Indochina Express - Day 20 (Chiang Mai to Bangkok)

March 22nd

Moving day again. The ride to the airport only takes 15 minutes. With so many flights in so short a time, we are getting much more efficient in getting through security. For example, I'm wearing a belt with a plastic buckle so that I don't have to take off my belt to go through the X-ray machine. We were trying to figure out the seating on this plane - Mark and Chris are in 35 A & B and Beth and I were in 35 J & K so we are speculating that we are in a wide-body plane with 2-5-2 seating. But no, it was a plain old Airbus A320 with the seats on one side A, B & C and on the other side H, J & K. In addition, the row numbers jump from 14 at the end of business/first class to 31 at the beginning of coach. We've never seen a seating plan like this before!

We did not want to repeat our bland meal experience, so we asked Mr. Moon to have our travel agents change our food choice to the standard one. This got us a steamed custard bun filled with pandan ( an Asian citrus fruit that has a lovely green color). Winner! The flight to Bangkok is only about an hour. We must have landed at one of the outmost gates of this huge airport because we've got a long walk to baggage claim. Most of the bags for the flight come and go and still no bags for about 100 of us. It looks like not all of the bags fit into the original baggage cart and they had to go back to out to the plane to pick up the remaining bags. My bag is the very last one on the conveyor belt! But hey, at least we all got our bags!

Outside, we meet our guide for Bangkok, Yokie, who is 45-year-old woman (mother of a 6-yr old boy) who began working as a tour guide with her mother when she was 15. She gets us some snacks and tells us that we will go to the hotel to drop off our bags and get a little rest before going back out at 5 PM. The hotel is a beautiful modern building on the Chao Phraya River that runs through Bangkok. When we arrive in our room, this is what we see:

Our travel agent really went all out on this honeymoon stuff. I hope that they got a good room rate! But hey, if anyone reading this is looking for a place to honeymoon, we have some ideas.

Tonight's excursion is a tuk-tuk tour, but this time our tuk-tuks are gasoline powered and apparently don't have mufflers! Our first stop is the temple of Wat Pho. Wat Pho was built while the capital of Siam was still in Ayutthaya on the coast. When the Ayutthaya Kingdom was defeated by the Burmese in 1767, the then King Taksin moved the Siamese capital to Thonburi on the opposite side of the river from Wat Pho. In 1782, King Rama I moved the capital across the river to what is now Bangkok, renovated Wat Pho and moved a lot of abandoned Buddhas from around present-day Thailand to Wat Pho. Renovation was accelerated under King Rama III (Thailand is currently ruled by King Rama X). Wat Pho is regarded as the first university in Thailand and is still a center for learning the art of Thai massage. The highlight of Wat Pho is the 151-foot-long reclining Buddha which was built by Rama III. But there is a lot of bling here no matter where one looks. There is also a lot of Chinese influence as Rama III made a lot of money in trade with China - Thailand would send agricultural products to China and would bring back Chinese sculptures as ballast for their boats. The connections with China and providing troops to the British East India company in their war with Burma helped Thailand avoid being colonized like other countries in southeast Asia even though their military was quite weak at the time. Here are some pictures of Wat Pho:

The sun is setting as Yokie guides us to a park across the street from Wat Pho where the city hall is located and we see a plaque with the true name of Bangkok:

which translates as "City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarma at Indra's behest". Just rolls off the tongue, don't you think?! The Thai people call the place Krung Thep or City of Angels. I'm not sure why the locals didn't go with Krung Thep, but you can't have a name as long as the actual one so a shorter one developed. Where the name Bangkok actually comes from is murky, but some think it may have come from Bang Makok (Bang is village on the river and Makok is a local plant similar to an olive).

