Weekend in Chiang Rai

This weekend I went to Chiang Rai to check out the famous White Temple and a few other well-known sites. It was a quick and busy trip.
We left Thursday night after our classes were done. After a 4-hour bus ride, we arrived in Chiang Rai around 9pm. We checked into our hostel and grabbed a bite to eat. My friend Leslie was in the middle of eating her sandwich when she saw a cockroach sitting on the other half. We all freaked out. It was an interesting dinner, to say the least. While we were walking to our hostel I noticed a ton of roaches and rats on the street which was quite gross. Chiang Rai was a lot dirtier then Chaing Mai for sure.
Friday morning we left at 8 for our day tour of Chiang Rai. Our first stop was the White Temple. It was so beautiful. The temple was built by a very famous Thai artist who is from Chiang Rai. After he became rich and famous, he returned to Chiang Rai to build the temple for his village, He has paid for the whole thing by himself. He will only accept donations of less than 10,000 baht (about $300) because he wants to be able to make the temple how he wants it and not have people control him. The temple is constantly changing and nowhere near done. He is always adding to it. So I could come back in 20 years and it would look different which is pretty cool! The reason that is is all white on the outside is to represent the purity of the Buddha.

 This part of the Temple represents Hell. There are lots of pop culture references throughout the temple. Faces of famous people are all over the inside and outside of the temple.

Inside the temple is covered in murals. When you walk in the door the wall is the face of a demon and things that the artists considers evil- there were minions, George Bush riding a rocket, spiderman, Kung-foo panda, Michael Jackson among many others.  As you walk back towards the Buddha the colors get lighter until you reach the Budha. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in the temple. There is a museum where you can purchase all the parts of the murals inside. I bought one of George Bush riding a rocket.

Our group at the temple

Next stop, the blue temple. This temple was painted by an artist who also worked on the white temple. He is also from Chiang Rai. The temple was just finished in 2016 and is slowly becoming a tourist attraction. While we were there-there weren't too many people there which is always nice.  The blue in this temple represents the calmness of the Buddha.

Next up was a tea plantation. We got to sample a few types and enjoy the view

Next was the stop I was looking forward to all day! The monkey cave! There is a temple that the monkeys pretty much just took over and it became a huge tourist attraction. There are 4 different groups of monkeys at the temple. They rotate throughout the day so they all get fed lots of bananas from the tourists. Once one group is done, they head up the mountain and the next group comes down. When you walk in you get a stick to hit the ground to scare the monkeys away if they are being too aggressive, which was a little scary, The guide gave us each a banana to feed the monkeys. Once they saw you had food you were done for. The surrounded you and stared at it. One was tugging on my pants begging for the banana so I got scared and tossed it to the ground and that was it for me. I was happy to watch everyone else feed them after that.

The monkey cave was quite an experience, to say the least!
Next, was the scorpion temple with a view of the Myanmar and Thailand border. There is a small river that separates the country but you can tell which side is which. Myanmar has all kinds of colorful houses. It is hard to see the river in the pictures, it was hard to find in person because it is a brown color so it blends in.

Last, but not least. Our final stop for the day was the golden triangle. This is the place where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand all meet but are separated by rivers.

 In front, is Thailand, the land on the left is Myanmar, and the right is Laos. There are 2 casinos pictured. One is the golden dome on the Laos side and the other is a red building towards the back on the Myanmar side but it is harder to see. Gambling is illegal in Thailand, so there are lots of casinos along the border! It is called the golden triangle because back in the day when the opium trade was still huge, they would trade a pound of gold for a pound of opium.

Our tour group

It was a very long day! Our tour lasted almost 12 hours. We were ready to go back to our hostel and relax! we stated at the Happynest hostel in Chiang Rai it was super cute!

The next morning, we slept in a bit, got breakfast and checked out the Cat N Cup Cafe while we waited to catch our bus back home to Chiang Mai.

Weekend in Bangkok- temples, Ayutthaya, and floating market

Hello all!
I spent this past weekend in Bangkok with 8 other girls in my study abroad program! It was a HOT, busy, exhausting weekend.
We left Friday after our classes and headed to the airport! After a quick flight from Chiang Mai, we arrived in Bangkok around 8:30pm. I promptly spotted the Krispy Kreme in the airport and treated myself to a donut! It was great! The first thing I noticed when we stepped outside the airport was how hot and humid it was. Chiang Mai has definitely been hot lately- high nineties daily. But it was nowhere near as humid as Bangkok was. 5 of us piled into a taxi and headed to our hostel for the night.

