11-2 Doi Suthep and the Walking Market

We’ve listened to Nine and booked her Doi Suthep tour to visit a traditional Mao village and the Wat Phrathat Temple at Doi Suthep. The driver is late – we’re supposed to leave at 8:30 but end up leaving around 9. It’s no big deal as this is a half day tour and we have all afternoon free before the walking market around 7 or 8pm. The driver shows up with one other person in the van, a man from Israel. Nice! Almost private tour!

Doi Suthep is a mountain peak where, according to legend, a White Elephant stopped when carrying a holy relic – the arm bone of the Buddha. The story goes that the reining King in the 1300’s was presented with this relic and wanted the perfect place to lay it to rest and build a temple. He enlisted his white elephant, made a blessing, turned around 3 times and set the elephant free with the relic on his back. The elephant climbed and climbed and when it reached Doi Suthp, it turned in a circle three times then sat down and died of exhaustion. The King then knew this was the place for the temple.

We climb and climb up the mountain too, but fortunately we’re not on an elephant (hell no, not after Friday!), we’re in an old van that slowly makes it way up the steep switch backs. It’s cloudy and rainy, and as we begin our ascent, the guide tells us we will turn off the air as we go up the hill, but will open the windows. Ok. But as we climb we realize that the reason for no air is that the van won’t make it up the hill running the air! And sure enough a little ways up the hill, there is a terrible buzzing sound coming from the dashboard. The guide starts messing around with wires and fuses, looking at the fuse box layout. Finally he stops the car and gets out (all the while I’m asking Ed to make sure he knows how to get out of the van fast!), messing with wires under the dash. He asks if we have a torch light! And, well, we do. Ok, so I have WAY too much in the backpack, but hey, it came in handy, didn’t it? Finally fixed, we start out again, now without the annoying buzzing alarm sounding thing.

We pass the temple and head first to the traditional Mao village. This is where all the women dress in traditional garb – velvet jackets with little coins sewn on them along with headdresses with coins. We thought it would be fun to visit another traditional village, so you can imagine our surprise when we pull up to a traditional shopping village! It’s just a big market with all the typical tourist junk! Oh with the added intrigue of gem sales – every hawker and motor scooter driver have gems for sale. Yeah, like they’re real and we’re buying. Sigh. So we have 20 minutes here – ok – we wander, buy some little trinkets and are back at the van in 15 minutes. 20 minutes comes, 20 minutes goes. We buy Fried bananas to waste some time (they are sinfully good by the way). 25 minutes, 30 minutes, no Israeli. The guide goes looking for him. 35 minutes, no Israeli. For God’s sakes man – what are you doing? Turns out he’s looking at every freaking stall in the market! Not buying mind you, just looking around. Geez – we want to go to the temple – you want to wander – go to the darn Night Market….alone! Finally Ed and the Guide coral him and get him in the van almost 1 hour later. How rude!

Now we’ve got a 30 minute drive back to the temple and the certainty that we’ll lose him again there. Oy! We get to the temple and agree that we’ll meet at the bottom of the stairs at 12 noon. Yeah, right! We all go up together, buy our entrance tickets and go in. We wander off around the perimeter of the temple – looking at the carvings, the architecture, the bell that was forged out of old currency that was donated to the temple. One of the most stunning things about the temple location is the view of Chiang Mai. However, it’s way to cloudy/foggy for us to see anything today. So we just get a good look at the fog clinging to the trees below the temple walls.

Inside the main temple is beautiful – gold, statues, more ornate architecture. Unfortunately the main temple housing the relic is under reconstruction, so it is covered in scaffolding – they’ve painted the scaffolding gold, which is nice aesthetically, but does nothing for the photo ops!

We meet our guide at a little before noon and true to form, no Israeli. But he does show up a little after noon and we are pretty pleased. Of course we’ve had a great time people watching while we were waiting. Watching two little Mao girls getting their photos taken with tourists for a charge. You can tell the little one hates it, but you can also tell that it’s their family income.

Back down the hill, we stop at a scenic point and actually get to see a view of the city. Yay! Then we continue down to city level and hit the Tulip right before 1pm and decide to hang out for the afternoon. I had seen an advertisement for the women’s prison inmates who gave massages and pedicures/manicures as rehabilitation. I thought that would be good to do on a Sunday afternoon. I just wanted a pedicure/manicure – but after conferring with our scheduler, Nine, we decide I should just go to the salon up the road. Off I go to find the orange building near the end of the street. Two orange buildings later (the first was some huge office complex), I find this cute little salon where they barely speak English! With the help of a friendly customer, I manage to point and pantomime my way though a pedicure and manicure with color. Including tip, only $10US. Yeah, I’m loving this place!

By now it’s about 3:30 and we decide to go wander through a few temples and check out the setting up of the walking market to get our bearings. After a few of the larger wats – which are all so beautiful – we hit the Walking Street. Vendors are just setting up, so we scope out the wares on display so far and the street food that is available there. We figure tonight will be street food night then we’ll hit the Garden for the bands starting at 7.

Back at the Tulip we freshen up and finally head out to see the market. Oh my god! The street has been transformed into this hustling bustling retail mecca! There are thousands of vendors, stalls, lights, everything, you name it = and even more people (mostly Thai) shopping, bargaining and walking through. It’s easy over a mile long – and we don’t even cover half of it before we’re totally overwhelmed. It’s crazy! We do end up going to a street stall we had seen earlier and ordering 2 pork omelets and a fried pork with cashews dish –plus water and soda. While we eat, the proprietor’s little son – maybe 1 ½ or 2 at the most keeps up entertained by running by and shyly looking at Ed, then running back to Mom. He can’t say hello yet, but he can Wai us – and he does when we say hello and wai. Entirely too precious – my heart just melted! He ends up playing with us the rest of the time we are there – dancing and holding hands, playing with my newly painted fingernails. The bill is less than 100 baht (that’s less than $3US) – the wife is trying to give us change from our 100, but we won’t accept it. That’s too crazy.

After our exceptional dinner, we meander back toward The Garden. It’s early – only a little after 7, but fighting the throngs of people on the street is getting tiring and we definitely want to have a seat for the bands. Good tactical decision! It’s a decent sized little garden area, and the tables are jammed in there – but still, it’s almost full. We grab a great table right up by the patio where the acoustic chic (Cherry – she is on the web, youtube, facebook, as The bathroom girl – don’t know, she didn’t explain!) is currently playing and the other bands will be as well. Cherry is really good, great voice, nice personality. We sit back and enjoy the show – as well as the people watching, trying to figure out who everyone is. It’s all ex-pat in there – the only Thai face in the crowd are the Thai wives. Everyone seems to know each other and most also seem to be regulars. We’ve decided it’s Frisco’s of Chiang Mai! The wine is good, beer is good, bands are great (reminds you of 3’s to loud, oh I mean, 3’s a crowd, only better) and the crowd is fun to watch. We end up sitting there for a couple of hours just enjoying the atmosphere.

Out on the street, it’s close to 10 and the market is still going strong! It’s just incredible – and it’s a shame that we don’t have the camera – although there’s no way you could get the feel from pictures – it’s one of those have to be there things. Back at the Tulip we sack out, looking forward to our last day in Chiang Mai (boo hoo!) at the cooking school.