A lot has happened too.
I will attempt to go over everything major that has occurred without being too incredibly wordy so as to not bore everyone to death. :]
Happenings in Chiang Mai over the last ten days:
Two Saturdays ago, January 29th, we went as a group up to Doi Suthep, which is a pretty big tourist destination, especially within Chiang Mai.
Doi Suthep houses Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, which from what I hear, is one of the “Big Four” Buddhist Wats visit in Thailand.
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| doi suthep. |
Before we arrived at the Wat (or temple), we stopped at a Hmong village.
At the Hmong village, we walked around and looked at all of their little shops. They were nicely arranged along these windy roads, and thankfully were not as packed as some of the markets we have visited thus far.
There were little kids running around everywhere, and they were all so adorable.
A couple of kids were sitting together outside of their parents shop underneath a table; contently playing.
A lot of the people we encountered in this village were dressed in the traditional Hmong dress which was very pretty and decorative.
After the village, it was on to the Wat at Doi Suthep.
For anyone considering a trip to this temple, be aware it is a slightly steep walk up to the entrance of the Wat; 300 steps to be exact.
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| all three hundred glorious steps. |
I was slightly out of breath by the time we trudged to the top, but it was definitely worth it; especially looking back down and seeing all of the steps I had just conquered.
Overall, the Wat was beautiful, and it provided a magnificent view of the city of Chiang Mai.
Thankfully, it was a nice and clear day, so we were able to look out and marvel at the city in which we are currently taking up residence.
The best part about our visit to this temple would have to be the experience of “making merit” by walking around the chedi.
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| making merit. |
A chedi, is defined by Wikipedia as, “A stupa (from Sanskrit: m., स्तूप, stūpa, Pāli: थुप "thūpa", literally meaning "heap") is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, once thought to be places of Buddhist worship, typically contain the remains of a Buddha or saint.”
“Making merit” is simply the act of reducing one’s bad karmic load. From my understanding, Buddhists believe that every act either produces good or bad karma, and obviously one would want to possess a karmic load greater in the side of good karma.
There are many ways to “make merit,” and for us, we walked around the chedi holding a single lotus flower, two candles, and three sticks of incense.
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| lotus flower and incense [the candles were hiding]. |
Another way to “make merit,” which we also participated in that day, is through the act of ringing bells.
So hopefully my karmic load is more heavily weighted in the “good” side!
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| it was a beautiful day for ringing bells! |
On our way back down from the Wat, all of us invested in chocolate waffles; which is basically a waffle with chocolate syrup drizzled in the middle and then folded in half.
My waffle was pretty good, but for some reason I couldn’t really taste the chocolate (weird, I know..).
After our visit to the Wat, we stopped at a large jade factory located on the mountain of Doi Suthep.
The jade factory was very nice (they even served us complimentary drinks! Haha) and we were able to see a ton of different jade pieces, as well as people actually in the process of carving jade.
The next day, Sunday, we went “temple hopping.”
We visited three Wats in all; first was Wat Gu Dao, then Wat Jet Yot, and finally Wat Umong.
1: Wat Gu Dao is a Burmese and Shan temple, and the monks we saw there wore maroon robes to signify they are from Burma.
2: Wat Jet Yot is supposed to be known for having 7 yots, or spires, which represent the 7 weeks Buddha spent in Bodhgaya after Enlightenment. This temple is also modeled after the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, India; although apparently the two differ quite a lot.
3: Wat Umong houses an emaciated Buddha statue, which represents the Buddha before he found “the middle way.” There are also a lot of really neat tunnels to explore below the chedi.
After a day full of temples, Erin and I decided to attend a talk about refugees from Shan state in Burma; we learned about this talk from the school where we help teach English.
The talk ended up being a book talk (but thankfully it was in English!) and it was held in a really cool art gallery in a rather trendy side of town we did not even know existed before that night.
We were able to hear Bernice Koehler Johnson talk about her experience as an English teacher in and around the Thai/Burma border, which mostly Shan people. Bernice was a very warm presence and good speaker; Erin and I decided to invest in a copy of her book and even got it signed!
