Monday 2 sept, chiang mai

Day 2 in chiang mai

Breakfast, Eyrique arrives. Move room

Rest for a while then walk......

Oven like heat of the afternoon. W meet analysis ex Muay Thai boxer who now lives in Australia. He attempts to persuade us to go trekking, buy a suit, go to a fight....

 

 

Temples temples

 

Taste of heaven veggie restauarnt: Poor service, Off off off, Bill is wrong....it gets a bad review from me on happy cows

More temples and chat in wat.....

Massageat a mother temple I'm so stiff. Buy some herbal remedies. Buy some conventional remedies, cos I'm getting a cold. In boots! Full of far ants with motorbike injuries and Thai women buying western cosmetics!

Over the street a aguy is training fighting beetles...i summise

 

 

Night market is snot a good plqce for food....in fact the food we have is poor and not at all spicy.again.....I'm disappointed


We check out the Gay bar, same old tired scene. Middle aged well to do faring with a boy each side. Quiet, low key, not very inspiring

Eyrique is disappointed.

 

W go to the outdoor Bus. Bar next to the iron bridge by the guest house. the coloured lighting morphs from red to green to blue to purple. this is a spot where young thais gather at night to take photos of each other. the bar plays Guns n roses, for goodness sake.... We're charged 20 baht for a bowl of ice.....

I load myself up with pills to sleep off my cold.......

 

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Exploring Chiang Mai

Wat Phan Tao, Chiang Mai

Wat Phan Tao (built 1846 onward)

Wat Phan Tao means "The Monastery of a Thousand Kilns". According to the noted scholar Michael Freeman, this is probably due to the fact that the site was used for the casting of Buddha images intended for Wat Chedi Luang, which is adjacent to the monastery. The building was originally constructed not as a monastery, but as a royal palace building (ho kham) for the ruler of Chiang Mai, Chao Mahawong, who used the structure from 1846 to 1854. It originally stood on stilts, but these were removed when the building was refurbished as a monastery in 1876. Some traces of Chao Mahawong's habitation can still be seen; for example, the front gable end is decorated with the image of a peacock standing over a sleeping dog. The dog is the zodiac symbol of Chao Mahawong's birth year. The dog image is also present in the pediment of the left window on the front facade, though it is absent on the right side.

http://www.orientalarchitecture.com/thailand/chiangmai/wat-phan-tao.php

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Train into bkk

 

 

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Bangkok river, fish, weeds, elephants

 

 

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Last Sunday, 1 September

Bus to chiang mai.....

The bus journey was incident free,. Other than immigration police checkpoints, with police checking docs and dogs sniffing baggage, on the way out of tak province. My neighbour. For the entire journey was a large soldier who sat impassive, sunglasses on, playing kids games on his mobile, his body occupying as much space as possible in a very male way. I chat to a shaven headed ex-pat American who is. Building a house in pai.

 

Cm, riverside house has expanded and is not as homely as it was

The sun is baking, hotter than I remember it. The air is clear.

Teak Buddha temple. I discover my memory card is corrupted...have I lost all my pics....? Shit

Sunday walking street

Almost immediately I chance upon Michael!

Busking police,an in shades and helmet

Busking violin playing pretty girls

Bushing blind man/ woman with mic and loudspeaker around neck

National anthem at 6 everyone stops in their tracks. At the end return to exchanging money,haggling, stirring food

Moong bracelets

Pashminas

Temple markets with khao soi stalls

Massage parlours consisting of lines of reclining arm chairs on the street corners

Magic of wat. Garden, food court, chanting monks, I meet peter the American actor

Farang hard krishnas dancing up the street, crashing little hand cymbals.

Motorbike showroom with huge tv showing man utd Liverpool. I missed the match... 1 -0 great result !

Smoothies

Herbal iced teas

Local. Atists'paintings.

Mango wood bowls

Carved Buddhas

A card reading fortune teller in the temple

I buy a replacement jade necklace

France's, mike and I go to Reggae bar

A sit on the floor around low tables sleazy backpacker vibe.

We. Are easily the oldest there.

Pink flood and the eagles are playing

Buckets of mohito

Loud, can't hear her....the rain comes down. Opening and closing roof.

Mango sticky rice banana pancake on way Home

 

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Blog interrupted

Dear blog readers. Maybe you have noticed the hiatus. Not been in blog mode recently and thoughts are piling up and spiralling out of control. Maybe I'll get them written down soon. Now stuck in Bangkok once more!

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Leaving mae sod

Up at dawn,and I can hear the dripping residual rainwater ticking onto the roof below. Morning has that fresh glow of promise. A silent hour when the URL almost dreamlike sweeps the fallen leaves from the yard. I sit in the soft fuzzy light, all foliage in the garden seems a dense green blur. I eat yesterday's fritters and sip a tea. I'm in no rush, though do have an appointment for a change. T catch the chiang mai bus. My plan had been to walk the mile and more along the road, but logic, desire and the need to take things easy persuade me toget a tuk tim. I wai and thank the owner who is manicuring in her window, and the housekeeper waves me off. The road is sleepy. It's Sunday. Two young novices of around 12 are pacing dozen the road. Orange saffron robes, one with a green sash beneath, the other a yellow one. Hey are not together, maybe 20 yards apart. Each carries himself with he nobble detachedd dignity of something other. Erect perfectly balanced, slight figures but with an air of confidence, modesty, humility. Shaved fuzzy heads, pale yellow tan skin. smooth facesthat carry no expression. They are barefoot, each cradles a silver coloured bowl which they prefer no doubt to the same selected households, and into which is donated a quantity of food. Could be fruit, a ball of rice. This is to be eaten by midday. Monks fast until the next morning. These kids are not lolloping around, not listening to their smart phones. I wonder what goes through their mind. How they feel when they wake, and prepare themselves for this un changing ritual of centuries. They are ageless. They are ancient. They are somehow infused with the spirit of what makes this place so exotic, so intangible at times. Inscrutable, sublime.

It feels like a dream, a trance. Like a memory from deep in the past, like a vision of a. Future. A permanence. It's something I. All never understand.

At sukhothai all those centuries before the same rituals were enacted. I am going to chiang mai where I will see the same once again. I will meet men who have lived these lives, played these roles. A duty. T bring merit to their family. I will meet boys who will become novices. I will go places where such temples and monasteries where they carry out the day in day out identical regimes of waking praying collecting food, eating, sweeping, learning, and playing have stood for centuries. Ones which are still being built, being painted. Ones which people go to for medical purposes, steam saunas, ones in which the town comes to buy and sell food. Ones which are thoroughfares, kids going to school, tuk tuks passing through. A short cut from one gate to another. Ones where all the stray dogs from the town come to rest in the shade of the prayer halls. Ones which were built on the tops of mountains and were abandoned 600 years ago.the forest. Reclaiming hem, the locals reusing the collapsing stonework to build houses and roads. Where the gilded buddhashave been stolen, yet where nowadays people still light candles, burn joss sticks, leave offerings of fruit, coca cola, whatever they feel the Buddha would like.

Yet what does it mean? This is a country with underlying tensions that often manifest he selves violently. The red shirts stand offs in bkk being a good example. The terrorism in the south,the. Muslims fighting for independence. A country which deliberately avoids any involvemnt in international conflicts, preferring only to adopt positions that are beneficial to trade. Take the Burma refugee. Sitaution. Compare with how reluctant he Thais were to shelter the many hundreds of thousands who fled the terror of the Khmer Rouge and the displaced of vietnam. They were often sent back, sometimes robbed, sometimes raped or murdered. Een the local Red Cross workers being reproachable.

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