The Temple You Must See In Hat Yai Thailand

When I saw a video about the Phra Maha Chedi Tripob Trimongkol in Hat Yai Thailand I decided I had to see it. It is the first and one of only three stainless steel chedis/temples in the world. It was built by the locals in to honor King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 60th year on the throne. The temple is adorned with bells. It sits atop a hill overlooking Hat Yai. The location makes it so special and a must see for me.

I booked tickets for us out of Bangkok. We flew Smile Airways (I love a country with an airlines called Smile!) to Hat Yai . The flight was only an hour and a half, nice and easy. We stayed at the Centara hotel which was fine. The staff was amazing and the location was easy to get to.

We took a taxi to the chedi. As we drove up the hill we were reminded of driving in Italy on the very narrow twisty road that leads up to the chedi. The road hides the chedi, and builds the anticipation of what you will see at the top. As you turn one last corner there is the chedi. For us the light was perfect as the late afternoon sun caused the temple to shine as it rose above the curves and the trees to meet the blue sky.

The citizens who built the chedi used circles as a theme for the architecture. I love this since circles are such an important symbol in the spiritual world. They can represent the totality of experience and life, absolute enlightenment, strength, the universe.

As you enter the chedi through the circle entrance you are welcomed by beautiful gold statues and a feeling of leaving the busy world outside. The sounds of the bells and the chimes follow you as you make your way to the main area of the chedi. There stands a pillar that runs the entire way from the floor to the top of the chedi. The center pillar has small vases which hold the fragments of monks bones who have passed on.

We made our way up the circular staircase to the top floor of the chedi. As you come out of the last circle on the stairway you see the trees around the many steel tubes that make up the top of the chedi. The light gleams off of the structure as you enter a different world. There are different areas with bowls and signs marked day, month, year. At these stands you can make a wish and put your money in the bowl of the day or the month you want it to come true.

(I apologize for the video here, I was thinking of the sound and not the quality of the video.)

I was in awe of all of the moving parts and the sounds of nature as we watched the sun cast its glow on this beautiful structure. It is inspiring to think of the local volunteers who connected each steel tube to create a perfect circle on top of the next perfect circle. As you stand above the world on this mountaintop you can hear the large bells being rung by people below. The deep hollow sound below fill you with a sense of connection to the universe.

 

Back downstairs each circular gate is a day of the week and either the morning or the night. You are supposed to exit through the gate which marks your birthday and time. I don’t know what my day or time is. So, I picked one and out we walked to the area around filled with gongs, bells, and altars to pray.

 

I really loved seeing this chedi. I wasn’t crazy about Hat Yai. For a quick day trip it was worth it to see something so different. It was moving to see the love for a King who was kind, peaceful and loving.

 

Hat Yai, Thailand (Day Two-Thailand Trip)

For those of you who have known me for a long time you already know this about me, when I get something stuck in my head that is it I must do it, have it, see it or accomplish it. So when I saw a video about the Phra Maha Chedi Tripob Trimongkol in Hat Yai I decided I had to see it. It is the first and one of only three stainless steel chedis/temples in the world. Built by the locals to honor King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 60th year on the throne and adorned with bells, sitting on top of a hill overlooking Hat Yai makes it so special and a must see for me.

I booked tickets for us out of Bangkok. We flew Smile Airways (I love a country with an airlines called Smile!). The flight was only an hour and a half, nice and easy. We stayed at the Centara hotel which was fine. The staff was amazing and the location was easy to get to.

We took a taxi to the chedi. As we drove up the hill we were reminded of driving in Italy on the very narrow twisty road that leads up to the chedi. The road hides the chedi, and builds the anticipation of what you will see at the top. As you turn one last corner there is the chedi. For us the light was perfect as the late afternoon sun caused the temple to shine as it rose above the curves and the trees to meet the blue sky.

The citizens who built the chedi used circles as a theme for the architecture. I love this since circles are such an important symbol in the spiritual world. They can represent the totality of experience and life, absolute enlightenment, strength, the universe.

