Sunday, March 30, 2008. 18:18pm Thai Time, 16:18PST. Room 704 Amora Hotel, Chiang Mai. I wasn't sure the day could be longer, but here it is: longer. I am ready to pass out and it's only 6pm. And I have a dinner to go to and I have begged to go along with new friends to the night market... I'm not sure I can survive... I woke up wide awake at 3am and restlessly found things to do until 6am when I just got dressed. Walking around Chiang Mai yesterday evening in the setting sun I realized all the pictures would really need to be first morning light ones to be really good since everything at dusk was back lit. So I went out in the morning intending to get there for stunning morning light. Instead I went out into fog. Oh well. Breakfast was awesome- it is a huge buffet full of regular western-style foods as well as traditional thai breakfast. Unfortunately I didn't see the traditional thai until after I had my omlette. I got a huge plate of fruit- mango, pineapple, honeysuckle and topped it all with plain yogurt (fresh made!!! WOW!) and a squeeze of fresh lime. Delicious. The coffee was fantastic and I washed it down with fresh guava juice. Then I had the man make up an omlette for me with mushroom, peppers, onions and tomato and topped that with sweet red chili sauce which gets the nasal juices flowing at 6:30am. It was great. While he was making my omlette, I walked over and saw the traditional thai breakfast which I'll definitely do tomorrow- egg and glass noodles, dried shrimp and fried squid, fried chicken, herbs, a little bit like bun it seemed- and broth and a ton of toppings. I'll try it tomorrow. Somehow noodles are feeling like spaghetti was in Italy- necessary and I'm starting to absolutely crave them. I ate fast and tried to be good about not eating too much then went out and walked a mile around the perimeter of the city to see if I coud get some shots with the morning light (alas, no light) but I did spy the morning market going on and I went by to check that out. Monks getting food for the day, people getting their breakfast on the street.
Pictures of the morning market- you can see a truck with a bunch of saffron-robed monks in the foreground. And I happened upon this elephant fountain statue on the promenade next to the town moat which was really kind of enchanting. Below is a close up of the cool gilded hang dong outside of a wat just across the street from my hotel. In the middle pic below is a picture of an altar which every home and business seems to have out front, which they decorate with cheesy plastic beads and trinkets, as well as incense and other things. The far right below picture is a shot of typical domestic thai architecture, carved and still with the finials.
At 8am the bus was loaded up and we were off for what was to be the start of a wildly long day. We were at full capacity- which is 38 people. I sat across from a woman talking to the women behind her when the last 2 people to board the buss were a husband and wife duo about my age, who sat next to eachother across the aisle, I offered to move and let them sit together, but they said it was okay so away we went. I introduced myself to the man sitting next to me- Marius and then his wife Ivana. Next to her sat a woman who said "Are you Shelby? I'm Kerry, I'm the only other person who signed up on this trip solo." Ivana and Marius are from Toronto, although they moved there from Chicago a couple years ago having moved from Serbia (Ivana) and Romania (Marius) before that. They are super great and we sat together all day on a very, very long day and seemed to get along well- they are just about the two nicest people ever. Kerry is very well-travelled- she has the most expensive Cannon digital SLR ever and just hearing it click makes me droolingly mad with jealousy. We drove out of ChaingMai city to our first stop- a Wat complex with the usual staple of ferral dogs all over the place as well as saffron-robed monks and another tour bus from- gess who? Overseas Adventure Travel, which made me bite my inner lip. The Wat was specifically interesting for its collection of white monuments which I assume are funerary in nature, but I wasn't sure. There is this whole yard of them- just stark, stark white behind which is a massive cheddi which is covered with 24 karat honest-to-god gold. This is typical for Thailand- they pound out the gold very thin then use it to veneer the surface of certain very special cheddi. I took a few pictures then had a moment of sheer panic when my battery light started flashing and I realized I never charged it and flying always sucks the life right out of the battery. So today was going to be a day without pictures. Marius so nicely offered to give me theirs from today when we were back on the bus! I managed to get a few. Thais ring bells to give them a reminder to stop and pause and know that they are usually rung as a blessing.
