Photo album: "Chiang Mai"
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We leave Bangkok in train, at noon, on Monday March 25th, 2008. We are still travelling in third class but this time we are sitting on the wooden seats. There is no restaurant car in the train but we can order a meal. The meal, a plate of rice with chicken or fish, is delivered directly to our seat, with a fork and a spoon. We don't use knife to eat in Thailand, everything is already cut in small pieces. We arrive in Chiang Mai on Tuesday morning. We find a lodging in a hotel for young men situated inside a school. At the end of our stay, the very day of our leaving, we find out that a few things have disappeared: 700 baths in André's rucksack and my last four unused films of 36-exposure Kodachrome II, in mine.
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We covered the 700 km from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in 18 hours of train. We arrive at 6 a.m. on March 26th. To visit the town and the surrounding we decide to rent bicycles. We leave Chiang Mai by train on April 2nd and are once more in Bangkok on Wednesday the third at 6 a.m.. The next day we embark on an Air Vietnam flight to Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. |
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Seen from the courtyard of the
school where we dwell (we are at an altitude of 300 m), the Doi Suthep
mountain which reach an altitude of 1600 metres at a distance of only 12
km, remains hidden by the haze during the day. We can only sight it in the
evening when the sun lights it from behind. This haze, due to the dust in the atmosphere at the end of the dry season, will remain until the monsoon arrives. |
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About ten kilometres south of Chiang Mai, a buffalo is browsing in a dry rice field. |
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Other rice fields under water. |
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A door in Buddhist temple Wat Phra
That, on Doi Suthep mountain. We rode upwards on our bicycles 1300 metres
in only 18 km. We walked though the final part pushing our bicycles. The temple keeps a relic of the Buddha and the legend says it is a white elephant that chooses the spot for its construction: Carrying the relic, it climbed the mountain and after having trumpeted three times and turned thrice round itself, it fell on the ground and died on this very place. |
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Praying faithful in temple Wat Phra That, on Doi Suthep.. |
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On top of the 309-step stairway leading from the road to the temple of Wat Phra That. |
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Bloomy tree close to the stairway. |
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On both sides of the stairway, a seven-headed Naga (serpent) serves as handrail. Its body is covered with "scales" of ceramic. The heads are down and the tail on top of the stairway. |
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A zebu in a rice field, it is tied up through a system with a balancing pole which prevents the cord to touch the ground. |
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At 70 km south of Chiang Mai, we went to see the Mae Klang waterfalls where we have found some coolness after the long ride in bicycle under the sun. |
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Near the waterfalls, we can bathe in cool water. Here, there are, among others, U.S. soldiers on leave. We go back in Chiang Mai, around 7 p.m., a little tired after these 140 km in bicycle. A comment: today, as well as when we rode up Doi Suthep, we had an unquestionable success with people that watched us passing on our bicycles. |
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Rice fields under water and, a little farther, a man driving an antique plough pulled by a zebu. |
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Bloomy shrubs. |
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Me, near the river Mae Ping, 15 km north of Chiang Mai. Behind, several norias and a footbridge in bamboo. |
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View of the noria near the footbridge. Everything is made of bamboo. The wheel rotates driven by the stream. Small containers are attached all around the wheel. Those containers take water when they pass inside the river and they empty, when they arrive on top, into a gutter that ends in a tube which supply the water into an irrigation canal, on the river bank. |
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