Faye Dasi Sutton

This morning was another early start. On the way to Chang Mai we stopped at the Wat Rong Khun otherwise known as the White temple. It  was renovated by Chalermchai Kositpipat who is an artist who painted Thai temple in London. He was inspired by Thai king and Buddhism and used all his money on this temple. This temple is quite unique as usually Buddhist temples are gold or red. He used white to represent purity.  In the afternoon we spent our time chilling by the pool before going to the local street food market. I had a garlic chicken with rice as well as gyoza.  I also ticked something I wanted to try. It was not a great decision. In the evening we had the best time. We went to the Chiang Mai Cabaret. This is the Thai version of a drag show. This was honestly one of the best shows. The acts were incredibly talented and the costumes incredible.

Day 54 My mother always told me that only boring people get bored... I must be the most boring person going. Today we had a 9 hour trip on a boat down the Mekong river to get to the village we are staying at tonight. Well... after I had eaten my breakfast, watched some Netflix, had a nap, read my book, eaten lunch watched some more Netflix, did a little drawing I was bored. This is still with 3 hours to go. We finally arrived at Huay Thoom. This is a village of about 300 people consisting of 50 family’s. The village make their money mainly from farming. There is a local primary school and lots of farm animals. We were given a welcome ceremony by the village chief and  other members of the village. We then tucked in to a lovely traditional meal.  In the evening we ended up playing with some of the kids from the village. As soon as they saw our smart phones all they wanted to do was play games. ...

This morning we were up at 5:20 to go and feed the monks. This is an old Buddhist tradition based around around karma. We had to wear a scarf so that we looked nice for the monks. Buddhists believe that your morning can set up your day. If you give first thing in the morning then it sets you up for a positive day. The monks came by in a line with a bowl hung around them that we dropped sticky rice into. This happens every morning. The monks will go back to the temple and put all of the offerings of rice together and this is their two meals for the day. I learnt that monks don’t eat dinner... strange concept.  After a quick nap we got a bus to take us to the waterfall. As in Asia things aren’t always so simple. As we pulled into the petrol station we hit a bit of protruding metal. The result... flat tyre. Luckily and surprisingly our driver had a spare in the back! It obviously hasn’t been used in a while and was flat when he put it on. He had a pump wh...