Today we set out on a guided private tour of 3 of the more popular wats in Chiang Mai. This is a city with over 300 of them, so having it narrowed down for you is likely a good thing.

I’ve been to Asia before, so I do know that after a while you start to get a bit tired of seeing Buddhist temples. It’s like travelling Europe and the feeling you get after your 25th cathedral, yes they’re beautiful, but they all start to look and feel the same.

The key with wats is to take them in small and focused doses, which we did today and they were all quite nice in their own way.

wat
wät
noun
(in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos) a Buddhist monastery or temple.

Our guide requested a photograph from a young monk outside of one of the temples. Caellum was a little be apprehensive, so Theresa stood beside the monk and Caellum was to her left. This was not acceptable, as a female is never allowed to touch a monk. She had to move to the outside of Caellum and kneel for the photograph. There’s a lesson in this for Caellum, but it wasn’t the time or place to teach it.

There are a lot of interesting things about the temples and Buddha’s in Chiang Mai in particular. You get all the different flavours of Buddhism, from Burma, because they occupied Chiang Mai for 200+ years, as well as Laotian and Bangkok influence. We’re going to see very different temples in Laos next week.

Our tour took us to 3 temples in the span of three hours, and that was a nice amount of time spent on it. Our guide was a fountain of Chiang Mai history, and I’m going to have to hit up the Wikipedia page to refresh and remember everything we were told.

We heading back to the hotel for some lunch and rest. Theresa  took off for an aromatherapy massage, which was apparently very good. She slightly overpaid, and spent $15 for the hour long treatment. There are places in the night market which will do an hour for $5.

Caellum wanted to do some more Muay Thai, so we headed back to the gym for another lesson. It was a lot different today, as there were more people around in the afternoon, including the gym owners son and other young fighters that he trains. Caellum was a lot of fun to watch as he was able to spar with a 10 year old that knew what he was doing. Again, he was apprehensive until he realized he could actually throw a kick or a punch and it was ok.

I on the other hand was a little slower the second day at it. It was still a great workout and I will definitely do it again before we leave.