Countryside to Chiang Mai City

Since Friday afternoon, we'd been hearing loud music, chanting and speaking coming from one of the wats in the local village. On Saturday night, the cook at our resort, who doesn't speak English, managed to convey to us, with help from the owner, that she would be dancing the next morning at the celebration at the wat. She wanted us to come.

So, yesterday morning we walked into the village and down to the wat, being vigilant as usual when passing all the dogs. At the wat, there were all kinds of things going on. (We can't seem to show many pictures because we think we've exceeded our bandwidth for the month with blogspot. Our pictures from previous blogs seem to be coming and going too. Hopefully the new month will solve the problem.)

Anyway, we discovered the source of all the noise. Around the wat yard, there were at least 4 big speaker arrangements broadcasting 4 different things, all at the same time. Near the entrance, a band was playing Thai music pretty well non-stop all day. Beside the temple, there was a little shrine set up in a tent where people came to pray. A monk sat at the front and droned into a microphone about something. Near that was another stage with recorded music blasting. And finally, behind the wat, another stage was set up to present theater performances and dance, with recorded music blasting there too. The noise was deafening.

If the picture shows, this is the band by the gate playing all kinds of instruments that were unusual to us.

Lots of people were there dressed for the festival. Most were in western clothing but some ladies were dressed in long skirts and tunics with sashes. They formed a procession every time a monk came in the gate, and escorted him to the temple, accompanied by a little marching band. Then they'd turn around back to the gate and do it again. 

One group of people were all dressed in the same purple traditional clothing with the same weaving and embroidery patterns. They looked a little uncomfortable but went into the shrine and presented an offering and prayed. When they came out, some ladies offered them cool drinks and plastic chairs. They sat for awhile and then left. It seemed that they must be from one of the hill villages and just stopped in to pay their respects, even though they weren't comfortable there. Interesting.

We bought a lottery ticket from this lady just because she was so friendly. She spoke no English but we all gestured and laughed until we got it done. In southeast Asia, people are crazy about lotteries and the chances of having good luck. In Vientiane, on the busiest street for Lao people going home from work, there were dozens of card tables set up along the road with people selling lottery tickets.
Anyway, we enjoyed the festivities for a while but left after an hour or so because the noise was just deafening. I had a headache by the time we got out of there. We could hear the festivities in the distance from our resort but it didn't bother us. This morning was quite quiet again.
We were the only white people at the party and apparently in the village. Except for the owner of our resort, who is French, we hadn't seen another white farang (foreigner) since our taxi picked us up at the airport last Thursday.
Today, we enjoyed the morning around the pool again. The only other couple at the resort (an Asian American and his Thai girlfriend) left on Friday. Since then we have had the whole place to ourselves so it's like having your own small resort, your own pool and your own staff to clean the bungalow and cook breakfast and dinner. It was a beautiful place overlooking the rice fields and mountains beyond. Hard to leave but our taxi came for us around mid-afternoon and drove us to our new hotel in the old quarter of Chiang Mai. The drive took about 45 minutes. We're at the Imm Hotel Thaphae Chiang Mai, right outside the Thaphae Gate to the original walled city. This is a fairly big modern budget hotel right next to a McDonald's and just down the street from a Starbucks.
Before we came here, I thought that Chiang Mai sounded like an exotic place in the wilds of northern Thailand. It is in northern Thailand not far from the Myanmar border but it's a fairly big city (175,000 or so) with a good size airport and expressways. It's right at the edge of the hill country so people come here for trekking into hill villages. Unfortunately, there are a lot of tourists who want to "get off the beaten track" and a lot of less than honest tour companies. They all sell similar packages of van ride into the hills, short hike,  elephant ride for an hour or so, raft ride down a river for an hour or two and a night in a village. People might think they're getting off the beaten track but they're not. The companies go to the same villages and the same trails every day. If you go on one of these treks, the house your sleep in and mat you sleep on were slept in and on by another tourist the day before. We may go to an elephant camp where elephants are cared for, not abused (which is also a problem) but we'll see. The old quarter is kind of a classic old Thai city so we may just explore that.
This evening we had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, Taste From Heaven, recommended in Lonely Planet and just down the street. They had really good green curry and pad thai at reasonable prices. Tomorrow we'll start wandering around town, seeing the sights.