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Articles Tagged ‘Wat Po’

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Boom Chiang Mai wah wah!

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

If you don’t watch tele, then you won’t get this title, even if you do watch tele, you may not… obviously it’s the heat.

Chiang Mai sunset streets

Chiang Mai is nice! Like Tainan is to Taipei and Kyoto is to Tokyo. Chiang Mai is calmer, smaller, quieter, greener, more village-like but unfortunately not cooler than Bangkok.

It was a full red moon the past couple of nights, and so we think in celebration there has been a local pop concert with local singers and pop dancers (neon clostumes, cheesy dancing – perfect)… entertaining and good night market-style food.

Local pop concert

We Have been here 3 days and 3 nights now. The first morning we went out looking at Massage schools. There was basically 2 that fit into our dates which we both visited. ITM (International Thai Massage) school was recommended by the Thai Tourist Assocaition and seemed really nice with a nice teacher and lots of students. It teaches Northern style massage and set in a nice district, but the courses don’t run all weeka and if I did the subjects I wanted, I wouldn’t have been able to see much of Thailand after the course before I go home. So in the end we went for the Classical Wat Po style, Chiang Mai branch. It seems a little more hardcore, having more accupressure than the more stretching-based Norhtern style.

(Boom) Chetawan (...wan!)Massage school

[read on]

Posted in Travel preps | 2 Comments »

Briefly Bangkok

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Bangkok by night

So we’re here, well we were there and now we are in Chiang Mai, but I’ll go back a couple of days…

Landed in good time at the airport (Kuwait City was nice by the way, well, the cafe chairs were comfy as we never made it out the airport and spent hours playing UNO and eating complimentary snack voucher “cheese” sandwiches), and got a coach in to the city to our hostel. All fine there. And even though a bit tired, we headed out again. Oooh I have turned right back into a Sweat Betty again. There is air-con in a lot of places which helps but as soon as I hit the street, I am dripping once again.

A Wat Po tower

We were on a mission to get to Wat Po temple where the famed massage school is and check it out before enrolling in the Chiang Mai branch, with the idea of getting a sample massage. It turned out that Bangkok is actaully quite a big city. Massive in fact and we exhausted ourselves even more walking across it. Either the map or we were rubbish and we spent ages trying to find it – when we did the school was closed. Not much luck that night, school closed, tourist info closed and chosen restaurant closed!

Thought we’d pop into the temple to have a brief look. Stunning! With the largest housed Buddha in Thailand if not the world at a twinkling, golden 20 metre (ish, I need to look that one up) long.

Reclining Golden BuddhaFrom Foot to Head

At first glance, and from limited expereice Thailand seems to be a little bit of a cross between Taiwan and India with its heat/humidity, food culture, tropical vegetation and elaborate temples. Thailand has a distinctive flavour of its own though and this can be seen in its temples for example. The exhuberant detail, and intricate form and decoration. The Buddhas are beautiful and the all-in-orange, monks that look after them are just as magnificent.

We decided to head straight up to Chaing Mai, a quieter and calmer city in the north where we will study Thai Traditional Massage, and get to grips with the capital on the way back.

Bustling Bangkok food street

Early the next day we went by impressive Sky Train, and complicated city bus to the Northern Bus Station and took a nothing-less-than 1st Class coach bound for Chiang Mai. Reclining chairs that reclined like I have never seen before, TV and cakes brought to your chair, plus irredescent pink upholstery to boot! All at only 7 pounds 50 for the 10 hour voyage! Marvellous.

Posted in Thailand | 1 Comment »