As you enter the chedi through the circle entrance you are welcomed by beautiful gold statues and a feeling of leaving the busy world outside. The sounds of the bells and the chimes follow you as you make your way to the main area of the chedi. There stands a pillar that runs the entire way from the floor to the top of the chedi. The center pillar has small vases which hold the fragments of monks bones who have passed on.

We made our way up the circular staircase to the top floor of the chedi. As you come out of the last circle on the stairway you see the trees around the many steel tubes that make up the top of the chedi. The light gleams off of the structure as you enter a different world. There are different areas with bowls and signs marked day, month, year. At these stands you can make a wish and put your money in the bowl of the day or the month you want it to come true.

(I apologize for the video here, I was thinking of the sound and not the quality of the video, bear with me, videos will get better.)

I was in awe of all of the moving parts and the sounds of nature as we watched the sun cast its glow on this beautiful structure. It is awe inspiring to think of the local volunteers who connected each steel tube to create a perfect circle on top of the next perfect circle. As you stand above the world on this mountaintop, looking over all of Hat Yai, you can hear the large bells being rung by people below. The deep hollow sound below fill you with a sense of connectedness to the universe.

 

Back downstairs each circular gate is a day of the week and either the morning or the night. You are supposed to exit through the gate which marks your birthday and time.I don’t know what my day or time is so I picked one and out we walked to the area around filled with gongs, bells, altars to pray.

 

I really loved seeing this chedi. I wasn’t crazy about Hat Yai but for a quick day trip it was worth it to see something so different and filled with love for a King who was kind, peaceful and loving.

 

The First Few Weeks In Thailand

Phew, our first month is booked. I have to admit it has been crazy stressful trying to pull everything together but I am done and now thinking I would love to be a travel agent…

Hubby and I will be in Thailand for a few weeks alone and then will be joined by our very best friends for some time in Thailand and Sri Lanka. This forced us to be a little more structured in our travels since they are on a much shorter time frame than our 6 months. BUT, we can’t wait to add more countries to our adventures together.

So back to my plans with my man. We arrive in Bangkok at 6:30 am so we plan to spend the day and first night there to recover from our 24 hours of traveling. (I am still in denial about this so please don’t mention it too many times. I don’t like to fly so I am focusing on my comfy business class seats and homeopathic sleeping pills and not crazy flight times of 7+ hours and 14+ hours.) After our day of recuperation we hit the road flying to Hat Yai.

We picked Hat Yai (kind of an out of the way place) in order to see this building and this reclining Buddha. The building is the only one of its kind in the world, built by the hands of the locals. It is surrounded by bells which I think must sound lovely in the breeze.

After a day there we are venturing to Koh Lanta (by bus and ferry) to dive for a few days. Keep your fingers crossed for us for whale sharks and large manta rays. I am pretty excited to see the amazing limestone structures and relax on a quiet beach. Finding a hotel here wasn’t the easiest but we are booked now and can’t wait to strap on our gear and jump in the water!

From Koh Lanta we head to Trang to tour the factory of my absolute favorite toy company ever, Plan Toys! I said years ago that one day I would make it to this place and now I am. (This is a hold over from my days owning Franklin Goose, I fell in love with them when I worked there and can’t wait to see where it all started.)

Then it is off to Koh Yai National Park for a few days. We aren’t big hikers but how can you not visit the waterfalls, elephants and other amazing animals here. Plus our hotel looks incredible so the thought of lounging around reading a book, and going to a spa sounds so incredible we had to stop here.

For some reason during planning this trip I have accidentally set a goal of visiting every UNESCO World Heritage site we can. This led us to Ayutthya. I am so excited to discover this ancient town and all of its amazing temples.

Then we are off to an elephant sanctuary for 3 days. My big guy is like a little kid over this! They have a baby right now so all he can think about is swimming with, playing with, and holding that little baby elephant. We are also going to try to squeeze in a cooking class there!

