We had a late start today and didn’t leave the hotel until 9am. We are all getting used to having fried rice for breakfast, but today our selection was actually quite large. The hotel is completely booked for the Loy Krathong festival tonight. Loy Krathong (floating basket) is the lantern festival where Thai people make a wish by either setting fire lantern in the air or a placing a floating basket in the river. (More on this later)

We had a cooking class today, that started in the market. We didn’t actually buy the foods for our meal, but learned about them, and got to smell durian fruit. It is very stinky and therefore, not allowed in our hotel rooms because the smell tends to linger. I bought some Thai tea there for fun. We then went to the school where we made 4 dishes: spring roles, yellow chicken curry and stir fry chicken with cashews and a coconut banana dessert. It was a lot of fun, and everything we ate was delicious.

Our fourth Wat visit was to Wat Chedi Luang. The massive stupa or temple was built before 1400s, but it was damaged in an earthquake in 1545. There were wonderful elephant statues adorning the base. Other buildings included the main sanctuary that had a gold standing Buddha and the city pillar where women couldn’t go into because we are not clean, we menstruate.

At 4pm we left the hotel for Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, which was about 1.5 hours away and up the mountain. It was named after the mountain where it’s located, and is a sacred site to many Thai people. You can reach it by walking up 309 steps or you can take a tram to the top. Since traffic was bad, we arrived later than expected, so Amy recommended the tram. We took off our shoes to enter the temple, and we arrived just in time to hear the monks chanting. It was a low toned, peaceful sound that sort of resonated through you. When the wind blue, chimes on the pagodas made a beautiful sound. The monks proceeded to walk around golden stupa three times.

Bowman and some of our fellow travelers sat with a monk and received a blessing and a prayer ribbon. He sprinkled water on everyone by using a bamboo stick to bless the group. Erika, Matt and I missed the blessing, so who knows what that means. He also gave everyone a piece of string, but only laid the piece on the women, because monks can’t touch women; if they haven’t reached enlightenment, we could be a distraction. Ha.

Our last event of this long day was dinner at the festival. We could see thousands of lanterns as we got closer to the city. We bought floating baskets off of a lady on the street and I bought a fire lantern that I set off with my wish in the market where we found dinner. We speed walked to the local temple, since it was on the river, lit our incense and candle, made a wish, walked out to a pier, and lowered it in the river by using a stick. My candle went out before it hit the water. There were so many beautiful flower baskets. When you looked up and downstream you could see the lanterns in the sky, the ones on the water and the ones hanging on land. It was an amazing site. And there were also so many unlit baskets floating that it just looked like basket debris. Bowman, Lisa and I meandered back to the hotel after a long day. y