful lot of people there too, but the space was larger and the feeling wasn't so condensed. Barry's chief motivation was a piece of lemon meringue pie, and we had some other varieties of entirely unhealthy and of course good tasting pies. My favorite piece of this unique edifice wasn't the edifice at all, but a quiet, away from it all, garden setting Buddha-under-a-tree shrine which most visitors ignore since it's nothing dramatic or particularly uncommon in Thailand.

Today looks to be a day of rest for us all, with my favorite agenda of nowhere to go and nothing to do. Maybe tomorrow will be massage day. I know Nancy and I need one. And then we take Terra to the airport at about 4:30 for her flight back to Bangkok, and on to Tel Aviv. Happy trails, daughter.