Two Foot Rubs in Two days
I am up early this morning. My cell phone rang at 3:00 am. I would have sworn it was turned off. Oh well, I read for a while and checked email.
Yesterday was an amazing day. We hired a driver and a car for the day. The car turned out to be a 7 month old full cab pick up truck. Our driver did this part time and lives on his family farm with the extended family razing rice, fruit, and they have cat fish ponds. He was great.
We left at about 8:30 and headed north. Our first stop was the White Temple. This is a compound of building started about 15 years ago by a famous Thai builder. He will not totally finish it for 60 more years. There are 9 building now. The buildings art bright white inlaid with mirrors. Inside there are murals that took your breath away. Some of them were pretty startling. One had the Twin towers being hit by pplanes. Scattered around the picture were all kinds of super heroes. At the top there were two eyes, inside one was Bin Laden and in the other was George Bush. It was pretty intense. Then we went to the Black House. Where the temple was all light this was all dark. For a blind person this place was extra cool because everything could be touched. Again there were 9 buildings and still building going on. The building started 40 years ago. Everything was very dark wood and all about animal everything. There were huge, I mean really huge, chairs and table made from animal horns of all kinds. There was a snake skin stretched out on a table that had to be 30 feet long. The skin as well as the table. The grounds were mostly wooded with lots of odd collections of very rustic art and what I think of as installations. There were a goat and horse mowing the lawn.
Now back into the car and off to Doi Tung. This is the home of the Queen Mother. She dies several years ago at 95. In her 80s, she built her villa and a garden that is acres of amazing plants. She lived for a while in Switzerland and brought a lot of planting ideas from there and combined them with native plants. The smells and sounds were unbelievable and the colors, well, I don’t think there are words. Lots of funky bamboo bridges over water features and Orchids everywhere. We stopped for a snack. I had a macadamias nut smoothie. Honest, I am not kidding. It turned out to be lunch. The villa had an audio tour that was great. Even though I was wearing a skirt that came to mid calve, I needed to put a silly pants thing over my skirt because 6 inches of leg was showing.
Back in the car an off to the Golden Triangle. Although when I hear this I always think Opium, the Triangle part of the name comes from being able to see three countries. While looking over the river from Thailand you can see, what they still seem to call Burma and Laos.
One more time back in the car. We stopped at a lovely temple that seemed to be a shrine to the monks although it was an interesting mix of Hindu and Buddhist. A little further down the road, while driving along the Mekong River, we stopped for a foot massage. Who would have ever thought I would have massages two days in a row. This was five dollars. I am seriously telling you I have never had such a foot massage including tea at the end. All this on the side of the river.
We arrived back at our hotel at about 6:30 and napped a little before dinner. We just ate in the coffee shop and really enjoyed our beer.
I think today we are doing a walking tour in the city. We will go early in the morning before it gets too hot. Trust me, it does get hot.