What’s a Wat?

While visiting Chiang Mai, Thailand Chris and I strolled around the city visiting a few of the wats. You might be asking yourself, “What’s a wat?” According to  Wikipedia: “A wat (derived from the Sanskrit word वात Vattaka) is a monastery temple in Cambodia, Thailand, or Laos. Strictly speaking a wat is a Buddhist sacred precinct with monks’ quarters, the temple proper, an edifice housing a large image of Buddha, and a structure for lessons. A Buddhist site without a minimum of three resident monks cannot correctly be described as a wat, although the term is frequently used more loosely, even for ruins of ancient temples. (As a transitive or intransitive verb, wat means to measure, to take measurements; compare templum, from which temple derives, having the same root as template.) In Cambodia, a wat is used to refer to all kinds of places of worship. In everyday language in Thailand, a wat is any…Continue Reading

Into Laos

We’re just chilling for a couple hours in the Laos border town of Huay Xai, before catching an overnight bus to Luang Prabang. We arrived here a few days ago in order to do something called the Gibbon Experience in the nearby Bokeo Nature Preserve. It was amazing (and will be up on the blog tomorrow), but a little grueling as well. We spent three days mired in mud and drenched completely through with sweat. We had planned to leave for Luang Prabang last night after getting back from the jungle, but were feeling pretty dirty and beat up so we managed to change our bus tickets to today. Our plans after Luang Prabang are still up in the air. We want to visit Vietnam and Cambodia before heading back to Bangkok for our flight home on September 4, but the border crossing from Luang Prabang into Vietnam towards Hanoi…Continue Reading