Chiang Mai temple
This morning it was high on my list to get up early and visit the prominent wats in Chiang Mai. If only life turned out how we planned huh? It was another morning making great use of the snooze button, except I don’t think it’s working that well on the iphone so I was awake the whole time just not wanting to get out of bed.
Dad and Mick have both joked, at different times, about how I could become Buddhist due to the fact I just hate killing anything. And I must say as a following I find it very interesting and intriguing and if I was to be religious it would probably be Buddhist so a Buddhist retreat is something I’m keen to do while I’m here, the thing is I don't think the retreat I was planning on visiting has wifi!! ;-) I am sooo joking……..!
Ok joking aside though, I've decided to book in for a course, it’s a short course but I’m really looking forward to it (as well as being a bit nervous!), if only they didn't insist on 4am starts, they clearly have no idea of my hatred of mornings!
What I love about this experience is that as a contact and website it’s called Monk Chat. Lauren, you’d love this!
In the meantime I need to find some accommodation for when I return from the course and for a few more days until I decide what I’m doing. What, although I knew, but didn’t take into consideration was, the fact that’s it’s effectively, the Thai new year on 10th. In my eye it’s a festival that I planned my arrival around, in the Thai eye it’s an opportunity for all the guest houses to be fully booked and as I only booked the 3 initial nights it’s not looking good.
I’ve traipsed around I forget how many guesthouses, this is what I don’t like so much about backpacking, and not a lot of joy to be honest. I love the area I’m in at the mo and would really like to stay here but a little cheaper. It seems those are not choices I have.
In between trying to sort this out I also decide to visit the most significant wats in the area, there are I think, around 300 in total, so I won’t be visiting them all, not in this life time anyway!
Now this did freak me out a little when I first saw it. Its a very prominent monk in a type of waxwork! But its very very life like.
So eventually I finally find a GH with a room free and the lady in charge seems really nice and friendly, it’s not as cosy or as ‘gazellik’ as I was hoping but it’s a room and its available so that’s great. Gazellik is a word I love, it’s probably not the right spelling considering its Dutch but I always remember Pete using it when describing some of the local bars in Schevenningen and that they weren’t in fact gazellik (cosy) and since then whenever I come across somewhere that should be gazellik and isn’t it’s the first word that comes to mind. Gazellik I think meaning, cosy, warm and friendly etc.
So I managed to book the Buddhist meditation retreat. :-) It’s only a two day course but I’m surprisingly quite nervous about it. Nervous about a mediation retreat and a Buddhist one at that? Come on!
But it’s tomorrow!
Temple
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