low clouds in front of doi suthep:
flash flood on my soi (street):
blackout on my soi (rainy season blackouts aren’t that uncommon, all of the electrical/telephone/etc wires are above ground so they get damaged a little easier than if they were burried under ground):
you can see the temple on the mountain in front of the clouds
i would’ve had this stuff up sooner, but i had to find some sort of video editing software (preferably freeware) that enabled frame rate adjustment… surprisingly hard to find! my version of imovie didn’t have it, which was weird since an older version, imovie 6, did. pretty ridiculous. anyway, i got imovie 6 hd which you can download for free if you have imovie 8… so i did. you can get it via this link:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/af5b283/n/iMovieHD6_dmg_zip
you’re supposed to buy it from apple if you don’t already have imovie 8 or something.
anyway, here’s a video of our scooter ride on huay kaew rd towards doi suthep (the mountain) to see wat doi suthep (the temple on the mountain):
our scooter kind of crapped out on us on that last big hill… right after we passed and ignored a sign that advised us to use the lower gear. it was ok though, we just pushed it up about 10 feet past the steepest part and started it right back up again! the scenery was amazing. we were also driving really slow. the traffic actually isn’t as terrifying as i thought it would be – people here seem to have a really good handle on their driving skills, and there’s doesn’t seem to be much in the way of road rage. nobody honked or yelled at us, even if they had to wait a little bit to get by us on the one lane road down the mountain.
we stopped at a lookout point on the way up for a great view of chiang mai city:
on the way back, we stopped at a different place and got a nice night view of the city:
and we’re not stupid, so we were wearing helmets:
(although i guess the matching shirts do make us look kind of dumb… you’re supposed to keep your arms/legs covered when you visit a temple, plus it gets kind of chilly on the mountain, and these were the only long sleeve shirts we had, damn it.)
yesterday we rode the scooter up the mountain doi suthep to wat phrathat doi suthep. the wat is just under 10 miles (15km) from chiang mai. it is said to have been built in 1383, and the first road to it was built in 1935.
you have to climb 309 steps to reach the pagoda and temple grounds:
the railing is these fantastically tiled dragons:
the pagoda (you can see some mountains through the pagoda but you can’t see them in this picture because of the light difference):
you have to take off your shoes and be appropriately dressed (long sleeves, no short shorts, etc) to enter. everything’s all gold and red:
there’s a ton of buddha statues everywhere:
there’s also bells all along the edges of the roofs:
and lots of pedestals and things:
outside of the temple, on the temple grounds, there are lots of other buildings. i think this is the temple museum (we got there later in the day and it was closed):
the front part of the temple grounds, to the right after you enter through the pagoda:
around the back of the temple is a really awesome patio-type area with a balcony that looks out over chiang mai city:
there’s bells of all shapes and sizes everywhere:
walking back down the (what feels like) million-steps staircase:
the dragon heads spitting out small dragon heads at the bottom of the stairs:
a quick little video from one of the interior corners of the temple:
