Day 3- We are fit!

We went to Doi Suthep today. I was pretty nervous at the thought of climbing 306 steps up to the temple. It has been really long since I have done any intense exercises and I was really not feeling up to climbing 306 steps up. However, my sub group and I managed to climb the 306 steps and although I felt like dying, it was an accomplishment for all of us, or at least just for me.

Since we hadn’t managed to interview any monks at the White Temple yesterday, we were planning on interviewing at least one monk at Doi Suthep. We went in search of a monk and thankfully with May’s help, we managed to get a brief verbal interview with a monk. He told May that he has no problems with the Chinese tourists and that they were a benefit to the Thai economy and the temple.

While we were leaving the temple, we managed to get an interview with a Chinese tourist who was visiting the temple. Apart from conducting interviews, we managed to take goofy photos of ourselves. The visit to Doi Suthep was most certainly valuable for our project. I actually learnt beforehand that the temple at Doi Suthep, Wat Phra That, is one of 13 most sacred places of worship in Buddhism. While not a Buddhist myself, I felt rather fortunate that I managed to visit the temple as this temple is considered very important to my fellow Buddhist friends. However, I observed something that I did not really appreciate at the temple.

My group and I were trying to find out about the behaviours of the Chinese tourists in Chiang Mai. More than the Chinese however, I noticed that the behaviours of our fellow Western counterparts were rather disrespectful of the sacredness of the temple. We were about to talk to the monks in an area specially demarcated for them. Anyone who wished to talk to the monks could do so but would need to kneel down in that area. I noticed that the Western tourists chose instead to stand in the area and had no regard whatsoever for the people who were telling them to kneel. Observing this, I was again compelled to wonder if Asians as a whole, are still very traditional and backward or is it that the Westerners simply do not have the same respect for cultural values as us. Watching what happened, I unfortunately believe that the latter is true. The same could be said about their actions at Mount Kinabalu just last year.

After all of that, my sub group and I opted to go to CMU as May had kindly arranged a focus group discussion for us with her friends. Unfortunately, her friends were unable to make it at the last minute and thus we opted to use the time to have some fun as a sub group. We went to Maya shopping mall and then went to a café to buy some drinks and to just hang out together. We then decided to go to a waterfall nearby. I am by nature not an adventurous person so while my group members were busy climbing up and down rocks I decided to wait for them somewhere near the bottom. However, I did manage to take a cool picture with all of them where we each sat on a different rock and did different poses for every frame. We left the waterfall a while later and headed back to CMU to meet May. May brought us to the student night market where we had our dinner and shopped for a little bit after.

Thereafter, after a night out, we headed back to the hotel. While we were definitely disappointed that we couldn’t get a focus group discussion as we originally intended, I was very happy that today was a fun day where everyone loosened up and really got to know one another.

Today my group and I became much closer than we were before so that makes me really happy. I never even reckoned that I would gain such amazing friends throughout the trip but I am so glad I did.