We head to Wat Chedi Sao Lang in Lampang. The name means Temple of Twenty Chedis. A Chedi is a stupa or pagoda or monument to honor Buddha. The original temple was built about 1,000 years ago. I love how this country of 95% Buddhists has combined elements of Thai culture with Buddhism. The dragon/serpent and the dragon head curls at the edge of temple roofs, the spirit houses and the chickens, and the fanciful figures.
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| The Chedis guarded by fanciful lions |
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| Buddhas inside the temple |
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| William encountering a snake |
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| The Thai dragon and the Buddhist wheel of education from his first sermon |
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| William and a fanciful Thai guard |
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| William is taking his chances here with the tree that makes you pregnant when you pray to it. It is a spirit tree. |
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| Another fanciful creature |
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| Chickens are big here |
We head on to the elephant hospital. When elephants are injured they are brought here for care.
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| This one had a skin condition |
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| This one stepped on a land mine near the Burmese border and hurt his left hind foot |
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| This one hurt his left fore leg |
There has been a decline in the population of Forest Elephants so they are involved in a breeding program and have mothers who care for orphans.
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| William is feeding a mother |
From here we went to a local food market. If you are squeamish, you might want to stop reading right here. This is an outdoor, covered market with individual vendors getting their wares ready for the local shoppers. Our guide told us what much of the food was, but I don't remember it all. I am sitting here drinking a Singha beer and munching on a snack we bought there. The size of peanuts, but not really peanuts.
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An insect pupae, fried and possibly seasoned although I don't know what unseasoned would taste like, but they go good with beer.
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This is just a sample of the vendors fantastical wares.
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| Ant larvae |
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| Lots of different mushrooms |
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| small pumpkins. They seem to pick things much greener than I would. |
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| more mushrooms |
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| unknown item next to baby bok choy |
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| big cardoons of ? |
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| bamboo shoots are big |
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| all ready to add to your wok |
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| tiny dried frogs. Used to sweep these out from under Jon's dresser. Never thought of them as edible. |
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| beetles mixed with green veg on banana leaf |
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| grasshoppers to the left |
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| these large beetles that look like over sized cockroaches are individually hog tied around their legs and trussed around their bodies so they can neither crawl or fly away |
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| bee larvae and the honey comb they are plucked from |
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| sticky rice with sugar and a sweet bean added enclosed in a bamboo tube |
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| pig stomach and intestine, nicely washed |
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| eggplant and strange cucumbers? |
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| In addition to various dry fish there are these snaky looking fresh fish |
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pig skin. I had a stew made of this on rice the other day for lunch.
not bad |
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| mold? |
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| deliveries come by motorcycle |
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| looks like unripe cherry tomatoes and white tomatoes? |
The live frogs did not photograph well in plastic bags and there were other unidentifiable small dead skinned four legged creatures. It was a fun time.
Then we went to lunch. We had a choice of chicken, pork or meat (non-translatable I guess). Bill and I just chose pork.
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| our guide fished sticky rice out of bamboo for us |
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| a stew topped with crispy Thai egg noodles |
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| Condiments of raw garlic, pickled vegetable and lime. These were good but I passed on the extra chili. Our guide already had hers extra hot and added more chili and sugar. |
Then on to Wat Hariphunchai in Lampun.
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| The library that holds an ancient book of Buddha's writings on banana leaves and other sorts of ancient paper. No one is allowed to touch it any more. |
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| just a lovely Buddha in the side galleries |
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| in front of the gold covered stupa |
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| in the temple |
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| an elephant headed bird |
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| William at the red Buddha |
Enough for today. We land for the night in Chiang Mai.
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