On Friday, the SEE TEFL class had a Cultural Day exploring different cultural sites around the city, and I tagged along.  The first stop was the “Farang Cemetery,” where various Westerners have been buried since the late 1800′s.  The graves include missionaries, explorers, World War II soldiers and POW’s, recent expats, etc.

Next, we went to a temple along the river – Wat Chaimongkol.  Founded nearly 600 years ago, this Wat included various temples and statues added over the centuries by Thai, Burmese, Laotian, and Chinese devotees.  Behind the temple, vendors sell different animals found along the river, such as turtles, eels, fish, small birds, etc.  The animals are in buckets or cages, and visitors to the Wat can purchase an animal and set it free back into nature.  Amber and I purchased two small sparrows in a cage and released them.  According to Buddhist tradition, by setting the birds free, we will experience freedom in our own lives in return.

Next, we visited the Chiang Mai National Museum to learn the history of the area.  The museum has a great collection of exhibits with art and antiques dating back nearly 1000 years.

Our last stop was a visit to the Bombay Burma Trading Company’s collection of antiques.  It wasn’t really a museum, but more like a giant warehouse of dusty artifacts from the past 200 years or so.  Some of the items on display were labeled with yellowed, hand-written notes.  A person could wander through the area for hours and not see everything.

Tags: museum, temple