Temples and Muay Thai Boxing

July 1st, a few Tuesdays ago, was a holiday in Hong Kong, actually the day HK was given back to China. So, Drew took that Monday off from work, and we went on a 4 day trip to Chiang Mai, the 2nd largest city in Thailand, located in the northern section surrounded by "mountains." They were really more like hills, but the temperature was certainly cooler than in Hong Kong, and the air was a bit less muggy, so we'll take it.

We flew out Saturday morning, and got to Chiang Mai around midday. It's only a 2 hour and 45 min flight away. After checking into our hotel, the first order of business was finding some lunch. After walking around a bit, we ended up going to the FreeBird Cafe, a restaurant that gives all profits to a school that it runs for refugees. It was also vegetarian and vegan, but the lack of meat did not equal lack of flavor! It was delicious! I had pumpkin yellow curry, and Drew had a salad sampler, with all sorts of bizarre salads. The lack of meat did mean that Drew couldn't get full; he had to order a full salad after the sampler. Add some fruit smoothies to that, and you have a great meal!

Every business we passed in Chiang Mai had a small alter somewhere near the entrance. This is similar to what we saw in Bali, but these alters were much more elaborate. 

After lunch we went temple hopping within the old section of the city, which was also where we were staying. So, all of these temples were within walking distance. I couldn't believe how elaborate these temples were. Talk about attention to detail! And there were so many of them. There was a temple like this on every block, it seemed. They all had dragons like this one at the entrance. 

They were Buddhist temples, with elaborate statues inside. I was unaware that there was a dress code to go inside of the temples. No short shorts or skirts. Some of the temples were nice enough to provide robes, like bathrobes, so you could go in, but some I just had to skip. I'd be more prepared tomorrow. 

This temple is called Wat Chedi Luang, and it was originally built in 1385. It was crumbling in places, and you weren't allowed to go inside, but it was still cool to see something that old still standing. 

I loved all the elephants built around the bottom level of the temple. A lot of them were missing, but you can imagine what it looked like in its prime. It's also cool to see how important elephants were to them even back then. Nowadays, elephants are used to attract tourists, but they are technically sacred animals. 

This was one of my favorite temples due to the colored glass and the incredible detail. Imagine how long it took to carve all of that!

Every temple had an entourage of monks working or praying. With so many temples around, that meant there were a lot of monks! A lot of them were surprisingly young, under 16 years old. Makes me wonder if these boys made their own choice to become a monk or if they were forced into it out of necessity?

All around the old part of the city there is an ancient city wall in the shape of a square built in the 1300's. There were four main gates in each direction. Nowadays, only those gates and some of the corners remain, but it's very easy to picture what it would have looked like. This was the east gate called Tha Phae Gate. I find it curious that the arrow slits are in the shape of a cross. I didn't think Thailand was ever ruled by Christians, but I wouldn't be surprised. 

For dinner, we found a street stall called the "Wok Guy" which was two guys manning woks, and one lady doing the prep work. These dishes would be cooked in less than a minute, and the woks were so so hot, I could just imagine my eyebrows getting singed off. But, the food was delicious!

After dinner we went to see Muay Thai Boxing. I thought this was a great idea and would be a lot of fun. I also thought we were going to see adults fighting. It turns out the different boxing schools use these touristy attractions to let their students fight in practice matches. So we were, in fact, watching kids fight each other. If they were wearing protective gear, it would have been ok, but they only wore gloves and mouth guards. No helmets, no padding, nothing. The sad thing was, we watched 5 fights, and 4 out of the 5 fights ended in a knockout, meaning one kid took a blow that knocked him unconscious so the deliverer was the automatic victor. I'm not a doctor, but I've seen enough concussions from softball to know that getting one every week starting when you're a teenager is definitely detrimental for your development, and the long term effects are devastating. Again, do these kids really enjoy fighting, or are they stuck in these schools because economically they have no other choice? The moral of the story is 1) The kids should have been wearing helmets, and 2) We shouldn't have been supporting this. Had I known it was kids and not adults, we wouldn't have.