After a really tiring 14 hour trip the previous day, today we were in no mood for anything too hectic, especially one which would require a lot of walking around. So after a late breakfast, we set off to vist Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, another among the finest temples of Chiang Mai, and one of the important pilgrimage destinations to the Thai people. The Temple is located atop a small mountain, which fortunately is accessible by transport almost right upto the entrance. Earlier, to get to the temple itself, one required to ascend a flight of steep stairs, but now a rail elevator takes you there for a small fee.
The temple itself is breathtakingly beautiful, and one can walk leisurely around the huge compound admiring the architecture and the several images of Buddha which adorn the entire temple complex. But in addition, the temple provides an extremely beautiful birds eye view of Chiang Mai city, especially the airport. The air is clean and one can see planes landing and taking off along the complete length of the runway. We were able to complete the trip in under two hours and headed back to our hotel for lunch and some more rest. We were going to have dinner with our hosts in the evening and were quite free till then. May as well not tire ourselves needlessly.
A picture gallery of our visit to Wat Doi Suthep is below :
In the evening, Chris picked us up from our hotel at about 6:30 and we drove through the city to a Heritage Hotel called 137 Pillars House. They had a Happy Hour going at that time of the evening, but that was not the real reason we went there. Baw Tananone, Chris’s husband, is a Thai and their ancestral home is just across this property. Baw told us stories about how in his good old days, logs used to be transferred along the Mae Ping River (where we would be going for a dinner cruise after drinks) and how elephants trained in logging and clearing wood jams used to prevail in this area, There were photographs in the bar of several eminent people who had played their roles in the history of this area, Baw told us stories about some of them, and we enjoyed the stories, amazed at the history.
After drinks, we went off to the riverside where Baw had made reservations for a dinner cruise for all of us. It was about a two hour long cruise, up and down the Mae Ping River and we admired the sights along the banks from our boat. Several of the properties had some sort of legend or history attached to it and Baw filled us in with trivia about them. Pictures of our evening at 137 Pillars and the Boat Ride are below
All too soon our days in Chiang Mai were over. It’s a small city, not rushed like Bangkok, perhaps that’s what makes it more enjoyable. It was time to say Good Bye to Chris and Baw and to thank them for having made our visit to Chiang Mai so memorable. Tomorrow, we would be off to Bangkok and we were looking forward to that visit as well.