Then it is off to Chiang Rai to see the amazing temples and structures there.

This is just in 19 days! Then we meet our best friends and the journey continues. I will post that itinerary in another blog post. Of course as we travel I will post our adventures, stories, experiences, photos, hotels (believe me some of them you are going to want to see!), etc. I am going to try my hand at video too, so if you have tips, advice or requests let me know!

 

Living By My Rules

As we plan our trips to Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe I continue to find the same things, and I am frustrated! Almost all of the blog posts, videos and Instagrams are of young backpackers traveling the world and how you can travel like a backpacker too, or about how to take a week or two vacation somewhere.

What if you want to be different? What if you want to live by your own rules when you are in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond? I have grown past the backpackers lifestyle, I don’t want to sleep in hostiles however, I want to travel the world and live on my terms, not by what society tells me I am supposed to do. I am going to continue my freelance career and hubby will be doing some consulting while we are on the go.

Because of this I am spending hours digging through information that doesn’t apply to us because we are doing things different than most people. So I have decided to write about our trip & lifestyle from the perspective of people like us who may just want to break the societal rules.

Here is what I know so far. It is very easy to find amazing hotels in Thailand and not spend more than 100.00 per night including breakfast. It is possible to travel through the country cheaply without jumping on a songtaew or mini-van. We have booked VIP buses for 12.00 per person, flights for 33.00 each and ferrys for about 24.00 per person.

Let’s start at the beginning. We decided we wanted to travel for 4-6 months and we knew we wanted to do it as cost effectively as possible because, to be honest, we would like to keep traveling as long as possible. The first thing we did was cash in our miles on our credit card to book our business class tickets. We use two different credit cards that give us mileage and use those for our monthly expenses instead of a debit card. This means every month we are earning points to book trips for free. So, this saved us about 2,000.00 before we even leave the country. And we get to travel in comfort. (I can’t believe how excited I am about these comfy accommodations and perks even though I hate to fly.) We also get passes to the airline clubs once a year so we saved those to use for our long layover in Europe. This way we can relax in comfort, eat for free, and save more money.

Next thing we have done is establish a budget for hotels, food, travel and activities. We know some of the places we are staying are cheaper than others so we will work on saving money in expectation of Europe being expensive. In Thailand we are staying in so many great places that are under 100.00 including breakfast!

I can’t wait to share pics of our hotels and adventures! We are diving, going to elephant sanctuaries, hiking, and hopefully a cooking class. Not to mention touring my absolute favorite toy company-Plan Toys!

Here is our first stop in Bangkok to spend the night and get acclimated before we hit the road. I will share more of our itinerary in my next post.

What It Feels Like To Follow Your Dreams

I have to admit that agreeing to leave for up to 6 months was scary for me. I have always wanted to travel the world and always believed I don’t have to live by the normal rules-work, get married, have kids, buy a house in the suburbs, and then retire. Earlier in life I left for 15 months with my husband and we lived in Italy, selling everything we owned. Then of course we did it again last year, selling everything but our car and about four boxes. We ended up in Honduras for 5 months and it was fantastic. So why would taking another 6 months to keep doing what I have dreamed of doing my whole life be scary? I guess because breaking the status quo can be.

I feel like the older I get the more there is at stake, the less time there is to recoup your losses if you really screw up and that makes me so mad! So here is what we did to compromise and live within our budget:

  1. Used our airline miles to fly to Thailand (and upgrade to Business class so we don’t kill each other cramming a 6’3″ man in coach (my husband) for such long flights
  2. We fell in love with Airbnb. We had never considered Airbnb before (yes we are a little late to the game) but once we started looking at them I am obsessed!
  3. We are balancing our trip so that many of the places we are going are inexpensive to offset our time in Europe (never inexpensive).
  4. We spent time really talking about our current finances, our retirement etc. to set up a budget that we both feel comfortable with.
  5. I LET GO! I found the part of me that remembers that everything always works out if you follow your dreams and your path. I know the road isn’t always smooth but it does always work out. I realized I would rather live the life I WANT free from worry than to worry about why I wasn’t living the life society wants me to.

