Day Eight - Hmong village trip

Nhong and Pew were meant to be travelling on to Chiang Rai today (that's N's home town) but missed their bus so decided to come out with us for the day.  They'd arranged a driver for us for the duration of our stay in Chiang Mai, so it was just a matter of us picking them up from the bus station and then off we went to Doi Pui, a Hmong village.

The Hmong are a tribal people originally from Southern China but long since dispersed to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.  Many Hmong had fought against the communists during the Laotian civil war and fled south to Thailand to escape retribution after the Pathet Lao became the government in 1975.

These days many have formed expatriate communities overseas in places like the US, France and Australia but for those who remain in Thailand, it is usually a matter of scratching a living from selling ethnic wares and general knick-knacks to tourists visiting their villages (as we did today).

After lunch, we headed for the temple Wat Phrathat at Doi Suthep outside Chiang Mai.  I had been intrigued by these curlicues displayed on most Thai Buddhist temples and had no idea what they were. Closer inspection revealed that they were the tails of great snakes or dragons which are routinely used to decorate these extravagant buildings.

I was also intrigued by the number of different representations of Buddha that we encountered.
I guess we're all familiar with the image of the meditating Buddha and we may even have one of those Chinese fat laughing Buddhas perched above our fridge. We saw the mighty reclining Buddha in Bangkok but in what other ways was he shown in temples?  Eating? Working? Playing?

Well, it turns out that in Thailand, ordinary folk have for centuries associated certain poses from Buddha's life with days of the week, so if you'd like to know what your Buddha pose is, have a look at this link.

P.S. We have decided that this could well be a once in a lifetime trip, so since we are so close by, we are going to take a trip to Laos or, more properly, the Lao People's Democratic Republic. You can get a bus to the border which will take a day, overnight stay there, then board the slow boat down the Mekong for another day. Four days travel would be a bit of a stretch, so we've booked ourselves on a return flight to the old capital, Luang Prabang, leaving on Tuesday 29th.