After getting very sick yesterday, I decided to get out and see some more of Chiang Mai. I had heard the Temple at Doi Suthep was a sight to see and started to walk towards it. Walking seemed like a good idea until I had been walking for an hour and not even reached the Chiang Mai Zoo which from there Doi Suthep was another 18km...in this heat? Forget it! I'm getting a Songthaew! Flagging a taxi down is easier here than it is in New York and there are thousands of those Yellow beasts roaming round. Getting a good deal is another thing completely. I hooked a Songthaew with a couple of girls, one from China and another from Japan before heading up the hill. About half way up, I came to the realisation that I must have been off my head to think I could have cycled this let alone walked it.

We picked up another girl from Switzerland on route and continued our steep ascent of the hill outside of Chiang Mai. Arriving a while later, we could see lots of stalls but no sign of the Temple...over 300 steps later and we were at the entrance to the Temple...making me realise that if I keep living off of a diet of beer and noodles, I am going to have to do this climb every single day of my trip to work it off!

The Temple itself was beautiful, statues of Buddah and Elephants everywhere including a couple made out of Jade. The beauty of the Temple actually started with the steps, each side of the steps there was a huge sprawling dragon which stretched from the top to the bottom in glittering gold, red and green. I liked the silence of the main temple, it was so peaceful to watch the people praying and burning incense. We also got to sign our names on a piece of material that will be wrapped round the base of the main Stupa. The silence was broken however when outside the main area one of the girls queried if one of those Jack fruit fell off that tree do you think it could kill someone? Hmmmm.

Funny moments seems to happen to me all of the time and this visit is certainly no exception. A Japanese couple approached me and asked me to be in a photo with them. A bit weird I thought...got me wondering whether I look like someone famous from Japan...maybe...not. Just weird as it's happened to me 4 times already! The only other thing I thought was strange was having to change your shoes into a pair supplied by the Temple to use the toilet. Although I am learning that one side of the rows of toilets are the holes in the ground and the other side are Western toilets! The girl from Switzerland had a little chuckle at a bunch of Monks carrying a video camera and taking pictures, I suppose they must go on 'holiday' and visit things as tourists as well!

The view from the top of the Temple was breath-taking as you realised how high above Chiang Mai you really were, you could see all over the city and being my usual random self I suddenly asked whether I could spot my guest house which made the others laugh. We left after that and I spent the rest of the day touring Chiang Mai with the lovely girls I had just met, after a very late lunch we went our separate ways.

Deciding to have an alcohol free evening, I went and toured the Night Bizarre. Bizarre is probably quite an apt name for it to be honest. It was very similar to the Patpong Markets in Bangkok where you could buy every forgery going...except there wasn't an offer of 'you wan Ping Ping show? Best in City!' every 5 minutes.