So now I am worry free (except about what I am going to read since my husband has strictly forbidden me from bringing 6 months worth of books and I can’t love ebooks yet). It is really funny about life, nothing has changed except my attitude and my outlook and yet I feel like everything is completely different.

When I lived in Italy I used to ride my bike around the ancient wall of Lucca, listening to my iPod and feeling like the whole world belonged to me. I felt as though I were floating because I was living my dream. So, that is what I remember when I finally decided to stop worrying. Worrying made me feel bad, living my dream made me feel good. Opportunities came to me there as well which helped to propel me forward towards all the things I wanted in life. -That is the advantage of following your dreams, and believing in the reality you want.

The cool thing about not having the responsibility of a mortgage, car payments, electric bills, cable, internet etc. is that you are free to spend that money elsewhere, like on travel. We can travel like this and still spend the same or less as we would owning a home and all of the costs associated with that. Everywhere we are staying offers free wi-fi, many of them offer free breakfast, plus we don’t pay electric, gas, water, recycling etc. so we are saving all of that money as well. We have to pay to live somewhere so why not do that around the world where we can have experiences? Do I sound like I am trying to convince you? Maybe I am, okay I definitely am trying to convince you to follow your dreams, even if they aren’t selling your house and traveling the world, whatever they are, follow them, trust in them and then live them, be present in them and enjoy!

 

Wanderlust Wins Again

When your passion is traveling and you feel you can’t be content until you see the world what do you do?

Well, if you are me you plan another big adventure for 2017!

In February we are off again and I can’t wait! We are planning on being gone for up to 6 months, depending on how budget and work end up. Here is our goal list of places to see:

1. Thailand-definite things are to play with elephants at this sanctuary, dive, stay in the ecofloatel, and see the buddhist temples, monasteries and statues

2. Sri Lanka-absolutely must snorkel with blue whales, and take this trek up Adam’s Peak at sunrise, tea plantations, Golden Temple of Dambulla and the Yala National Park

3. Malaysia-dive until I am water logged

4. Indonesia-this is a bit of a toss up for us. I have heard that Bali isn’t all that it once was but how do you visit Indonesia without going to Bali? I am interested in Lombok if we go…

5. Seychelles or Maldives or both-must see these islands before they are gone, tons of diving again

image from triumphrainbow

6. Morocco-must make a clay pot dinner in the market of Marakesh and have it cooked in a local oven, have to spend a week in Chefchaouen getting lost in the streets of blue, gawk endlessly at the incredible architecture (I fear I may fall deeply in love with this country and not want to leave)

7. Italy-visit our friends, see more of Venice and hopefully Positano again-the rest is up for grabs

8. Spain-if time permits I want to get lost in Barcelona and drink coffee in cafes while pondering the amazing architecture of Gaudi

9. France-spend time with our friends we miss desperately and finally walk the streets of Paris

So, if you have recommendations I would love to hear them! Now I am off to start planning and will keep you posted as we plan our next great adventure.

Back in the States

We came back to the states four days ago from Utila, Honduras. It hasn’t been as shocking of a transition as our move back from Italy 9 years ago. However, there are still some things I will miss, and some things I won’t. I have been adding and subtracting from the list over the last 4 days but feel like this is pretty much the summary:

Things I will miss about living in Utila:

  1. My friends and students!
  2. The ocean
  3. Getting everywhere (or almost everywhere) by boat
  4. The quiet
  5. Knowing people where ever we went.
  6. The lack of traffic, everyone being busy all the time and rushing.
  7. Not hearing and seeing TV’s everywhere
  8. The stars at night
  9. Speaking/Learning Spanish
  10. Scuba diving!
  11. Not freezing in air conditioning everywhere
  12. Plantain chips

Things I won’t miss about living in Utila:

  1. The sandflies (no-seeums)
  2. Lack of food options in the grocery store
  3. The difficulty of getting anywhere from our remote section of the island
  4. The mosquitos
  5. Sweating most of the time
  6. The sandflies (no-seeums)
  7. Not being able to sit outside because of the bugs
  8. Lack of good coffee
  9. Lizard poop

The experience I had truly changed me. I am a better person because of this experience. I miss the friends we made and my students everyday it is amazing how these kind and wonderful people all touched our hearts so deeply!

