We headed out around 9:30 this morning to climb Doi Suthep to the temple at the top. It started off as a nice stroll through a forest on a well-marked trail.We lost the signs (and the trail!) after about 45 minutes, and spent the next 3 hours or so bushwhacking uphill alongside a stream. Literally bushwhacking, like i was wishing we had a machete to hack our way through. Climbed a couple of vertical ascents and sloshed through the stream a few times. Picking a path over a toppled-over bamboo stand. Stopped in our tracks to catch sight of waterfalls and sunlight shooting through the forest canopy. I had a few moments when I was worried that we’d be hiking through the afternoon, and that our water would run out. The hike was just about perfect, though. It was way off the beaten path, and was just the right amount of physical challenge to get my muscles working without kicking my ass.

Sadly, there was trash throughout the streambed because it gets washed away during the rains and winds up there. Waste management is generally a foreign concept here, which upsets me.

One of the cooler parts of our adventure was this little fuzzy black mutt with a curly tail who decided to adopt us and play guide soon after the trail signs stopped (along with the trail). He’d wander off, and just when we thought he’d left us, there he was ahead of us, patiently waiting for us to catch up. He was our guide and companion all the way up to the village just below the temple, where we stopped for lunch.

Lunch was like manna from heaven. We had shared a two-year-old Luna bar that Allyn brought along. We were all feeling a little weak-kneed from the climb, and ravenous might come close to describing how hungry I was. Jodi speaks Thai fairly well, and overhead one of the women working in the restaurant commenting to her friend that we were very dirty. Her friend replied that falang (foreigners) are always dirty. Duh. They probably all had just finished hiking through 6 miles of jungle with no trail.

The wat was beautiful. Jodi narrated the scenes of the Buddha’s life as we went through the inner part of the temple. I particularly liked the story of the Buddha subduing Mara, which is the posture where he’s seated cross-legged with his left hand in his lap and his right hand touching the ground. The Buddha was on the verge of enlightenment, and he touched the ground to call on the earth ass a witness to his enlightenment. Just then, the armies of this demon king (Mara, who represents suffering and earthly attachment) were sent to attack him and prevent him from overcoming Mara through enlightenment. As the Buddha touched the earth, the earth goddess, who was bathing in the river nearby, took note of what was happening. She wrung out her wet hair, and the resulting flood washed away the army of Mara.

Inside one of the temple buildings, I had a white band of strings tied on my wrist by a mawdu (a shaman-like guy who isn't a monk but who still serves people in spiritual matters). He chanted as he tied the braceleton, pausing only to ask me where I'm from. So the story goes: when a person moves, or goes travelling, or otherwise encounters a major life change, that person's spirit can become confused and lost. The string acts as a beacon, telling the spirit where the person is and helping it realign itself with the body. The mawdu was calling my spirit from San Francisco, telling it where to find me. (Silly me, I thought I’d packed it!)

After coming out of the temple, we stopped for banana waffles with chocolate. A banana gets skewered on a stick, dipped in waffle batter, placed in an appropriately shaped waffle iron, and then drizzled with chocolate syrup. Odd, but so tasty. You can get just about anything on a stick around here, including fried duck anuses. No joke. Fried duck anuses on a stick. My vote’s for the banana waffle with chocolate.

When we got back home, I had my first pad thai in Thailand. Yummy. I could eat that stuff every day, if there weren’t so many other tasty treats to be had!