We walk through the night market in present day China town. This is where Yokie grew up (her mother speaks Mandarin):

We stop for dinner in what looks like a hole-in-the-wall place, but the food is great, and we are successful in keeping Yokie from ordering too many dishes! Back on the street, we pass on a chance for fried crickets from one of the night market vendors, but we do stop for mangosteens which the Thai people call the Queen of Fruits. For those of you interested, the King of Fruits is the durian. The vendor cuts open the tough skin to reveal five or six white segments. It is hard to describe the taste but is a little like lychee, but not as sweet. We all enjoy them. The brown fruit in the back are the mangosteens:

Our final stop for the evening is a rooftop bar close to the river. We are not really bar people, but the view is really worth it. We enjoy seeing Wat Pho and the older Wat Arun (where the old capital was) lit up at night and watching the dinner cruise boats go by on the Chao Phraya River:

Indochina Express - Day 19 (Chiang Mai)

March 21st

Today's events will give us some exercise. We've got a hike along the hillsides of Mae Wang about an hour west of Chiang Mai (about 15 miles south of where we were yesterday) followed by a bamboo rafting trip along the Wang River.

Our first stop is at a local market to pick up some of the food that we will eat for lunch. This is a way of helping the local Karen people with the costs of hosting trekking groups like ours. Mr. Moon picks up dragon fruit, watermelon and bananas along with some vegetables. 

After another ride into the mountains, our driver stops in a village to pick up our Karen native guide. He hands each of us bamboo hiking poles. I'm not sure that this will help but it gives me something to do. Once we get out of the van, we walk straight up a hill between two homes. After gaining something like 500 feet in 15 minutes, I'm really hoping that the rest of the hike will not be like this! As we are walking up the hill, we see another group of hikers moving across the hillside above us. This is clearly the main route for trekkers in this area.

For a while, we are walking along a dirt road and while it goes up and down, it is mostly across the hills instead of up and down them. This is a good thing because the temperatures are already into the low 90's. As we go, we begin to hear a mountain stream in the valley off to our left. Our guide indicates that we will be following this stream up to a Karen village next to the Huay Hoi waterfall. Mr. Moon and our local guide have clearly known each other for a long time. In fact, at one point, Mr. Moon says that he has known our guide since before he wore pants.

Along the way, our guide shows us native trees (teak) as well as plants and bugs. In particular, he shows us a golden orb web spider that is black with yellow markings along its feet and abdomen. While we are impressed with the size of this spider (about 6 inches in diameter), our guide tells us that this is a rather medium sized spider. He says that Huntsman spiders can grow to nearly twice this size!

After about 60 or 90 minutes of walking, we reach the stream, and the trail gets more difficult. There are lots of ups and downs and the trail is often only 6-9 inches wide on the steam bank. With some effort, we arrive in a quiet area of the stream and find the trekking group that we'd seen earlier resting here. We keep going and hope that we showed this group of 20–40-year-olds that old people can still do things like this! At least, none of us fell in the stream within sight of the other group. After another 20 minutes, we find another quiet place to sit and rest:

While we are sitting, the other group passes us again. This is fine with us as we didn't want to hold them up on the narrow trail.

The ground up ahead levels off and the stream slows down. While we are crossing the stream, we see two elephants in the nearby field. Our guide explains that there are still groups using elephants for trekking or for people to ride in this area and that they are letting their elephants out to eat leaves on the bushes and small trees along one of their fields. Given how much they eat, we can imagine what would happen if a wild elephant wandered into one of these fields!

Our guide tells us that we are coming to his village, but first, we have to cross back over the steam on a wooden bridge that is shaped like a triangle - one board for walking along and two pretty flimsy looking handrails to hold on to. This is definitely a place where it is important to just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and not paying any attention to where you are or where you are going. Thankfully, we all make it across in one piece. Our guide then heads across the field toward a group of banana plants while Mr. Moon leads us into the village.

