day 9 - sept 9


Sawadee Kaa!! 

We've learned a couple of words:
Khrap(kap) koon Kaa is thank you
Sawadee kaa is hello 

For Breakfast today we had fried rice, watermelon, and potato soup broth. It's so yummy every time. It keeps us full really well too. After breakfast, we did some prep then went off to the White Temple (Wat Rong Kuhn). This temple was fascinating. It depicted a lot of good and evil. When you walked up hands reaching up, dragons, skulls, and it appears to be evil reaching out, slave like. The detail was so intricate and incredible. We took off our shoes and went into the temple. The murals over the walls were amazing. There was so much to take in with these murals and the message within it. It took a while to process what was going on. It depicted modern day: super man, batman, hello kitty, the twin towers: above this was a Buddha painting and monks worshipping it, below that was large demon eyes with Bin Laden in one eye, and George Bush in the other. The artist wanted to warn these two and keep them aware of the danger of war and hatred. On the side walls, there were boats with people going away from the back wall, to the front wall which represented peace and that is where Buddha was. Most were looking forward, some were looking back and around. These paintings were so detailed and we are still processing them. There was a monk sitting in front of big Buddha, I could have sworn that this was a real monk, but I was just a molding of one. 
 This guy rode with his baby on his motor bike. This is actually a common site to see! 







 Sarah taking her selfie again 

















 Noelle, Tina, Me, Mom, Sarah, Stefi, and Evan (Outdoor group) 






 This is a wishing well. It was beautiful. This is me throwing a coin in! 

 There were four of these, people would write on them, then they would hang these up with names and dates! 






 This was on the rope of all of the construction cones at the templ. Kinda creepy. 

Mom doing her potty dance in front of the golden toilets! 
After, we walked to the "toilet." And this was the nicest toilet facility we've seen in Thailand. Gold and sufficient. Upon arrival to Mirror, we are Lunch-fried rice and 🍲 Pho and papaya. We cleaned the bathrooms, and packed our stuff up and rode to Chiang Rai. We have previously bought bus tickets, so we shopped around a bit waiting
 for our bus, then rode to Chiang Mai in a nice bus that they gave snacks and had a toilet in. We're glad we got in the bus because the station was pretty confusing. We asked many Thai people for direction because there was not a sign for our bus. The drive to Chiang Mai was through forests and mountains. We were able to get some shut eye and enjoyment. It was so green and beautiful. 





In Chiang Mai, we found a Tuktuk driver. He was a real good driver and such a cute Thai. We took a couple photos with him and he asked "you going to take this photo to America?" We assured him we would. We came to Chiang Mai this weekend because Doug (mom went to high school with him) and Colleen Stratton are in town and told us about the district conference that was occurring. We wanted to go to the Saturday and Sunday sessions. We got to the hotel about 7pm, so we quickly got ready, Doug came and got us from our room, and we went to the meeting. The walk was literally a minute and a half away. It was amazing. We had ear phones that were a translation. It was really neat. The 
church meeting was about marriage and doing your role, finding joy and smiling often. It was really good! It's really neat that the church is the same everywhere. 





After the meeting, Doug and Colleen showed us around to get some food. We ate fried rice and mango and sticky rice. It was SO good! We talked and spent some good time together. We were able to also see Elder Barlow from Morgan. We were sorry to miss his wife, she was home not feeling well. He is in moms stake. He is a counselor in the mission presidency here. Such a small world! We had a real nice hotel room, we were able to get a discount since the church had reserved multiple rooms. Thanks Doug and Colleen! 

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