So after a long day of shopping (you won't know how long until you go shopping with Jessica, but its all good, we love you Jessi) and hanging out with friends, I call for a ride home for myself and Dengtai (who was staying over at the time) and when we get in the car, my mom asks if we want to go with her to the mountain. I didn't know what she meant, but Dengtai said her friends family had taken her to one of the temples on the surrounding hills of Chanthaburi. So we decided "yes, we'll go see the temple".
It was a long drive down, longer still as we had to stop and talk to friends of the family along the way, one of which was going to join us in our car on the way, but opted out when we already had three people in the back (but by no means is this opting out a regular occurrence as we often drive with four people in the back seat). We finally made it and were wondering what was going to happen, as communication is not a priority generally (all they've said was that we'd get tired and be scared or excited).
So a few minutes pass and we see a lot of trucks coming and going, from this we surmise that we will be taking a truck up the mountain. So we pick a truck and we get in the truck bed that has been outfitted with benches and railings, and head out. We don't get far before the truck we picked runs out of gas, some seemed irked by this development while I was merely curious and happy it didn't happen farther up the mountain. A new truck is quickly arranged and we are fast on our way to the top. When I used fast just then, I meant it. The truck goes speeding up the mountain! Taking sharp curves on a narrow road in the dead of night at stomach churning speeds! It was totally AWESOME! We were screaming and laughing and being laughed at the whole way up, so enjoyable! It seemed like there were some close calls, as those coming down were using the same road as those going up, and their speed was only slightly reduced so they could brake properly, also there were tree root and large rocks to navigate around. Dangerous? Yes. Necessary? No. Fun? Definitely.
So we get to a stop and get out of the truck, only to be put in another truck and told this one is more dangerous and steeper. They weren't lying, we had to hold on to the railing so we didn't fall off the back. It was just as fun though, couldn't go as fast, but had to keep the speed pretty high so they could make it up the hills.
That was the last up round of fun, and at this point I was hoping down would be just as fun. But it would be hours before I found out. We weren't at the top, but the trucks couldn't go any farther so it was on foot from there. I can't guess how far it was, it seemed longer going up than coming down, but I would estimate it took maybe an hour, hour and a half to get up. Along the way there were these series of bells, there were at least a hundred. And you took out a coin and hit every bell along the way with it, if you missed one it would be bad luck, so we did this and at the end you put the coin in an unmarked donation container. Suspicious, a little, but I can only hypothesize that the temple uses it as upkeep money and it counts as spiritual merit (merit being like when you say Hail Marys or Pray and follow the rules kind of thing, I don't know how to explain you can Google it if you care) for the person.
So we get to the top, long walk, and find out we went to go see Buddha's footprint (at Khao Kitchakut). I'm sure the more spiritual would have found it to be kind of profound, but as a tired person who isn't very spiritual, I just thought that I walked all that way to see a giant rock. But I got over it, and joined in with those making merit, figured that I came all the way up here might as well make the most of it. So I took off my shoes (they're big on that here) and waded into the sea of people to get closer to the giant rock (I mean footprint of Buddha). The rocks were painful and I was sure I was going to get a foot disease from all the bare sweaty feet, but I made it to the offering place with Dengtai and we threw flowers into a pit of some kind wishing for good health and happiness for a bunch of people, I threw two in for my mom, my cat, my family and myself as well as all my friends, one in for a good future, one for driving safety when I finally get out on the road again and then just to make sure one in for "Peace on Earth and Good Will towards Humanity (I think I said "men" but I meant it in that "humanity as a whole" way). Then Dengtai and I got out of there because they were going to to a mass group prayer. We sat on the steps overlooking the exit and waited, for like two hours. We finally headed down about 1am and got into the trucks around 2:30ish. Down was also fun as hell! Thought I was going to lose my glasses because of the sheer angle of the truck (I didn't). It was harder to see because the brake light was in my face but that kind of added to the "OMG I'm gonna die!" aspect of the whole thing. Also we went faster on the longer stretches that we did on the way up, presumably less static friction to overcome. We made it down alive and in one piece and were headed home by about three. Got back faster because we didn't stop, ate something and went to bed. Classic times.
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