We see that the group that had passed us was already there. Some were eating while others were swimming in the pond under the Huay Hoi waterfall. Mr. Moon introduces us to the headmistress of the village:

Mr. Moon explains that she and her village have been supporting area trekkers for many years. Her English is not great, but it is good enough for her to ask each of us where we are from. Mr. Moon tells us that the village gets some of the cost of the outing and also sells some of their handicrafts to visitors. In exchange, the village provides the places to eat, chicken for our meal and the waterfall to cool off. He also says that the village would be grateful for any money we can contribute to the operation.

When lunch arrives, we discover why our guide went to the banana plants. They wrapped the chicken in it to cook just as the Chef in Hoi An had done with fish. Lunch was simple; chopped roasted chicken, rice, raw vegetables and fruit, but so good after a couple of hours of hiking! Before we continue our trek up the mountain, I grab a picture of the waterfall:

Mr. Moon tells us that we only have about an hour to go to the mountaintop village where our driver will pick us up, but now we are climbing so it is a lot more work. Beth has again turned bright pink and I'm hoping that she will be able to make it to the top. We did slow down a lot, but we all make it to the top. There, we find the village school which includes some dorm rooms for students who live far enough away that they only go home on weekends and housing for teachers (who are mostly from Chiang Mai) as well. We are very happy to see our van and get iced towels from the driver!

The ride back down the mountain was exciting with lots of switchbacks. We stop to drop off our native guide (who has left his scooter near where we picked him up) and then head to a local rafting camp on the Wang River.

Before the roads were built, the easiest way for the locals to get to market or move around was by bamboo raft. These rafts are constructed of about 6-7 large pieces of bamboo, each about 15 feet long and tied together at both ends and the middle. This is sort of like punting on the Thames where long poles are used to push the punt along except that the bamboo raft is much more flexible. Beth sits in the middle and our river guide is in the front. I'm told to stand in the back, but after nearly falling over backwards into the water a couple of times, I decide that the best way to do this is sit cross-legged and use my pole as if it were a kayak. Here are a couple of pictures:

I realize that in order to keep going more or less straight, I have to push off on one side while the kid in the front is pushing on the other side. It is close to Thai New Year so there are a lot of people on the river, and many have just pulled their rafts over to the side to enjoy the cool or to get drunk. There are enough impaired people that we run into a number of raft traffic jams where people have gotten their rafts perpendicular to the river and everyone crashes into them. For the people who have parked their rafts on the sides of the river, this is a great opportunity to splash anyone who comes by. We pass through an elephant camp and even get sprayed by a couple of elephants. I'm already soaked so I don't mind, but Beth is not pleased so I do my best to push us along as fast as I can.

There is one section with rapids where in low water times like this, passengers have to get out and walk around the rough spot while the guides take the rafts through and then pick us up again, but we eventually get to the pickup point and are glad to get off. Fortunately, it is hot enough that we dry off quickly and enjoy a coke with Mr. Moon, Chris and Mark before getting back in the van and heading back to Chiang Mai.

After a short rest at the hotel, we head back out for dinner. Based on Mr. Moon's recommendation, we're going to a place called The House by Ginger. We use google maps and it takes us along a bunch of alleyways that would be considered sketchy almost anywhere. But Mr. Moon has assured us that there are thousands of closed-circuit TV cameras in the old town and that we are completely safe going anywhere. When we arrive at the restaurant, we are really glad that we had the hotel make us a reservation because there are dozens of groups trying to get in. I would describe the restaurant's decor as a visit to Grandma's. There are pictures on the wall, various vases with and without flowers, rugs and tiles made to look like rugs, and sofas to sit on instead of chairs with patterns that were likely popular 100+ years ago. There are even a couple of walls hanging from the ceiling so that they have more wall space. The food is great and, of course, we get to finish it off with another mango with sticky rice!

Indochina Express - Day 18 (Chiang Mai)

March 20

Today, we are driving about 1.5 hrs north of Chiang Mai to the Highlands Elephant Center. This trip caused some issues in our trip planning. We really wanted an experience with Asian elephants in Thailand, but the first option that the travel agents suggested included being able to ride on an elephant, and there were indications in reviews on travel sites that the elephants were chained at night. This was not at all what we had in mind, so we were happy when beth found the Elephant Nature Park. This park was founded in 2005 by Sangduen "Lek" Chailert, probably the world's foremost spokesperson for the humane treatment of elephants.