Do You Know How It Feels To Be Hungry?

Yesterday a friend of mine in Honduras asked me if I knew what it felt like to be hungry. I realized I don’t. I mean I know how it feels to be that grumpy hungry when I haven’t eaten in a while, but actually hungry where there is no prospect of food, I have no idea.

She told me about how it was for her during the first 8 years of her life when her family had no money and so there were very often times when she and her brothers would have to wait two days to eat. As a little girl she would go to shops trying to do any little work she could just to get some bread with butter for her and her brothers so they could survive. She said to me, “You have no idea how it feels in your belly to be really hungry. You can’t imagine the feeling of not knowing when you will eat.” She is right of course.  I have no idea what that hunger feels like, and no idea how a child must feel when they don’t have any power to go anything.

This memory drives her as a mother to always provide food for her children no matter what and in a country where no matter what can happen quite frequently that hasn’t always been possible for her. She told me about the one time she couldn’t feed her own children and her son looked at her and a jar of coffee on the table and asked her if she could at least make him some of that so his stomach would stop hurting. (He was under 5 years old).

As we prepare to head back to the States for a few months I find myself genuinely worried about the massive contrast between the way we have been living here, very simply with no advertising in our faces, no traffic, no massive stores with excessive waste and full of things to buy that no one really needs and the communities here with many people who legitimately know what hunger and hopelessness feels like.

I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about her question, maybe because I know how hungry and uncomfortable I am missing one meal, knowing I will have another soon with no problem and I feel ashamed for getting “hangry” or maybe it is because I heard it from a mother’s perspective and that affects me deeply. Either way I will not forget or stop thinking about how to help with this issue worldwide.

 

 

Limitless Possibilities

What I love most about life is the limitless possibilities. At any moment things can shift and change, we can go in a new direction with nothing more than a different decision than we made the day before. It keeps life robust, exciting and challenging.

Seeing life as a series of events, emotions and relationships that we rearrange when we want, or need helps to really keep things in perspective for me. Everything is fluid so when things are bad, they don’t ever stay that way. When things are going great, enjoy it and embrace the attitude you have in those moments and try to take that attitude with you everyday.

I am at the point of change again, getting ready to head back to the U.S. for  (hopefully only) a few months then off to our next adventure. I know that as we rearrange our lives, our prospective plans and thoughts it is best not to hold on to any expectations, fears or angst. Moving forward has too many exciting opportunities to look back, or hold on, for if we do then we will miss whatever is coming next.

Find the joy in change, embrace and you never know what is waiting for you in the next step, the next moment, or the next conversation. Our limitless lives can be as full as we want them to be, don’t be afraid.

What I love most about life is the limitless possibilities. At any moment things can shift and change, we can go in a new direction with nothing more than a different decision than we made the day before. It keeps life robust, exciting and challenging.

Seeing life as a series of events, emotions and relationships that we rearrange when we want, or need helps to really keep things in perspective for me. Everything is fluid so when things are bad, they don’t ever stay that way. When things are going great, enjoy it and embrace the attitude you have in those moments and try to take that attitude with you everyday.

I am at the point of change again, getting ready to head back to the U.S. for a (hopefully only) a few months then off to our next adventure. I know that as we rearrange our lives, our prospective plans and thoughts it is best not to hold on to any expectations, fears or angst. Moving forward has too many exciting opportunities to look back, or hold on, for if we do then we will miss whatever is coming next.

Find the joy in change, embrace and you never know what is waiting for you in the next step, the next moment, or the next conversation. Our limitless lives can be as full as we want them to be, don’t be afraid.

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