July 26, 2017. Part 2. Getting "templed" out

July 26 continued....   Our taxi driver took us to a few more temples.

 

This one is unique....made of silver instead of the prominent gold...

This is a famous statue of the worshipped elephant with rats bearing fruit underneath...

This lady was bowing and worshipping inside the temple.  

Somewhat "templed out", our driver then took us to a village of handicraft shops.  We had to say "no thank you" to the:

• Jade jewelery
• Silver jewelery
• Lacquerware
• Silk scarves
• Croccodile leather goods
• Stingray leather goods
• Elephant leather goods (how awful!)
• Hand-painted umbrellas
• And more

But, I finally gave in and bought a hand-made silk cushion case.

 

We are pretty sure our driver was getting a kick-back at these shops for bringing us.  He was such a nice fellow.  He said he used to be a Thai boxing champion.  Thai boxing is extremely popular, and tonight is a match so people are going crazy buying tickets.  Our taxi driver offered to drive us outside of the city tomorrow for an all-day tour.  The price he quoted us was a fraction of what the commercial tours cost.  So, we agreed to it.

He dropped us back at our hotel and we had a swim to cool off.  Then, we went in search of a good craft beer.  Kind of hard to find here.  We found a cafe that sells "craft Thai beers" although we learned from the Hungarian owner that it is illegal to brew beer in Thailand as the big breweries have a monopoly on it, so they work with Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to brew beer for them.

After our beers, we wandered to the night market.  Interesting, but kind of junky stuff.  It started looking cloudy, so we found this very nice restaurant nearby.  The entire structure is made of carved teak wood, hence its name, The Teak.

George had a very spicy squid dish....

And I had a dish that is supposedly Chiang Mai's signature food.  It is a bowl of noodles and chicken chunks in a spicy coconut curry.  Quite good, although I thought I would not like it as I'm not a coconut fan.

Sure enough, as we were eating, the skies opened up and it poured.  The waiter helped us move to an interior table.  We caught a tuk tuk home, even though it was a short distance to avoid the rain and puddles.