Lek grew up in the mountains of northern Thailand near the Myanmar border. As a child, she saw the mistreatment of Asian elephants involved in logging teak and started providing medical care to elephants as a teenager. Thailand banned teak logging in 1989 and most of the captive elephants were moved into tourism - performing at shows, allowing people to ride them or acting as pack animals to trekkers. Injury, as well as death, of these elephants are common, so captive breeding programs were part of these businesses. Lek knew that in order to make the elephants docile enough to safely interact with people, they had to be mentally broken so when she was able, she started to rescue animals and provide them with a sanctuary where they can live out their lives in dignity. As tourism crashed during the COVID pandemic, she encouraged many of the tourism companies to either give up their elephants or to convert to a business model where tourists come to care for the elephants instead of coming for a show. For her work, Lek was recognized by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as one of six Global Conservation Female Heroes and awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Emmanuel Macron. She has also appeared in documentaries produced by National Geographic, BBC, Animal Planet and Discovery. 

Lek has now rescued more than 200 elephants, and the original Elephant Nature Park is running out of space. The Highlands Elephant Center, where we are going, is a spin-off from the Elephant Nature Park that opened in 2013. They currently have six elephants: five females and one male and they only take small groups. After an "interesting" ride into the mountains along increasingly sketchy roads, we pass cages with monkeys, geese and pigs before arriving at a wooden hut where we meet our guide for the day, Bobby, and two other guests: a day trader who is from Wales, but it currently living in southern Thailand and a woman from Czechia. Bobby explains to us that we will prepare breakfast for two of the elephants and shows us two large containers of mini watermelons and a half-dozen small machetes. Our first job is to quarter all of the watermelons. When we are done, Bobby tells us that the elephants are on their way. Here is what we saw:

The men walking with the elephants are mahouts. They are trainers, keepers, bodyguards and friends to specific elephants and these deep connections are critical on keeping both the elephants and general public safe. Breakfast is popular and these elephants can move surprisingly quickly given that they weigh about 2.5 tons each!

Now it is clear what the structure that we are standing in is for. The guests (and the watermelons) are in the inside and the elephants stand on the outside, putting their trunks inside. Elephant trunks are quite amazing - equal parts snorkel, periscope, drinking straw, nose, and arm & hand. We nervously hold out the first pieces of watermelon and an elephant reaches out, wraps their trunk around the watermelon and plops it into their mouth. The trunk is quite warm to the touch and, given its various uses, also dirty and slimy. These two ladies are hungry (Bobby tells us that each of them eats in excess of 300 lbs of food per day) and are not shy about whacking us with their trunks if we are not bringing watermelons fast enough. In no time, both containers are empty, and the elephants are still reaching around with their trunks to see if there are more watermelons hidden away somewhere. Here is a picture:

Bobby tells us that these two elephants: Mae Pond (born in 1981) closest to us in the picture and Nong Pop (born in 1990) are two of the five female elephants at this site. The matriarch of the family, Kham Paeng (born in 1971) is in an enclosure with a new female Moh Go Nar who arrived in July 2024 and her just over1 year old calf Jun. There is also a young male named Kham Saen (born in 2019), but in the last year he has, like many adolescents, been acting out and not paying attention to his mahout. As a result, he is no longer safe to be with people and is kept in a separate enclosure.

Breakfast over, we walk down the road with Mae Pond and Nong Pop toward the main enclosure. But elephants don't go anywhere without a food source nearby, so we are each given a string bag of pretty overripe (to us) bananas. Bobby tells us to wear the bag on our outside shoulder because the elephants will otherwise just reach into the bag and help themselves. This is obviously a favorite snack because Mae Pond and Nong Pop eat the bananas as fast as we can feed them - and will go searching for where we have them if we are not fast enough. Getting searched means being slobbered by their trunk so we hand them out as fast as we can. Here are a couple of pictures:

We are only about halfway to the main enclosure when Mae Pond trumpets and both elephants speed up. Bobby explains that they heard baby Jun cry/trumpet and that in that case, the first reaction is for all of the family to gather in a protective circle around the calf.

