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The beauty of Doi Suthep temple

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The previous post in this series is here..

We had a long drive from the Land of Angels to go up the mountain overlooking Chiang Mai to reach the Doi Suthep temple.

The temple was built is 1385 and is just beautiful. Gilded gold decorations, elaborate nagas (there is a hairline difference between Aadhi seshan and a dragon and this area is where the crossover happened is my guess), Buddhas in every pose, paper lanterns, the most beautiful set of steps we have ever walked on.. watching faith upfront, a fast track to heaven (apparently if you climb up the stairs to go to the temple, you go to heaven.. we paid for the escalator cage), etc.

We rang the bells and made wishes, prayed in the shrine, got blessed by the monk and got yet another “saradu” tied on our hands, watched the city and the airport from the view point.. basically had an enjoyable afternoon that made the time with the elephants in the forests a 100km away earlier in the morning, a distant memory.

We bumped into friends at the head of the staircase! What were the odds.. Apparently pretty high when half of bay area friend circle goes to attend the same wedding in Thailand..

The photos and videos do NOT do justice to the beauty of this place.

We also stopped by briefly at Wat Pha Lat which is now a famous meditation center. It was closed for tourists as the monks cannot meditate with the tourists around. So had to be content with taking video outside. Then we stopped at Wat Si Soda at the base of the hill which is just beautiful. We did not get time to go up the staircase but the nagas and stairs were amazing.

Here are the few landscape mode photos..

and the video highlights reel where you can also see Wat Pha Lat from outside and Wat Si Soda..

After the Doi Suthep temple, we were back to the old Chiang Mai area to see some old temples that were built here even before Doi Suthep.. that in the next post..

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An evening to remember in Siem Reap City

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The previous post in this series is here..

It had been a long day. We had woken up at 3:45AM to leave the hotel at 4AM and had made 6 stops by noon. Had eaten parts of the packed breakfast (San could eat a lot more than me given the allergies) and some energy bars and kept going. By 1PM when we came back to the hotel we were exhausted. After a 3 hour nap and some Wagh Bakri chai, we decided to go enjoy golden hour along the river.

The plan was to walk along the river, cross over to the night market restaurant area, eat dinner and walk back to the hotel. It was just a 20-25 minute walk. The river walk was beautiful. Then we walked to the same area where we had found dinner and decided to go to a different restaurant. I thought the writing was in Telugu from a distance.. turns it out was in the local language. The food was decent. We both were developing a sore throat. So we stuck to simple safe items. We were the only ones in the restaurant as it was still early.

Enjoyed the food and walked back.. Saw a cat restaurant on the way back and was missing the little one. She loves cats. I am told that one day I will be a Crampa (cat grandpa).. and that is all the pa I will get.. but given I am allergic to most cats, that privilege will be lost on me.

A video highlights reel..

We got back to the hotel by 7 and it was lights out. Our driver had promised one more sunrise, this time we would actually get to see the sun come out over the forests atop another temple on the hill. We were to leave the hotel by 4:30AM.. again. San was in two minds and said she will decide at 4AM, but I begged her to join me in the morning and we dozed off.

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The mother of all temples - Angkor Wat

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The previous post in this series is here..

We had seen the outside perimeter of the Angkor Wat temple earlier in the morning when watching the sunrise. Instead of going into the temple with the crowd, we had visted Bayon temple, the tomb raider temple, Banteay Kdei temple and Kravan temple and finally made our way to Angkor Wat.

Our driver said we could walk around ourselves and follow the crowd or better take an official guide from the entrance for 15 USD. So he found a guide who was his friend. This guy had practiced English lines with a Boston accent and he recited the lines at the right locations. He happened to be a decent photographer (not the same caliber as our driver but not bad). He told us there are 3 courtyards. The outer which we were in, the middle courtyard and a top courtyard which involved climbing a bunch of steep stairs.

The sun was up and there was no shade once we reached the middle courtyard. So we told our guide “while we have the energy, lets go to the top and do the difficult stuff first”. He was surprised by the request but said “whatever you want!”. So up we went, saw the main shrine first, then we came down and everything else was relatively a piece of cake.

The building below is the library in the background. No books. That building was just amazing. The moat around the temple was equally amazing. 1.3 km by 1.6 km with a 90 feet moat around the entire perimeter that was manually dug and filled !

The four main corridors converging below a square rock that align perfectly on a compass with the main directions.. marvellous engineering from a 1000 years ago!

We walked around the middle courtyard and made our way out through some stores to the parking lot. The guide said “I have to walk back a km to the point where we started our tour. you guys go straight up and turn right and your driver will be waiting for you”.

So in an hour and a half we had seen Angkor Wat Temple instead of 3 hours.

A video highlights reel..

When we came out, our driver asked us if we saw abc, xyz etc.. and we were like “Nope”. He skipped those. Later we had to google the Ramayana mural and dasavatar and figured out he had casually shown us some stuff but we did not go around the middle courtyard completely because we avoided a crowd. I was temporarily upset but got back to reality pretty quickly. We saw as much as we could see at that speed.

It was really hot and humid and I was getting a migraine. We really wanted to eat and get back to the hotel for a nap. We had started at 4:30 AM and it was close to Noon. We had walked miles in each temple. So we told our driver to tell his guide friend to do more coverage next time. He realized we were exhausted and suggested we drink some coconut water (we had wanted it the previous day). The coconut water outside the temple in the shacks was delicious and sweet. Next stop was our hotel. We stopped on the way at the market and while our driver waited we went through the market and shopped for T-shirts and linen pants with elephants on them.

We had some leftover from the breakfast that had been packed in the morning before seeing Angkor Wat. So we skipped lunch and took a nap in the hotel. The headache was getting pretty severe and San was tired as well. We rested for almost 3 hours and it was time to visit Siem Reap by ourselves in the evening.. We were to start at 4:30 AM again the next morning!

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.