Yesterday we booked with Happy Tours to get an island tour. There were 7 stops on this tour….makes for a busy day. We were picked up around 9:30 am, the last ones, and headed right to the first stop, a beautiful temple. Haven’t been to a temple in a while.

Wat Plai Leam is a Buddhist Temple compound. Each of the 3 main buildings were built in a different style. There is the Thai style, the Chinese style and maybe it was the Buddhist style. Neither of us remember exactly what was said. The sun fried our brains today, once again. This is still an active temple though.

18-arm image of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion

The large white laughing Buddha statue which the guide explained all about, but we also don’t remember what she said.

From here we headed to the famous Big Buddha. Just how many Big Buddhas can one country have? A LOT! You usually have to take your shoes off for this kind of thing, but since it was 10:30 am and the sun was frying the steps we were allowed to leave our shoes on. I’m guessing there were too many tourists getting burned feet so they took pity on us.

They really need someone to proofread their signs.

It was a quick drive to the beautiful Chewang View Point. They give us 15 minutes for a beautiful place like this with lots of steps or steep ramps for the less fit but 30 minutes or more where there are stalls trying to sell us stuff. Could have used more time here to get to the bottom.There was also a Spirit House.

Onto the next stop, Grandfather and Grandmother Rocks.

Had some delicious coconut ice cream here. Probably tasted even better as it was so hot and the ice cream so cold. Could have eaten 2 myself.

Next up was the Mummified Monk at Wat Khunaram. It is apparently an unusual sight. The monk Luong Pordaeng died in 1973 in a seated meditative position Since then, his body has been on display in an upright glass case at this temple. There has been very little decay to the body.

Last tourist stop was the Namuang Waterfalls 1

Some people chose to do elephant trekking but we didn’t.

Then it was time for lunch. Some had purchased a package that included lunch but we didn’t. However we were hot and hungry so decided to go eat and maybe have an ice cold Chang at the restaurant they recommended. Doug had a green curry chicken and I had ginger chicken. We were not disappointed.

On our drive back to the hotel we got to see lots of the island. We were the first ones dropped of. Loved that, last picked up and first dropped off. Plus I got to sit in the seat next to the driver and had a great view.

Back to our hotel room where we both crashed for a couple of hours.

We finally dragged ourselves out and headed over to Starbucks for a vanilla iced latte. I think we could become addicted to these in this climate, but they are so expensive. The small size runs about $12.75 Cdn for two. May have mentioned that before. Took the lattes with us and continued to tour the Festival Mall that is next door to our hotel. We saw part on our first night here but apparently missed a lot of it. WOW did we miss a lot! There is a whole night market and food court at the other end out in the open. We were still full from our lunch but will be trying some foods from here tomorrow night. Won’t be trying any of these though.

As we headed back in the direction of our hotel Doug grabbed a smoothie

We came across some street entertainment. They set up a whole bar and food area every night and have live entertainment. The group of dancers were really quite good. I was getting a major headache, probably from all the sun today and lack of water. I don’t like to drink a lot of water on excursions as you never know what the washroom situation will be, so we headed back for the night.