By the time we reach a large area below the main enclosure, things seem to have calmed down. The mahouts put out large piles of what looks like a combination of sugar cane and corn stalks and the five females come down the hill to join us. Bobby tells us to be careful not to get between Jun and the adults and to generally give Jun more space. He tells us that she is quite mischievous and likes to head butt or pass someone and then reach back to kick with one of her back legs. This is not aggressive; it is only play. But this is not a good thing when you consider that baby Jun already weights close to 300 lbs!

Bobby also tells us that Jun is still nursing and will also be hand fed by her mahout. The other females are happy to grab some sugar cane, hold the stalk with their feet, strip the leaves off with their trunk and pop the stalk into their mouths. Elephants use a wider frequency range than humans and you can sort of hear and feel the low frequency sounds that they are making while they eat. After a while, we hear cow bells, and a bunch of pretty emaciated looking cattle arrive to clean up what food is left. Bobby tells us that Lek not only rescues elephants, but also cattle, monkeys, geese and pigs which explains the cages that we saw driving into the park. He also tells us that they grow their own sugar cane and corn to feed to the elephants as well as coffee to sell in order to buy more food for all of the animals that they protect. All of the people who work here are Karen people from the local villages.

Once all the food is gone, the elephants start snacking on the leaves of some of the trees in the area. They have long since eaten all of the lower leaves and now are using their trunks to try to find leaves, even those that they cannot see. Here are some pictures:

Now that the elephants are fed, it is time for us to eat. Lunch is a vegan buffet. We have vegetarian Khao Soi, spring rolls, a couple of stir-fry dishes with some sort of meat substitute and some sort of dim-sum like steamed buns. It is all great!

By the time we finish lunch, temperatures are back in the mid-90's and it is time to give the elephants a chance to cool off. We walk up the hill to a large field which has a spring-fed pond on one side. The mahouts put out more sugar cane and corn stalks and shortly after, the five females come up the hill. From our vantage point, we can see Kham Saen's enclosure in the distance:

I know that while female elephants stay together for life, males are more solitary. But these are still social animals and even the males form small, more temporary groups. Kham Saen can talk to the other elephants, but I feel sorry for him off on his own.

Bobby tells us that Jun quickly bonded with the matriarch Kham Paeng after she arrived last year, so much so that Kham Paeng gives much more attention to Jun than Jun's mother does. Anytime that Jun appears either upset or frightened, Kham Paeng is right there to sooth her. And when Kham Paeng decides to take a bath in the pond, Jun is right there with her while the other three females are content to eat. Jun and Kham Paeng are still in the water when the cows arrive to clean up the leftovers. When they finally get out of the water, Jun decides that she wants to nurse and while she does, all of the other elephants form a protective barrier around mother and calf. After their lunch, and in some cases, their baths, the elephants head over to the embankment at the edge of this field to apply bug repellent - in this case, this means digging some of the red clay out of the embankment and spraying it all over themselves with their trunks.

The elephants then head back down the hill to the enclosure where they sleep, but we stop at Kham Saen's enclosure. There we find a large bucket of a mixture of rice, overripe bananas and a bunch of things I'm not sure of. Our job is to make balls of this mixture and feed it to Kham Saen much like we did with the watermelons in the morning.  Bobby tells us that Kham Saen is a lot more unpredictable than the females so we should take our hands away right after Kham Saen takes our rice balls to prevent him from getting any ideas for fun at our expense even though he is safely on other side of a quite formidable fence.

