The leafy village of Chompoo, sits around 20 minutes out of Chiang Mai, off Highway 11, and is a beautiful place to visit, with its large village ‘square’ centred around the small but delightful, Wat PayaChompoo.
In the future I will try and get more information on its history, but this will involve some time chatting to the Monks there; being a village Temple, off the tourist trail, there is no English info.
In front of the Temple is the canal where you will see many huge catfish, and maybe join in the popular pass time of feeding these hungry monsters.
Something else I want to find out is the story behind the fish. They are clearly significant to the village, judging by the village sign which is overlooked by a large sculpture of, yes you guessed it, a fish!
The large tarmacked square is home to a stunningly beautiful tree;( anyone care to identify it?
So much I need to do to improve these write ups; history to discover; botany to identify; comments and assistance are always welcome.
The Wat is guarded by two impressive Dragons at its entrance.
The Temple itself is small but nonetheless attractive. The modest Chedi behind the Temple has one of the pulley systems for blessing the Chedi by dousing it with water from a silver bucket , decorated by a lovely phoenix type bird.
Inside the Temple, more of that Temple artwork, with many scenes from the Buddhas life depicted on the walls.
My first visit here was brief and I will endeavour to return for more photos and info. Although the grounds are modest there appeared to be quite extensive buildings, most probably a Temple school as well as Monks accommodation.
The young novices we saw there were very happy, (and why not?), living in such a peaceful setting .
for more photos from Wat PayaChompoo please visit our photobucket album here.
Who knows, this New Year might just see me keeping this blog section more up to date. Thing is I’ve given myself so many new projects for the site that certain things in this one man show take time to catch up on. Good to report that the Guesthouse has been doing reasonably well considering the present world economics and local political turmoil that are affecting tourist numbers. Thanks to loyal regulars and some lovely newcomers we have been doing much better than expected.
Marching bands preceded a procession of hundreds of Monks and Novices and local school children carrying of a huge long orange robe, followed by a beautiful cart, also pulled by local schoolchildren.
The cart was carrying a special water bowl, brought all the way from Lamphun.
Following this, the long orange robe would be wrapped around the Pagoda at the end of this ceremony to ward of Bad Spirits in the coming year.