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all typical days here in Chiang Mai: classes at CMU, delicious Thai dinners, iced Milo’s, and teaching at the school for Burmese migrant workers. :]
On Wednesday night, Erin and I made a late night 7/11 run and stocked up on some junk good and Big Gulps in the hopes of catching a movie on TV.
We don’t have TV’s in our rooms so we had to use the one located in the “Conference Room” of our guesthouse, which is really just a large gathering area.
Unfortunately, the only movie we could really find was the hit, Dr. T and the Women, starring Richard Gere.
If you have yet to see this classic, don’t waste your time. Sorry, Mr. Gere. :]
Thursday was supposed to be like another day, but right before we departed for school, Drexler received a call from the program director at CMU saying we should stop in the park and watch a puppet show instead. The puppet show was being put on by a teacher (and her theater troupe) who had previously given us a lecture on traditional Thai dance and puppetry. It was held at the Chiang Mai University Cultural Center, outside in a park-like area.
The show was pretty good; it was fun seeing all of the little school kids enjoying themselves, clearly excited to be out of school early.
There were also a lot of tables and vendors set up throughout the park, so that was neat.
As we were all walking around and exploring the different tables set up, three young Thai school girls came up to a few of us and asked if they could get a picture.. It was rather adorable.
Of course we agreed, and the girls got their picture taken with a couple of smiling “farangs,” or foreigners. :D
Since we were already “cutting class” so to speak, we decided to check out the museum section of the CMU Cultural Center. This was a lot of fun; they had so many cool sculptures, even the architecture of the building and trees were interesting. I took a lot of pictures here.
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| this tree outside the CMU cultural center had the craziest roots! |
Thursday night our group took a song-taw down to a section of town roughly known as Chinatown. It was the Chinese New Year and we were curious to see if there would be any celebrations going on.
Where we were ended up being a long main street full of vendors, selling the usual – lots of food and clothing/accessories. There were a lot of people out and about that night, but unfortunately, no real festivities.
Towards the end of the night I couldn’t help but purchase some food (it all looked so good) and ended up trying pork pot stickers. They were pretty good.
The next day, Friday, started our weekend long adventure to a “monk camp,” better known as the Wianghaeng Pariyatsuksa School and Meditation Center in Wianghaeng, which is roughly a three-hour drive from where we are staying in Chiang Mai.
The camp where we were going to stay is only 10 km from the Thai/Burma border.
The drive to Wianghaeng is absolutely beautiful; straight up into the mountains, completely with incredibly windy/twisty roads for a large portion of the trip. Not something I would want to drive myself.
And surprisingly, the driver of our van didn’t seem to be phased at all by the conditions of the road; I actually think he may have been a Thai Nascar driver in a past life.
Although thankfully, we all arrived in one piece.
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| monk camp. |
The monks at this camp were actually novices, young boys ranging in ages from 9-19; who are “monks in training” so to speak since they are not quite old enough to become monks.
From my understanding, the age at which one is eligible to become a monk is 20 years-old.
We arrived at the camp Friday afternoon and explored a little bit, ending up hanging out in their Wat for a while, which is modest compared to all of the ancient Wats we’ve been visiting but was nice all the same; it was very open too, surrounded by the outdoors, which was also a treat.
Later on that evening, we were fed a delicious dinner and attended our first Buddhist religious ceremony.
It was incredible to hear the Monks all chant together in rhythm, almost sounding like song.
I don’t have any idea how all of the Monks/novices manage to sit propped up on their legs/feet for the entire ceremony though; I had to constantly readjust, trying to keep the blood flow to my legs going :]
We all slept in these “mud brick houses” which were pretty bare, with only mats on the floor for sleeping. Oh and a lovely family portrait of Thailand’s royal family framed on the wall. The King is everywhere here!
Surprisingly, the mats weren’t too uncomfortable, and felt awfully similar to the beds we are used to sleeping on at our guesthouse in Chiang Mai. It did, however, get pretty chilly where we were in the evenings as well as in the mornings, so thankfully the Monks were sure to supply us each with multiple blankets.
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| our beds. |
To our amazement, we awoke the next day to the sound of Monks chanting right outside our mud brick house.
