Two temples and a football game

This weekend we took a few field trips around town.  With no breathtaking waterfalls or significant ancient temples, Suphan isn't too well known in Thailand.  I guess you could call it "plain jane".  But if you had to name something worth noting about the city, it would most likely be the huge dragon temple on the city's outskirts.  It seems like it would be a semi-popular tourist attraction, but it's not in any guidebooks and barely anyone knows about it...but it's definitely there.  I was surprised to see how big it was (that's what she said), and as you can imagine it looked pretty out of place. The dragon is actually a Chinese museum, with a lot of other little Chinese temples in the same complex.

And no, I'm not actually doing the "asian peace sign" seriously:

 

Cyrus standing at the foot of the dragon:

After the dragon, our friend took us to a lesser known temple that he visited before.  He randomly befriended a monk, Utai, the last time he went, so we were able to tour the temple led by a monk that lives there.  The site is over 700 years old and has hundreds of Buddha statues. Being there made you feel like you really were on the other side of the world, in a place that has a history very different from your own.

Utai also showed us how to do a traditional Buddhist prayer, by lighting incense and a candle, and then placing a gold leaf on the Buddha statue.  We bowed three times, then another monk splashed us with water for good luck.  The experience was pretty awesome.  It was one of those things that we didn't want to do at first, because we were all tired from seeing the dragon temple, but it ended up being one the best experiences I've had here so far.

Later that night, we went to the soccer (aka football) game of the professional team that plays here, Suphanburi FC.  The Thailand professional league is nothing to call "ESPN deportes" about, but it was definitely a fun time and it felt good to just blend into the crowd for a while.  It was an exciting match to watch, but Suphan lost in the final minute of play.  Fortunately, the soccer games are free to go to (awesome), so although we didn't get a win, we at least got our money's worth.

The people standing up in the pic below are the Suphan FC cheering section.  They brought drums and had organized cheers, as did the other team's cheering section across the stadium.  It's funny that you don't need to understand the language to know exactly what the guy in front of you is yelling after the ref makes a bad call.

 

It should also be noted that in Thailand beer is drank with ice, and occasionally through a straw.  This may seem outlandish, but I won't lie, it's actually kind of good. And I might bring the ice thing back to the US for those hot summer beers.

 

It was a good weekend, but we're ready to explore some new cities next week. Another American girl who lives in our apartment has a boyfriend that owns a restaurant in town.  All of us are going to meet there for T-giving dinner and grill some good ole' American food. It will be sad not being home, but at least we have a lot to be thankful about. If only we could watch the Packers - Lions game....

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and go Packers!

Oh, and Cyrus says go lions.

Paige and Cyrus