In Chiang Mai (“city new”), we visited Doi Suthep. All these temples come with stories that our guides recount to us eagerly and in great detail, despite the fact that they retell them every day. In this one, monks loaded an elephant at the bottom of this mountain with a sacred relic (part of Buddha’s brain) and followed it as it meandered its way up. It stopped twice before reaching the top. Temples were erected at each site, the highest one consisting of several structures, including a burial site under a banyan tree that supposedly grew from a cutting of the tree the Buddha sat under. We ascended to Doi Suthep up a staircase of 300 steps, bordered by a banister of a long serpent’s body, tail at the top. When the Buddha decided to leave his life of wealth and leisure, serpents protected him against the demons who assailed him. A brief word about death: Each village has a crematorium, and traditionalists still burn bodies in open concrete pits. Our guide scooped up whitened bits of bone to show us.

We spent the evening with a middle-class family who helped us cook our own Thai meal with the herbs and oils from their farm. This was a great experience, as it allowed us to relax and laugh with our hosts, who so graciously introduced their entire family, from their 2-year old to their 91-year-old grandmother. Everyone (but the toddler) was working, with the grandmother rolling banana leaf cigars at the fire (pounding and drying the leaves, then rolling them with tobacco). Our proud host showed us the upstairs of his house, with one bedroom kept empty as a sacred space for past family members, all of whom we had “met” in the entry hall photos. He sat us on the floor and gave us tea leaves to chew with a little salt (in the old style) and a betel nut (both were bitter). We were there with a lively French couple from Nice. While her husband spoke a little English, she didn’t, and my being able to translate words and phrases for them made the evening even more fun. That, and the fact that every piece of food we put into our mouths was so fresh and succulent.