Today we went to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, one of the most sacred temples in Northern Thailand located 13km outside of Chiang Mai at about 1000m height in the nearby mountains. Through the hotel we booked a driver and included Phra Tamnak Phu Phing, the Royal Palace Gardens, which are nearby and a visit at a local Hmong Village (it was only 100 Baht more) when we made the booking. As expected, the visit to the Hmong people was disappointing – it’s just a big collection of souvenir stands selling predominantly clothes and other fabrics, silver jewelry, statues of elephants and buddhas of various sizes, etc. Unless you are interested in buying some of this stuff, skip this part – even the waterfall, which warrants a 10 Baht entrance fee, is rather disappointing. The Suthep temple and the Royal Gardens though were beautiful, the former extremely busy and crowded with (mostly Asian) tourists, the latter, also due to its size, providing a very relaxed atmosphere.
The history of Wat Suthep is quite interesting – in 1383 the King was instructed by a monk to establish a new temple in the mountains. To decide where to build the new temple, a relic was mounted on the back of a white elephant which was free to wander around to chose the spot for the future temple. Unfortunately the elephant did not only stop, but died as it arrived at mount Suthep… A monument was built on site in honour of the elephant.
Tonight we will attend a Khantoke dinner, a set menu dinner typical for Chiang Mai (having said that, it was only invented by a local host to see off some of his visitors in 1953) combined with a traditional Thai dance show. Not the best timing given that we are going to do something quite similar tomorrow night when we are back in Bangkok, but what the heck – the food reviews are usually pretty good for these kind of things and we picked the restaurant that rated highest on TripAdvisor, so hopefully we will be much better off than last night. Lunch, by the way, consisted of grilled Chiang Mai sausage and marinated pork belly (one skewer each), fresh pineapple and watermelon and grilled sweet corn, washed down with some freshly squeezed orange juice. All this was acquired for 160 Baht from sidewalk trolleys, about £3.30, and again beat last night’s hotel dinner by miles.