We went to bed pretty early because we were planning on getting up early to site see in the morning. I can't even describe the heat and humidity in Bangkok it is unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was high 90s and the humidity was about 80%. We were sweating while we were standing still! It was insane. Because we knew the weather would be very hot as the day went on we got an early start. We left our hostel around 7:30, got breakfast and headed out for the day! Our first stop was Wat Pho. This temple is famous because it has the worlds largest reclining Buddha.

Our group!

Then we took a ferry across the river to check out War Arun. It is the temple of the dawn because it is named after the Hindu god Aruna who is personified as the rising sun. The first light of the morning reflects off of the temple making it pearly and iridescent.

Next, we hopped back on the ferry to go back to the other side of the river to check out the Grand Palace. This was quite an experience. Because it was a weekend near Chinese New Year it was packed full of Chinese tourists. Originally we had planned to start our day at the Grand Palace and we arrived and a man told us to come back in the afternoon because all of the Chinese tour buses had just arrived and there were probably 40,000 people inside. We didn't really believe that many people could be inside at a time, but we would later find out it was possible. So we left to check out Wat Pho and Wat Arun and came back later.
By the time we got back it was about 2 o'clock and VERY hot. We made out way into the palace with about 30,000 other tourists who had the same idea. We were herded like cattle around the paths of the palace. It was so hot and crowded you couldn't even stop to take in all the beautiful things around you. It was so overwhelming, but I am glad that we did it. I was so ready to get out though!

Inside the main temple was the famous and very sacred Emerald Buddha, but you were not allowed to take pictures inside, unfortunately. After the Grand Palace, we headed back to our hostel. We were all so beyond ready to take a shower and a nap after a long day! Later we headed out to Khao San road which is known to be the spot where backpackers hang out. We got some food and did a bit of shopping!
Sunday, Nicole, Tara, and I had booked a tour to Ayuthaya because we didn't have class on Monday so we got to stay an extra day while everyone else went back on Sunday night.
Ayutthaya was honestly the highlight of my whole trip to Bangkok, it was on my bucket list and I am so glad we made time to do it. We were picked up at our hostel at 6:30- talk about an early morning!
We really didn't know the itinerary of our day, all we knew was that we were going to Ayyuthaya. We stopped first at a palace- I honestly don't even remember the name. We choose to get coffee instead of explore because we didn't have much time.

Next, we made our first stop at Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya is very similar to Sukhothai that I had visited a couple weeks earlier. Ayutthaya actually replaced Sukhothai as the capital of Siam from 1351-1767 when it was destroyed and vandalized by the Burmese in 1767. The Burmese cut off all the heads of the Buddha statues. In the 16th century, it was one of the biggest and wealthiest cities in the East. Ayutthaya was abandoned until about 1950 when it was restored by the Department of Fine Art of Thailand. It is now declared a UNESCO world heritage site.

 It is also home to Wat Mahathat, which is famous for the Buddha head that is entwined in a tree. I had seen this picture on Pinterest a couple years ago before I had even thought of studying abroad in Thailand and I wanted to see it in person.
No one knows for sure how the Buddha's head ended up in the tree roots, one theory says that the tree grew around the Buddha head. Another says that a thief moved the head away from the temple to hide it because he tried to take it out of the temple walls and he couldn't. So he left the head by the temple wall where the tree grew around it.

The head was a lot smaller then I had pictured, but still super cool!
Then we went to see the original reclining Buddha that the one we saw in Bangkok was made as a copy of!

We rode a big tour bus around all day. We took a boat back that had a super delicious lunch buffet with Thai food and french fries! I was so busy stuffing my face I didn't even get a picture!
After we returned from our tour we went downtown to check out some of the shopping that Bangkok is known for. There was an abundance of crazy stores including a hello kitty cafe and store that was super cute! They also hada a bobba tea ATM that my tea/coffee obsessed friend Tara had to check out!

Monday was our final day in Bangkok- and another early morning! We went to one of the famous floating markets. The only thing I bought was coconut ice cream, but it was a really cool experience. The vendors were pretty aggressive- they would literally pull you in with a hook if you glanced at their merchandise for more than a second.

how adorable is she?

We arrived back in Chiang Mai around 9:30 on Monday night. It was a very busy weekend, but I think we got to do and see a lot of really cool things! Bangkok was really not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a little bit wilder based on all of the things you see in the movies etc. but it really was not wild or as crowded as I was expecting!
Next week, we have midterms. I honestly can't believe my time in Thailand is halfway over. It is going by way faster then I could have ever imagined!

Aubrey :)