Buddha's Birthday Bash

So this last Tuesday was the beloved Buddha's birthday here in Thailand! Since there were no opportunities for us to serve here in Chiang Rai with all the businesses and schools being closed.. We traveled to Chiang Mai for the four day weekend! 

We stayed in a hostel there and it was actually fairly nice! 

We each shared a room but had our own bathroom AND it had the toilet separate from the shower! :)

Our first day there we got up early and traveled up into the mountains to go to this place called Flight of the Jungle. That was by far, hands down, no questions asked, one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life! It was this zip line through the jungle.. I thought it would be one or maybe two zips and would be done.. but I was wrong!! We were there for hours zipping, hiking, repelling, all through the most beautiful lush green jungle I have ever seen! There were times when we were so high we were above the tallest trees and you had to literally fly through the clouds in order to get to the next platform! 

Don't mind our lunch lady hair nets.. 

Later that night we walked through the Chiang Mai walking street which they light up every night and sell just about everything by little vendors on the sides of the roads. Perfect place for souvenirs and just about everything else! 

 We stopped by a Tailor there and a few of us had a few things made..

The next day we went to a place called Tiger Kingdom where we were able to play with baby tigers and even pet the big tigers! I thought the big tigers were going to be sedated but after taking to the leaders we found that they are not! Everything is so different over here in Thailand than in America, everyone is so chill here and not even worried about law suits. 

I asked the Thai man, "what happens if the tiger attacks me?!" 

He replied, "Then you die. You choose to go in cage." 

I thought the same thing when we were zip lining standing on the rickety bridges on top of 200 foot trees. The things you can so easily do here would never fly in the USA. 

I loved these little ones so much! They were only 8 weeks old!

Monday night we got to go to this monastery and take a meditating lesson from monks. That was pretty cool to meditate with real monks!

We left Tuesday morning back home to Chiang Rai! I thought Chiang Mai was so fun and a cool city to visit but I love it here in Chiang Rai much more. Here NO ONE speaks any English AT ALL. The restaurants here are all in Thai and everything is so cheap not marked up for tourists. In Chiang Mai most everywhere I went they spoke some English and they had hamburger joints, mexican food places, and there were tons of tourists everywhere. We are the only white people in our city haha

We got here just in time to walk walk over to the local Buddah temple down the street and participate in the birthday ceremonies. We all went into the main room and bowed down making sure our feet were pointing towards the back door and never the big Buddah statue. We were each given flowers, candles, and incense to light. After the ceremony we walked around the temple three times with the monks as they chanted some ritual chant. We lit our candles and incense and walked once mourned for Buddah, once for our present/past lives, and once for our future lives. The young monks then let off fire works which were huge and I'm pretty sure we all got a little burned!