Raw LLM Responses

I lived in Chiang Mai for a couple of years and still have a lot of ties there. I first started hearing outcry about this about a month ago and I'm in the states. Locally it likely started the moment they started felling trees on Doi Suthep. That mountain isn't just considered "by some" to be sacred. It's the goddamn icon of Chiang Mai and pedestal for one of the most important Buddhist temples anywhere. Chiang Mai is a fairly large city and has the highest density of Buddhist temples anywhere in the entire Buddhist country of Thailand. Then, right next to the city -- and I mean literally right next to it (heavily developed and populated road instantly becomes forested the moment you start the incline) -- there's the mountain Doi Suthep. The entire mountain is almost entirely forest all the way up and it looms over the flat, valley city of Chiang Mai. Near its peak is a bright shining light. At night it's like another star in the sky, except it's shining from the top of a mountain. That light is the temple Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. That temple is one of the most amazing places I've ever been. Legend has it that when they founded the city of Chiang Mai the king rode in on a white elephant. Then they gave the elephant a relic and followed it up the mountain until it trumpeted and died. That's where they built this temple (and also why it's not actually at the peak). After driving/walking up the mountain you have to climb 309 steps to get to the temple itself, and the handrails all the way up are huge dragons. The temple itself is like a slice of Buddhist heaven planted down on Earth, with an attention to detail and sense of peace like I've never found anywhere else. In the center of the temple is a chedi, a sort of decorated Buddhist pyramid that points to heaven, that everyone prays around. And what is encapsulated in that chedi? The relic that elephant carried. "But notlogic, what is this relic you keep mentioning?" Oh, nothing big. Just the mother fucking sho