Temples and a waterfall

A couple of elephants came to join us for breakfast. We would have appreciated a Thai breakfast, but instead there was a Thai version of a cooked English one, which was not brilliant.

However we left the TECC feeling rested and ready for new adventures. We found our way to the Wat Phra That Haripunchai in Lamphun easily and within minutes we had a parking space, too. It was around 10.15 and already the temple was teeming with visitors, mainly Thais.

The temple complex is colourful and the visitors were in a holiday mood, dressed festively, clutching iced grass tea and plastic glasses with fruit juice. There was a sweet smell of pancakes in the air. The flower and candle vendors were doing good business and the worshippers were also buying plastic bottles containing jasmine water. This was poured into a vessel shaped like a boat and is apparently used for washing the Buddha statues . Some people were buying small bells and others gifts to offer to the monks. A mother was writing a message on a roll of golden material in her neat, intricate Thai handwriting.

The buildings here were so different from one another and there was do much to see, that combined with the heat, it made you feel giddy. So we opted to walk through the cooler back streets and a covered market to reach the Phra Chamadevi monument. This was a small park decorated with thousands of brightly coloured lanterns and a magnifucent statue of the bold queen who founded the city.

To visit the temple which bears her name we took the car. The temple itself was almost deserted compared to the previous one and much more serene, much simpler. It contains a chedi which reminded us of some of the Hindu architecture we have seen in India.

You can't visit temples all day, so we then made our way into the hills to check out our homestay and met Pansa and Kevin, our hosts. They recommended that we should take a trip to the nearby Mae Ya waterfall before dinner. This was an excellent idea, giving us the opportunity to get a little exercise. Besides the waterfall was really quite spectacular.

Dinner was a really good chicken curry with a Singha beer and Kevin and Pansa were very good company.Read more