traveling

chiang rai, the past month or so.

so i know i said i post pics on the 'black house' but i somehow lost them, accidentally deleted or something. so instead, i'm just gonna post random pics that i've been taking around chiang rai. it is beautiful here, a busy yet quiet town with such raw, natural scenery.

the thai family i'm staying with attends a buddhist temple in the forest about an hour and a half outside of the city. they are called 'forest monks'. the forest monks are of the strictest kind only able to eat food that people make and offer to them. they eat once a day at 8am, shave their heads and eyebrows, and own three articles of clothing which they can wash only twice a month.

this particular day we went to the temple was april 17th, the celebration of buddha's birth, enlightenment, and death. it was a very special day, and for this occasion, the monks walked around a big moat being given rice from people traveling from all over thailand (bangkok, chiang mai, and the southern islands to name a few).

spent a few days helping setup. it took me almost as long to cut up the flower petals seen here and all around the temple!

there was A LOT of rice being handed out, so much that they had people carrying baskets for the excess

along with spending time in temples, i've also been training muay thai for the past month. there are about 8 or 9 fighters (two girls) in the camp and two promoters. for one of the fights, 9 of us rode in the back of a pickup truck for an hour and a half. all five of our fighters won their fights, and four of which by (t)ko. one of the fighters is a 15 year-old who has something like 40+ professional fights (and he's won something like 40 of em). he's a little badass and i love watching this kid go into "fight mode" before and during a fight; a switch in his eyes goes off/on. he won his last two fights beautifully via knees.