Our final job for the day is to make the same sort of rice mixture for the four adult females and feed them through the fence of their enclosure. I'm not sure of everything, but the mixture definitely had rice, Thai bananas (shorter than we are used to), some sort of protein pellets and dried fruit. It makes a kind of sticky glop which makes it easy to shape into balls but also sticks to everything else. We found that the best way was to wet our hands before shaping the balls. The girls all line up and are mostly willing to share (for example, if a person is standing between two elephants). Kham Paeng gives us an example of how smart these elephants are. She has learned that the rice balls are only weakly held together and sometimes split in two when they wrap their trunks around them, so she orients her trunk like a golf tee so you can place the ball on the end of her trunk. Here are some of the many pictures I took:

The future of these elephants is a little uncertain. Asian elephants can live to be perhaps 90 years old so the "old girls" can keep doing this for another 30-50 years, but Jun and Kham Saen are not and will not be domesticated the way that Nong Pop, Mae Pond, Moh Go Nar and Kham Paeng have been so they will not be safe to walk with tourists when they grow up. Kham Saen is not even safe with humans now. So, we are not sure what will happen to parks like this when the habituated elephants die off because even though Jun and Kham Saen have not been habituated to humans, they also haven't learned how to survive in the wild.

But between the money coming from tourists like us, the money they make from their coffee plantation and money from private donors, this business model is working well enough that Lek has expanded groups that she works with into the rest of Thailand as well as Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. If you are ever in this part of the world, we strongly recommend a visit. It was a great experience!

Indochina Express - Day 17 (Chiang Mai)

March 19

Temple day. The first one is in Chiang Mai. They are celebrating the birthday of the abbot and had some sort of ceremony for young children. It isn't about them becoming novice monks, but more like a confirmation - kids making promises in how they are going to live their lives according to Buddhist teachings. We ask Mr. Moon whether Thailand had the same back and forth between Hinduism and Buddhism like Cambodia did. He said that Thailand started out in Hinduism, became Buddhist and then stayed that way. His view on the back and forth in Cambodia was that Buddhism and Hinduism have always been pretty compatible and that the back and forth was more of a way for each leader to show that they were greater than the previous guy, especially if the new guy was the victor in a war between kingdoms. Here are a couple of pictures:

The white monuments are stupas, ceremonial towers built to house sacred relics (usually the remains of monks or nuns) so this is the graveyard for this temple. Large stupas like the towers in Angkor Wat are also used for mediation. Part of that mediation is called Parikrama and involves walking around the stupas, so many large stupas have a Parikrama pathway next to them.

The site of the second temple, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, is up in the mountains about 15 km west of the Chiang Mai city center. The site was supposedly chosen by an older albino elephant who was carrying one of Buddha's sacred relics (the legend says it was part of his shoulder bone). The elephant climbed up the mountain and walked around the mountain top three times, then put down the relic and died. The King of Lanna (whose territory included most of northern Thailand) ordered that a pagoda be built on the spot. Visitors to the temple can walk up the 309 steps, drive up in a car or take a tram. It is already getting hot so we opt for the tram.

Once we are at the temple, Mr. Moon gives us a brief history of the life of Buddha. Buddha was born into a Hindu royal family in what is now Tibet in 563 BCE. Normally, a Hindu mother-to-be travels to home of her parents to give birth, but Buddha's mother did not get home in time and Buddha (then known as Siddhartha Gautama) was born in the wilderness. Upon birth, he took seven steps, and a lotus flower grew immediately under each step. Buddha then announced that this was going to be his last life (meaning he will reach enlightenment during this lifetime). Buddha's mother died shortly after Buddha's birth, but before doing so convinced her younger sister to raise Buddha, who then married Buddha's father. They were afraid that Buddha would leave home so they cleaned the household and the village of all older people, poor people, basically anything that was ugly or bad so that he would only be surrounded by beauty. His parents also arranged his marriage at 16 in hopes of keeping him nearby. He had one boy, but then at 29 decided that he needed to see the world. Almost immediately, he encountered a hermit and learned that people got old (he said that he did not want to grow old) and a man dying on the side of the road and learned that people got sick (he said that he did not want to get sick) and a monk. Buddha wondered how the monk could have nothing (no material goods) and still be happy and decided that he wanted to be like the monk. His travels took him through all of the seven kingdoms and eventually, he reached enlightenment. Then he wanted to teach others how he had reached enlightenment and that was the beginning of Buddhism. The first Buddhist monk was the monk that he first met, and the first novice monk was his son. Here are some pictures:

