Our next stop was a monastery called Doi Suthep (Wat Phra That Doi Suthep), which is another sacred site for Thai people. It is said to have been founded in the late 14th century. Doi Suthep is the mountain it is on, so you can imagine the view, as well as the stairs we had to climb…so worth it if you can do it (around 300 steps). The interesting thing about Buddhism is that you don’t have to be a monk for the rest of your life, but you can do it for certain periods of time. We were excited to visit this place since we were able to receive a blessing from a monk.
The dragons at the gate are amazing, made with beautiful colored designs. When you get to the top, the golden mount at the temple is gorgeous, as well as all the beautiful statues of Buddha. You are surrounded by gold there!
We learned that there are different Buddha’s for the various days of the week (i.e. Sunday is contemplation)…your Buddha is based on what day of the week you were born. Buddhists also burned oil there which I had never seen before.
This place was really special to me since we got a blessing, and received blessed rope to wear on our hands. Monks cannot touch women so another man put them on us. I had never received a blessing from a monk, so this was a completely new experience for me.
Kristina and I shook these containers with sticks in them, and the stick that fell out of the container had a number on it that was matched to a paper with a fortune. I included a picture with our fortunes on it. A trip to Doi Suthep is a really beautiful experience that I recommend if you are in Chiang Mai.
After this, we went to visit the Tiger Kingdom. I know many animal lovers have a problem with this place since they do tranquilize the tigers if they get too aggressive. We both wanted to go since we felt like this was our only chance to be up close with tigers (I know it’s a white people thing as my friend Terrence Gant, owner of Third Coast Comics, pointed out). We spent a couple hours there. We purchased time with the medium size tigers. We wanted to be able to see the baby tigers, but the wait was a couple of hours. Going back, I’d just go for it, and see the baby tigers since we walked by the area they were in, and they were the cutest things.
For some reason, the medium size was not popular so we got to see them pretty quickly. For the record, I was terrified. The medium size is pretty large to me. If a tiger snapped and bit me, I would have no one to blame but myself for being stupid. The whole time we were with the tigers, we were afraid to touch them…the pictures are hilarious since we are nervously smiling, not touching them. One even got tranquilized while we were there, so that did not inspire confidence in our situation. If you want to be up close and personal with tigers of all sizes, then go to Tiger Kingdom.
When we returned back to the city, we decided to explore a bit after cooling off in our hotel pool (which was lovely). We tried banana and chocolate roti from a street vendor, and it was delicious! I have a rule: no diets on vacation…just try anything you can, and enjoy. Just watch what you eat back home.
