We woke up at 5am today to visit the morning wet market that starts at 6am and the temple to view the procession.

Our daily dining area, as well as common space for briefings.
The guesthouse we're living in is a pretty homely one. You can dress sloppily everywhere, sit anywhere you like and the staff are all very friendly!

I chose rice porridge again but the guy mixed up my order and gave me fried rice instead. It's delicious! I like the way they cook their rice. Wet and mushy.

After breakfast, instead of visiting the wet market first, we went to the temple because the processions start early. Again, we got scammed by our lecturer. No processions! The Songthaew drivers said the processions don't start so early. So we called our lecturer just to tell him that there's no processions. And he just said dreamily Oh is it? Okay... It was hilarious. Everyone couldn't stop laughing because we managed to interrupt his sleep.

This is the temple we went to, with no processions. I woke up so early just to be there. I had to take some pictures, though it doesn't mean much.

The Songthaew drivers were really nice. They brought us to the wet market instead, with no extra charge.

Dou jiang you tiao
The market here's slightly different from Singapore's. They have cooked food section as well as the raw food sections.

Pig's kidneys

This was outside the wet market. But it's busier than the inside and we saw really interesting stuff.

Skewered frogs

They sell lots of stuff we don't find in Singapore, like little chicks (skinned dead ones), the entire gut of the pig, that skewered frog and more. Their garlics are really really tiny.

By the time we were then, it was only 9am. The people living in my guesthouse decided to walk back since it was near.

The cars here are about S$20000! We needed this photo for our project on the standard of living, so we asked the receptionist to confirm that the figures represent the cost of the cars. She said yes, and added on that it's really really expensive. See the difference in the standard of living here and in Singapore? Over here, we can get a plate of phad thai for S$1.20 and a pack of chewing gums for S$0.40. The most expensive apparel I've seen so far is about 300 baht, approximately S$12. If I had more bag space and am not going to the mountainous regions after this week, I'd have shopped.

On our way back, we chanced upon another temple and it was crowded, so we went in to take a look. They're really serious about religion here. There wasn't really much to see in there and there wasn't a tour guide with us so we left after awhile.

We went back to our guesthouse to continue with our sleep, then project discussion.
Went out to take a few more photos for our assignment and searched for a food place we haven't tried.

Kang Kong and omelette

Their kang kong looked so harmless and bland when it was served, but it was really really spicy.

I ordered tom yam soup with prawns.
Such a disappointment. It was more sweet than spicy and not sour at all.

Mango stick rice!
Pure bliss.

It was raining heavily then and 3 other groups joined us for lunch. So we sat there, waiting for the rain to subside. The lady was really nice. She brought the fan all the way to our tables and provided us with umbrellas.

When the rain was less heavy, we shared 2 Songthaews up to the temple in the mountain. It was a 45 minutes ride, mainly because of the bends up the mountain.

It wasn't even a rain that has persisted for days. It was merely a few hours of rain and the roads were flooded.

After 45 minutes, we finally reached Doi Suthep Temple.
The lecturers said that if you haven't been to this temple, you haven't been to Chiangmai. So they made us visit the temple, despite the heavy rain.

The crazily long flight of stairs up to the temple.

I was literally out of breathe when I reached the top.

The temple was particular about our dressing. Knees have to be covered and no sleeveless t-shirts are allowed. If our dressing was not appropriate, we got to get a sarong or a scarf to cover our knees and arms respectively. To enter the temple, we have to remove our shoes despite the wet ground. It was freezing cold!

A scenic view of Chiangmai from the temple

The whole group of us went for BBQ buffet dinner. It was something like Marina South's steamboat buffet.

Again, the soup was sweet. Nothing but sweet. I don't even know what they made the soup out of.
The middle portion is for barbeque-ing our food. The exact opposite of our steamboat BBQ. Over here, we BBQ the meat in the centre and the soup at the side. We had a hard time balancing the meat in the middle and 80% of our BBQ food went into the soup.

I didn't really eat much. The meat all looked dubious and flies were everywhere. We even cooked the cooked food to ensure that the bacteria are all boiled away. This had been the most expensive meal thus far. 145 baht per person. That's about 6 bucks per person. It's cheap for a buffet, but considering that I ate only vegetables, it wasn't really that worth it. I could have spent that amount on 5 plates of phad thai.

We chanced upon this in one of the hotels while visiting the red light district.

The girls there are really aggressive. When they see a foreign man alone, they pull them towards the bar and the whole group of girls just jump on him. That street was more dangerous for guys than for girls, in my opinion. As we were walking and observing, all of us couldn't help but think that we're participating in ego tourism. Not a very nice thing to do, but we don't usually see these kind of things happening on the streets.

Well, that pretty much sums up day 2.
We're so bored it feels like a week has past. There really isn't much of a schedule. I'll be having thai lessons in the morning and I'll be free the entire afternoon, from 11am onwards. The humanoids have their meeting from 2-4pm but physical geographers have nothing to do. We have so much free time to look around Chiangmai but we don't really know what to do. The tours we want to take are mostly 1 day tours, so all we can do is take the Songthaews around Chiangmai and have massages.

I hope I learn to speak some thai tomorrow!