Next stop is lunch at one of the Royal Projects (one of thousands of projects sponsored by the King for the benefit of the Thai people). This project is all about organic farming. Among our too many dishes, we have the most popular soup in northern Thailand called Khao Soi:

Start with a coconut milk base, add in chili paste and a little fish sauce. Boil until cooked. Throw in some protein (we had chicken) and yellow noodles. Finally, stir fry some noodles to make them crunchy and throw them in. This is really good - spicy, although Mr. Moon says that we are getting "elementary school" levels of spice. If so, I don't think I would survive graduate school spice levels! I also had a Butterfly Pea Lime drink. Mr. Moon tells us that the color of Butterfly Pea changes depending on acidity level. In acidic solutions like this lime drink, it is purple, but in basic solutions, it is pink. Just to check, I add a little lime juice, and the drink turns a deeper purple. This is a great drink for a chemist! 

Our 3rd Temple was a forest temple. Here the monks went into tunnels under the pagoda to meditate, apparently because there is too much noise from wildlife. Mr. Moon buys a "gift pack (including toilet paper) for one of the senior monks so that he would give us his blessing. He also showed us how his robe was folded to go out into the world or when he was studying/meditating. Here are a couple pictures:

Our final stop in the afternoon is a series of archeological sites fairly close to the Ping River southeast of Chiang Mai. It is thought this was the site of a city called Wiang Kum Kam founded by King Mangrai (one of the founders of the Lanna empire) in the late 13th century and later made the capital of Lanna. Due to repeated flooding of the Ping River, the capital was moved to Chiang Mai and the city was lost to time after a Burmese invasion in 1558. Sometime after that, it was finally buried in another flood and the course of the Ping River moved to the west. It was only rediscovered around 1990 under nearly 2 meters of mud. Since the original names are unknown, these rediscovered temples are named after the families on whose land they were rediscovered. Here are some pictures:

It has been a long time in the heat, so we are happy to go back to the hotel for an afternoon nap before going out this evening for a walking/riding tour of the old city center. Afternoon nap followed by a walking/riding tour of the old city. Here are the electric tuk-tuks that arrived to take us on this outing:

Someone clearly went all out on the honeymoon theme! Unlike EVs in the US, these don't make any noise so they can sneak up on unwary motorbike riders. Perhaps they should make a tuk-tuk sound similar to their gas-powered cousins!

We stop at a park close to the city canal/moat where people were exercising and see a couple of very unusual sports. In one, a group of six or eight people in two teams surround a three-sided hoop suspended about 15-20 feet off the group. The object of the game is to get the ball through a hoop without using your hands. Sort of like hacky sack on steroids. The second game was like volleyball, but you could only use your feet, or your head and they use a rattan ball. One young guy made several bicycle kicks with top spin to keep shot on the court. Here are a couple of pictures:

Our next stop was Wat Chedi Luang - a temple built between the 14th and 15th century. When it was completed, it was the tallest building in the Lanna empire. In 1468, the emerald Buddha was installed in the stupa. Unfortunately, the stupa partially collapsed during an earthquake about 75 years later and the emerald Buddha was moved to Laos. We will come back to this artifact in a few more blog entries. Here are some pictures:

We also check out a night market and a night flower market. We finally end up at a nice quiet restaurant for dinner and enjoy a great meal next to the canal. Then we get back in our tuk-tuks and head back to the hotel. I hope that you enjoyed our day as much as we did!