It was roughly 5:30 in the morning; I don’t know how Monks do it.
I remember waking up to the sound of their chanting, and again to the screaming rooster, but continued to doze in and out of sleep until our alarm went off at 7am.
I will have to admit, it was pretty incredible to be awoken in the morning to the sound of Monks doing their 5:30am chants.
After breakfast, we were off to teach English.
We taught at a nearby school which is attended by both novices and “lay” boys, who are those without robes.
This was a rather interesting experience as we were given absolutely no direction, textbook, or lesson plan upon being thrown into the classroom.
We all split up, two to a classroom, and in my room (the Advanced English class) as all of the students stood up and said “Good Morning Teacher,” Aaron and I looked at each other as if to say, “What the heck do we now?!”
This task was made even more difficult due to the fact that we weren’t even sure how much English they already knew.
The most anyone would tell us is to simply, “Talk to them.”
So that is precisely what we did.
Towards the end we were finally catching our stride, having them compile lists of various vocabulary words and writing them on the board.
We weren’t even sure how long the class was supposed to last, but thankfully we survived the 2 ½ hours until lunch, which was at 11:30.
After lunch, we taught again for an hour in the afternoon and then went back to the camp.
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| my "students for a day" :] |
This is when the fun began – so in exchange for teaching English, the novices wanted to teach us all something. So we were educated in the art of making organic fertilizer and mud bricks!
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| making mud bricks! |
We were able to stomp around in this big mud pit area where they prepare for brick making, and actually make bricks. We were even able to lay a couple of bricks (which had already been dried in the sun) onto another house they were building at the camp!
Later that evening, we ate dinner and attended another Buddhist religious ceremony.
This time, I didn’t even doze off during the meditation portion…which trust me, is easy to do!
On Sunday, we ate breakfast and were off to see a couple of places before we had to depart back to Chiang Mai.
We were fortunate enough to be able to visit an “unofficial” Burmese refugee camp, and the leader of the camp was even there; he sat down and talked to us for a while, over some tea.
We were told there were roughly 600 Burmese currently living in the camp, and that it had been in existence since 2003 (if I remember correctly).
Another amazing thing we learned was that even though the camp has been there since 2003, they are only allowed to have and build "temporary" structures; nothing permanent with cement or bricks or anything.
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| the unofficial refugee camp. |
We weren’t able to stay for very long, but it was amazing actually being able to visit.
After the refugee camp, we were shown a local Wat which actually lies right on the Thai/Burma border.
You can literally see the border and make-shift fence put up on the Burma side, complete with a Burmese soldier stationed there, keeping watch.
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| a deserted house along the thai/burma border. |
There was a couple of deserted houses in the slight dip between where we were and “the Burma side,” all of which had been bombarded with shells and bullets, the many holes in the roof a living testament.
We were also told that this Wat supposedly contains one of the Buddha’s teeth!
After the visit to the Wat, we were whisked back to the camp just in time for another religious ceremony.
This ceremony was special however, complete with decorations and flowers and the like.
We learned afterwards that it was supposed to be a ceremony for longevity, as there were also some people from Bangkok also staying at the camp with us, one of whom we believe may be sick and came there for a couple of days to assist in healing.
I feel it’s safe to say, everyone’s favorite part of this ceremony was the point in which we were all asked to come up the front and knell before the Abbott in which he presented us with two bracelets, a white string one and a wooden beaded bracelet, along with words of advice or prophecy for our futures.
I was told that I would “get a lot of money when I went back to America.” But we shall see. :]
After this special gathering, we were all fed a delicious feast of steak and vegetables, along with rice (of course :] ), pear-like fruit, and a couple of random french fries. The meal was wonderful.
After our bellies were full, it was time to head back to Chiang Mai.
We were sad to have to say goodbye to the novices, but we needed to get back.
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| group photo. :] |
That evening Drexler took us all out for a delicious meal at a local Italian restaurant, which is one of his favorites. We all enjoyed caprisi for an appetizer, and I had the mushroom ravioli, which was wonderful.
Oh and fresh strawberries and whipped cream, along with some powdered sugar, for dessert. Next time, I will be trying the Tiramisu.
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