There was a temple which was open on 4 sides and very long and after making a lap around the white spires and the golden chedi, we went inside to watch a group of younger monks in robes seated on the floor listening to another, older monk reading something to them. We stayed a couple of minutes then went in back of that main meeting room into this smaller temple that was probably the most beautiful wat I've been in so far in Thailand- I don't know what it was called but it was small, with a 12 foot golden Buddha at the front with a red painted ceiling and frescoes depicting scenes from the Life of Buddha covering all 4 walls. Nan Nan was explaining some tenets of Buddhism to us: you come in, kneel so that 5 parts of your body make contact with the floor in prayer: two knees, two arms and one forehead so that your whole person in involved in the act. There are 3 small bows, one for the god, one for his teachings, and one for following his teachings. She explained that the Bhudda image is in one of the following 4 poses: standing, walking, seated or reclining. His eyes are always looking downward as to focus himself on what is here and now and to be focusing on himself as to maximize his self-awareness. His one hand may be up or in a meditative pose, and the pointed headress reaching toward heaven. She explained why I find Buddhism so attractive as a philosophy, if not a religion: the focus is always on here and now, this very moment. What is gone is in the past, it must stay there. Future is future and the most important thing in life is focus on the moment and to ensure that one is happy and not dwelling on either past or future, but existing in the present. But mindfully. I laughed to myself: this is the antithesis of Shelby: all anxiety, anal retention and frenetic living. I told the woman next to me "Wow, this is gonna take me way more than 2 weeks to soak up enough of that to make a difference." I laughed but she was too busy being a western observer to think i was very funny. The camera was palpably dying, so i was taking each picture as fast as possible knowing wach might be its last and I thus took a really bad picture of that chapel.
(Marius' better shot of the blurry one I took just below it)
As
we lfet the wat for the next one, there were tuckloads of oblate monks
dressed in white and red, with lots of makeup (there is an interesting gender-bending
tradition in thailand) en route to be ordained- this was massive, complete with
umbrellas, and even a couple of elephants.
We drove farther north and a bit west to another wat high up in the mountains of Chiang Mai province: Doi Suthep. This is a very, very famous wat in the entire country-with a massive 24 karat golden-leafed chedi and a huge complex on several levels around its base. We took a tram ride up to the second level, walked around abit and then took shoes off and went up to the upper level. Groups of thais bought lotus flowers and carried them while they walked around the chedi 3 times each, with shrines at every turn in the eaves on all 4 sides with smaller shrines of the Buddha in 4 positions and some more unusual ones (like the awsome one with a 5 headed dragon protecting it, and a jade green one) with people on their knees burning incense, and pouring oil onto perpetually burning flames for good luck. It was packed and really cool.
Below is Doi Suthep, a massive wat in Chiang Mai which is, according to everybody who lives here, the most famous wat in the province, if not in the country. It's on 2 levels, after climing 352 staris to get to the top. The chedi is of course leafed with 24 karat gold and the place was seriously packed with people, both Thai and tourist alike, all vewing, gawking, photographing, worhiping and socializing.
I took pictures sparingly, and with the last one of the veranda with the elephant (top level, far right) it finally died- so dead it couldn't even retract the lens back into thebody of the camera. I felt a twinge of panic not being able to take pictures for the rest of the day. We met at the base of the temple at 11am, after about an hour of walking around the wat, i ventured foolishly into the vendor area where I bought a little metal bell for 500 bhat as well as a faux-silk dark blue skirt and top set with little golden elephants embroidered on it for another 500BHT. Wallet a lot lighter, I got away from another vulture trying to sell me a meditation bowl (which really was so cool, but I couldn't make it sing like she did) for another 500bht. Down the hill, we all met up for a tour at a jade factory for a short presentaiton and a huge crowd of sales woman in traditional thai dress plying you with free thai lemonade or coke and cookies while they gave you a hard sell to buy something. We went away from there on to a lunch at this amazing, beautiful palatial estate out in the countryside with beautiful grounds. We had a buffet for 200bht each in this gorgeous setting. I had much better pad thai at the street vendor on the first day, though. I had a really awseome salad, though.
