We arrived in Chiang Mai about 7am in the morning. We checked into the Your House Guesthouse, greeted by grumpy staff who partied till 4am in the morning the night before (it was Christmas eve!).
The girls and guys were splitting our ways in Chiang Mai. The girls wanted a relax day with a massage visit. For the guys, our plan was to make a day trip to Chiang Rai. However, when we got to the bus station, the tickets were fully booked for the morning buses and the next available was at 12:30pm. So we booked the tickets for the next day instead.
Willy wanted to visit Doi Suthep, having heard a lot of it from his friends. So we took at tutuk to the Doi Suthep.
  | Doi Suthep Doi Suthep is a busy temple atop a hill overlooking Chiang Mai. It's visited by many locals and it has a carnival atmosphere to it. I thought it some what commercialized too.   |
    | Wat Chet Yot Wat Chet Yot is outside the Chiang Mai city walls, on the way to Doi Suthep. We asked the sawngthaew driver to drop us at the temple on the way back from Doi Suthep (80B per person). My interest in Wat Chet Yot is the stupa that is modelled after the one in Bodhgaya in India. I had not know about the temple in my previous trip to Chiang Mai, and missed it. So I made it a point to visit this time. It turned out to be an pretty interesting temple. Besides the stupa of interest, the temple had a lot of Burmese influence. In one of the shrine hall, we met some artisans who were painting the murals and had a chat with one of them. The murals were beautiful modernist with a dreamy mood. The whole temple ground is a sprawling garden with a few old stupas. Because it is outside the city wall, it does not see as many tourists as those temples within the city wall. Even though it's slightly out of the way, it's definitely worth a visit.  |
 | Wat Ku Tao This temple piqued my interest because of the unique stupa found in this temple. The stupa is shaped like stacks of diminishing spheres. According to the Lonely Planet, this design is commonly found among the Dai Lu people in Xishuangbana in Southern China. However, in Thailand, it is only seen in this temple and in Wat Phuak Hong. Unfortunately, there the stupa was under maintenance and we weren't able to get a clear view of the stupa shape. This temple clearly has a big Burmese patronage. Besides Burmese script, there were statues of nats (Burmese deities) and the Buddha statue in the main viharn was of Burmese royal style.  |
For the rest of the late afternoon, we dropped by Wat Chedi Luang and visited the nearby temples as well as the Three Kings Monument.
At May Kaidee's Vegetarian Restaurant
For dinner, I suggested we go to the May Kaidee's Vegetarian Restaurant as I wanted to book the cooking class.
The restaurant had a buffet every Friday for 80 baht per person. It was a pretty good deal and the food was good.
Then I had a surprise. My friends paid for my cooking class as a birthday present for me. My birthday is a couple of days away. But my friends thought that the cooking class would make a great present since this was something I wanted to do. I really appreciated it!
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