I was going to call this post “Monks and Motorbikes” but then I realized you would all picture monks riding motorbikes around and that would have been completely inaccurate. My in-depth post about my interactions with monks will have to come later. Instead, this post is about the day I got over my fear of riding a motorbike which included a ride up to a Buddhist temple near Chiang Mai.
West of Chiang Mai is Doi Suthep-Pui National Park. Just before the Doi Suthep mountain summit (1676m) is the temple Wat Phra That Doi Suthep—a famous Buddhist pilgrimage site. Other travelers staying at the Julie Guesthouse suggested going there as a fun day trip. They mentioned songthaews and buses as the means to get up there. “Or you could just rent a motorbike,” said one traveler.
I was in Germany for 6 weeks and traveled from cities to countryside visiting Bielefeld, down to Cologne, then Frankfurt, Munich, Regensburg, and finally up to Berlin. After spending so much time in Deutchland, I feel like I got to know the country very well. By the end of it, I had a pretty good idea of what I absolutely adored and you can see this in my many enthusiastic posts about Germany.
There are still many positive aspects of the country I missed mentioning, such as how much I appreciate Germany’s commitment to providing free education to their citizens, the just amount of historical responsibility they demonstrate through the many memorials to holocaust victims found all over the country, and their high standards for education requiring even carpenters and plumbers to go to college and obtain a degree in their trade to begin work in that field.
I watched Carolina trot away from the car toward the bus stop in Höfn. It was early in the morning and we had just said our goodbyes. I was excited to learn that one of her stops on her 10-month journey will be New Zealand—one of my main destinations. Perhaps we’ll see each other in a few months on the other side of the world.
Fabrice and I got back to Route 1 to continue our drive around the Ring Road. Today we would have to travel the most distance in one day: 360 km to Lake Mývatn. I had heard there were amazing natural hot springs there—less expensive and less touristy than the famous Blue Lagoon near Reykjavik.
