Chiang Mai is a beautiful city and an ancient capital located in the north, a motherland of all kind of carving in Thailand (wood, stone, fruit and vegetable carving art and other)
I came to the city to meet my carving friends Karla (a president of TempleofThai.com) and Khun Narata (a carving artist and teacher). TempleofThai was a sponsor of the
Fall Carving Contest 2012. My trip was a perfect occasion to meet the people in person.
I was lucky to get Chiang Mai at the day of Flower Festival. It was a Flower Parade with orchestra, costumed people and big flower sculptures moving the city streets. Apart from flowers we noticed vegetable carving flowers and watermelons.
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| Dragons made of flowers are the copies of dragon sculptures in Thai temples |
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| flower sculptures |
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A Thai girl sits between flower sculptures.
We noticed vegetable flower bouquets there!
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| Flowers carved of vegetables |
Watermelon and pumpkin carving
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| The Zero kilometer. Thailand starts from here |
After watching the parade we went to Wat Prasingh Temple to see Khun Narata carving. Khun is a well known carving artist and teacher. That day she had a carving class at the temple area in the shadow of the buddhist garden trees. What a great idea of having classes in a such pleasant place! I was invited to try myself in carving frangipani flowers out of soap.
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| With Khun Narata |
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| Girls carving soap flowers |
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| Frangipani flowers in person and in soap |
I left the girls at the carving and went for a cultural dose. The temple was beautiful with lot of dragon sculptures (we saw its copy at the Flower Parade). I did some things for good luck in the temple, took some pictures, had a talk with a buddhist monk (he started it, not me :)), tried local food with delicious fried stuff.
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| Dragon statues in the Chiang Mai temple |
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| Buddhists care for flora and fauna |
After the carving lesson Khun gave me a lift to a Thai restaraunt, we had a dinner for 4 friends there. The food, a famous thai recipe and more pictures will come up in my next post!
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| Khun's motobike. It was my first ride on a motobike! Was scary at first :) |
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