Here's Nomes and Noah at the bottom of the stairs up to the temple on the mountain. The dragony type thing on either side is called a Naga, and it's probably significant in some way I'm not aware of. Isn't Naomi sexy in her pre- stair climbing pose?
And then there's me, lookin pretty gangsta in my oversized pants and green crocks. I'm telling you, there are a lot of stairs. And it's hot in Thailand. Did I mention that? Noah is looking on with a look of "Can we just climb the bloody stairs already, girls?"
At the top there's a temple with an outer courtyard and an inner Chedi. This is from the courtyard. I know several Moms and none that look like this. Not entirely sure what's going on here. Almost as amusing as the mangling of the English language that appears in signs in this country is the stuff that gets translated. Some things, like road signs and crucial information remain in Thai only, while things like this need to be translated, but not explained to us bewildered foreigners. I just don't get it.
This is the famous golden Chedi at the temple. If you ever wondered exactly what a Chedi was (and if you did it's probably only since I mentioned it in the last bit) look no further. Here is a very shiny gold one that lives on top of a mountain. On a clear day you can see it from my house.
Here's one of Noah, who was very perplexed by this gong, giving it a smack. The yellow squares are gold leaf which people rub on things as an offering to Buddha. Of course that could have been completely made up by Naomi and I just now. The gong was cool.
A cool looking part of the temple (which is all outdoors) and some pretty clouds.
A shot of the city from up top. Most of the year Chiang Mai is invisible from here, but we got it on a good day.
And finally another shot of the temply parts of the temple. It was a fun trip, but I think it would have been much more entertaining when I first arrived, because when you see one temple, they tend to blend together. True, this one is on top of a mountain, but I'm not Buddhist and I'm also not really into going to places where people try to sell me cheap shit at ridiculous prices. The drive was gorgeous, though.
This week was pretty slow at school. There was one day that I taught one of my five scheduled teaching hours due to various interruptions. We had teacher appreciation day where we got to sit on a stage and have kids wai (bow with their hands put together) to us and give us flowers that we didn't actually get to keep.
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