Buddha's Birthday; Fred and Tui

Today is Buddha's birthday, at least in Thailand. It's the full moon day, and supposedly he was born, died, and found enlightenment all on this day. Thais are visiting the wats throughout Chiang Mai and giving offerings. At one of the wats I visited this morning the monks were chanting and I joined the worshippers in prayer. Lately I have been praying at all the wats, partly out of cultural respect, partly as I reaffirm a sense of spirituality that I haven't felt this strongly for some time.

I spent the good part of the day up at Doi Suthep Temple, which is in Doi Suthep National Park on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. It's a long winding road to the top by saegenaw, and there's a beautiful view of the city. To reach the temple, we climbed several hundred steps (by we I mean thousands of Thai worshippers and hundreds of farangs). It was quite a spectacle. In the outer sanctum there were at least three different traditional music groups playing, and kids were ringing the bells all around the temple. (I rang all the bells too, and there's probably fifty of them around the outer sanctum.) There were ceremonial dancers performing in the shade of a jackfruit tree with long tapering golden fingernails.

In the temple, I joined other worshippers in circling the central golden stupa three times, our hands held up in wai. The air smelled of sandalwood incense and jasmine flowers given in offering to golden statues. There were yellow candles and flowers of all kinds everywhere. At one of the shrines, people were crawling up to an orange-robed monk to have a short length of string tied around their wrists. I'm pretty sure this represents the underlying connectivity of everything, and I also had a piece of string tied around my wrist as we were sprinkled with holy water.

There's a legend behind Doi Suthep except it actually happened. About 800 years ago the rulers of Chiang Mai put a relic on the back of a white elephant. The white elephant was to choose the site of Doi Suthep. The elephant wandered up the mountainside and died at the spot where Doi Suthep was built.

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Many of the wats in Chiang Mai have gardens where signposts hang from trees. There are words of wisdom about Dhamma in Thai and in bad English.

It was in one of these gardens that I met Somboon (whose nickname is Tui) and Fred. Tui is a retired school teacher from Lampang, and also has a law degree. He speaks English well but always wants to learn more. Fred is a retired sociology professor from California who was a Deadhead at Haight-Ashberry in the Summer of Love. I wonder how they know each other, but regardless, I ended up spending the better part of yesterday hanging out with the two of them.

Tui gave me a Thai lesson and I helped him with some more complex English idioms. To put things in perspective, his pension is about 1500 baht a month, which is about what I have budgeted for two days of travel (and I'm a budget traveler). He spends a lot of days baby-sitting his five year old grand-daughter and he looks about twenty years younger than he is. I had all kinds of questions: how did he feel about farangs and Thai women getting together? Had he ever been a monk? That kind of thing. I've been very curious about monastic practices in Thailand because apparently just about everybody is a monk at some point in their lives. In fact, Tui had spent a month in a monastery about five years ago.

Fred is quite a talker. He has decided to retire to Thailand. If you can prove you have 800,000 baht in the bank (about 20,000 dollars), you can get a non-immigrant visa and live in Thailand. Fred was born with a cleft palate and it was interesting to hear his perspective on growing up with a disability.

We all biked out of town to Wat U Mong together, which is in beautiful teak and tamarind woods. There are man-made caves where monks used to pray. It is a beautiful place and the repose I felt gave me a few moments of insight on how I want to live my life. It's the type of clarity I find in places like the Shivapuri Reserve north of Kathmandu, Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, the redwoods of northern California. It's a life of calm and awareness and living in harmony with nature.

Later in the afternoon Fred and I biked to a waterfall at the base of Doi Suthep National Park. There was a rainbow over the city and kids swam in the many pools at the bottom of each falls.

After biking about 20 km I decided that it would be a good time to get my first Thai massage. I practically had all my limbs ripped out of their sockets, my head pulped, and I was walked on, stomped on, and elbowed extensively. For the most part it felt great.

In the evening I had the chance to meet lots of cool farangs at the guesthouse: Canadian, Irish, Swiss, a photographer, a masseur, etc. It's nice to meet other farangs and get a chance to chill out.

Last thing: the Night Market at Chiang Mai. What a tourist trap. I went there to get some street food and check out the scene. Fake designer handbags, bootleg cds and DVDs, tacky t-shirts, women from the Karen tribe walking around with trinkets. But it was the fact that it was almost impossible to find street food that convinced me that this market is geared for farangs, not Thais. In all the touristed areas of Chiang Mai, it's hard to find street food, and this is an essential aspect of Thai culture. I practically have to bike out of the old city to get sticky coconut rice wrapped in banana leaves.