The Terrific3 travel blog

Today was our first day of doing touristy stuff. We were supposed to do a cooking class, but the coordinator emailed me and asked if it would bother us to cook with people who were cooking meat. So thoughtful as I hadn’t even thought about it, but the smell of meat and fish is pretty disgusting to all of us, so she offered another day.

So I looked online for an alternative this morning and booked an afternoon tour with a company called “Thailand untouched.” Many of its tour guides were former monks and so they have a lot of knowledge to impart about Buddhism and temples.

Our guide Nom picked us up from our Airbnb and drove us to each site. He grew up in a family of 4 kids with a single mom, as his dad died when he was 9. He chose to become a monk as a way to get an education to help out his mom. He is also an identical twin, is married, has a 7 month old boy, and does most of the cooking in his house. He also does a lot of charity work and goes to the mountain every winter to teach kids in a school in an impoverished city. This is the part I enjoy the most about travel—getting to know the locals. He was very sweet with the boys, and made the tour very enjoyable.

The first temple we visited was Wat Umomg Suan Phutthstham. It was in a forested area, and we got a bonus hike out of it. I’ll attach more photos below.

Next, our guide was kind enough to stop at the market to help me buy fruit and swim goggles (Z broke his on our first day!)

Next we went to old town and stopped at the gorgeous Wat Phra Singh Woramahawihan. Our guide gave us bells to write our names on and hang by the temple for a blessing. The kids also got blessed by monks and had white strings tied around their wrists. Photos below.

The third temple was built in the 14th century and we couldn’t enter it because an earthquake had rendered it unstable in the past couple decades. The kids really enjoyed ringing the bell with the dong. Check out the amazing architecture on this one,

The last temple was the “silver temple” and was equally gorgeous. It also had a beautiful statue of Ganesh, my favorite Hindu god. Buddhism and Hinduism are cousins, and this was all very obvious to me today as we toured.

It was a lovely afternoon. Also hot and humid and exhausting. Both kids were overstimulated on the car ride home, so we had to scrap our pizza plans and I made dinner at home while they watched SpongeBob, and we enjoyed our first mango sticky rice that we bought at the market.

It’s been fun to watch their curiosity the past few days, and their excitement about learning new things. It’s only day 3 but so far, and I am super glad we decided to take this adventure.