After lunch we went to a very tiresome sucession of places that were interesting but I was tired and ready to go back to the hotel: we went to a jewelry cutting place which was painful- each guest was assigned a specific sales rep and I didn't know how the other people got away from theirs- mine was on me like a freaking hawk. I was ready to buy some really nice jewel here, but we walked into this expansive, wildly sexy showroom which was darkly lit (big red flag which was prickling in the back of my neck) with huge fishtanks filled with 1 foot swimming black tipped reef sharks. I looked at incredible jewelry, all the time being hounded by this sales person so I finally worked down from the $5000 rubies I was gawking at to $400 emerald pendants. Finally, I walked out, frustrated and pining for jewelry. I was impressed with my own restraint. We went to a shop making "handicrafts" which the guide, Nan Nan kept pronouncing "handicapped." I heard her say this the previous day, that we would be going to a handicapped shop and I thought "why?" THen she said it again. Just as she said it, we turned right into this street with a lot of businesses the first of which, on our left hand side, was a medical supply store. I thought "Cambodia has the most amputees per capita in the world because of all the land mines, I wonder if they are having problems with them emigrating to Thailand?" And I looked at Marius seated next to me and said "did she just say handicapped?" He laughed and said no- it was "handicraft." I was cracking up. Ivana said they have an uncle who lives in England but his Serbian accent is so thick that once he was talking about going out and bear watching, they were in the trees, on the ground, there were like 50 of them and he could see them all with his binoculars. She was totally confused wondering why there were bears in England and why one needed to use binoculars to see them? It came out that he was saying "Birds" but pronouncing it "bairds." I laughed: it wasn't even the second day and already we had an inside joke going. Bairds, silly.
Lastly, we went to a silk maker which I found underwhelming. I didn't buy anything there and the wind had really picked up, and it started to cloud over and rain a little. We trooped back on the bus and left for the hotel, it was after 5pm and I was ready to pass out from being so tired. It was a really fun day and I really liked meeting Marius and Ivana. I begged them earlier to let me tag along with them at the night market, but first we had to all meet back up at the bus at 7pm (after a 1.5 hour break) to attend a tranditional dinner.
Back at the hotel I cleaned up, changed into a dress (didnt' wear my new 500BHT Thai outfit with the golden elephants- too much hassle and the top isn't made for big american bustage) and left to meet the bus. We went to a place that specializes in tour groups and puts on something called "Kantoke" which is the traditional THai meal with traditional dress, dancing and music. The food was entirely forgettable, in fact I didn't care for it at all really and ate little. I tried the national drink which is a whiskey but far less strong than the Jim Beam I like so much- like 40 proof and it tastes like whiskey, just without the buring that 100 proof does to one's esophagus. We were all kind of falling asleep but the dancing seemed to drag on about an hour past everybody's attention span. It was okay to see, but one of those things that seems to be far more put on for tourists than for THais preserving their heritage or a way of life.
After dinner, we were getting off the bus and everybody was totally beat but Marius and Ivana, ever the energizer bunnies were still planning on checking out the sunday night market which Nan Nan recommended (her recommendations have been less than stellar) so I said I'd go with. We went and it was okay- the usual touristy stuff, some of it was really cool- Ivana had bought this wooden 3 panneled, carved Buddha image to hand on the wall and that was actually really cool- I bought a painting of the buddha image with some Thai writing on it at the handicapped shop, not sure in retrospect if I should have gone with the wooden one? Both very pretty. The market was okay- not great, and the wares seemed to be less quality than we've seen so far. So I decided to call it quits after an hour and they stayed out until about 11:15pm when the market closed, they said. I was fast asleep by then.
