Chiang Rai

So, I am about half way through my first trip of the summer. I am currently in Chiang Rai working as a chaperon for my faculties 'Chinese Camp' . It's been and interesting trip...we've done a lot of the same things as last year but the experience has definitely been different.

To start with some genius decided to only hire 1 bus driver per bus...it takes at least 24 hours to get to Chiang Rai and with only 1 driver it wound up taking just about 30 hours. We left at about 7 am on Sunday and arrived here at 1:30 on Monday. In that time I got to read an entire 450 page book and take a ton of naps. We also stopped in Hua Hin for an hour to go shopping/waste time. The market we went to was incredibly over priced and not that interesting. The idea behind the stop was to delay our arrival because last year we got up to Chiang Rai at 7am (when the decision was made I don't think anyone realized we only had 1 driver per bus).

Yesterday we went sightseeing around town and went to two temples. The first one, Wat Rong Khun, was the strangest temple I have ever been to in Thailand. Wat Rong Khun is like an edgy pop culture explosion. To get to the temple you have to cross over a bridge, under the bridge are spikes and hands reaching up (which reminded me of hell especially since some of the hands were holding skulls). Then in the temple there is the traditional Buddha statue and hand painted murals, but incorporated into the murals were different characters from pop culture. There was Neo from the Matrix, a pod racer from Star Wars, Doremon, a transformer, Superman, the head of that creepy puppet from the saw movies, and many others that I can't remember. The only down side to this trip was that it was raining and you couldn't take pictures inside :( After the crazy awesome temple we went to Wat Phra Kaew again to see where the emerald Buddha was found.

Here are some pics of the mural from Wat Rong Khun I found on the web.

Today we went up to the mountains to visit the tea factories. It was freezing and raining which would have made the trip miserable if the students hadn't been so funny about things. They were absolutely thrilled that they could see their breath and glomping onto me to try and share my umbrella...we were only able to get 4 people under it and still be able to walk. Fortunately, half way through the trip we found a shop that sold sweaters and gloves (I was an idiot and forgot my sweatshirt back in Surat)!

Tomorrow we're heading to Mae Sai and Burma :D Hopefully it'll stop raining because the market will not be as fun if it's cold AND rainy.

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