Sukothai Historic Park

Sukothai Historic Park

Our bike tour of the Sukothai historic park began at our hotel. Our guide from the day before brought bikes to us and we rode the short distance to the town. The first pictures, below, were taken outside the enclosed section of the park. I liked seeing cows grazing among the ruins.

Note the cows’ long ears. Our guide said that the cows with the long ears are not slaughtered. The ones with regular-length cow-ears are the ones used for meat.

This small chedi surrounded by elephant figures is also outside the enclosed park. I’m including this picture because it turned out well, not because I know the significance of the chedi or what relics it may contain.

Entering the park, our guide explained that unlike many medieval cities, Sukothai had four entrances, north, south, east, and west. We began on the northern side, with a visit to Wat Si Chum and The Talking Buddha.

A very famous image

The story as told by our guide is that the King took advantage of the physical layout and acoustics of this temple to create the illusion that the Buddha image could speak, though of course the actual speaker would have been a monk or other person in the king’s service. This subterfuge was used to give courage to the soldiers before an upcoming battle – the voice would exhort them to be brave and uphold the honor of the king and the city. The solders, who must have been assembled outside the niche where the Buddha image is seated, were no doubt convinced that it really was the statue speaking to them. In the photo with the close –up of the Buddha image, you can see a small window high up on the wall to the left. There are tunnels that gave access into and around the structure on both sides, but they are closed off now.

Not far from Wat Si Chum and The Talking Buddha is this ruin of a chedi, which dates back farther than the Sukothai kingdom. There were three of them together at one time, but only this one remains somewhat intact.

The guide explained that this chedi is in the style of the Khmer (i.e., Cambodian), shaped like a phallus rather than the rounded shape topped by a spire that is typical of Sukothai (as in the chedi with the elephants seen above). The phallus-symbolism goes back to earlier, non-Buddhist religions. I hope to understand the Khmer influence on Thai architecture and art better after visiting Cambodia later this year.

To the east you find this large square ruin with many Buddha images, such as the large Standing Buddha in the second picture.

Standing Buddha

The grounds in this area of the park are especially beautiful, with more long-eared cows grazing and trees that are so symmetrical, it seems that they must have been trimmed and groomed into shape. However, our guide said they just grew that way.

Mango tree in the background

At temples. you often see banyan trees like the one below with little images tucked in between the roots. It is believed that spirits reside in these trees. The images are there to remind us of them.

Banyan Tree

At temples and in parks, you also often see colorful strips of cloth wrapped around banyan trees; supposedly this is to keep the spirits in the tree.

Below is a picture of our guide talking with Kathleen about something. I’ve mentioned him so often, I thought you should see him.

Moving on through the park, we circled around this beautiful pond, which serves as a kind of reservoir, collecting rainwater for the town.

Toward the final one-third of the tour, the images and monuments began to blur together, but I want to show you a few last pictures.  Here is a famous Walking Buddha image from the park.

 The next two pictures show a Buddha image that was used at one time to hide relics and other valuable objects to keep them safe from marauding Burmese or other enemies. In the picture on the right, you can see very clearly where surgery was performed on the statue’s belly to remove the objects.

With surgery scar

The next picture is a statue of King Ram Kham Haeng, the most famous of the Sukothai kings. He is much revered as a strong king politically and as a scholar who created the Thai alphabet. Sorry the picture is so dark – the sun was going down.

Finally, this picture of the palace, taken as the light was fading fast. We chose to end our tour here, rather than trying to squint at inscriptions and images in the dusk.

Sukothai is widely regarded as the beginning of Thai art and architecture, distinct from Khmer and other influences. To understand it all better, I plan to go back in time, to a historic site in Cambodia, and forward, to the historic ruins of Ayutthaya in Thailand. Ayutthaya was an important kingdom that partly overlapped with and then succeeded Sukothai as the center of power for a time.  – Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these pictures.

Sukothai Countryside by Bike

The Sukothai Countryside by Bike

Thailand had a four-day weekend recently: because the Queen’s birthday / Mother’s Day (August 12) fell on a Tuesday, the Monday was declared a public holiday as well – a step toward encouraging tourism, which has been flagging. I spent the weekend in Sukothai, a north-central province. The city of Sukothai was the center of an early Thai kingdom (mid-13^th – mid-16^th C). The ruins of the old kingdom have been designated a UNESCO historic heritage site, beautifully maintained as a historic park. A fellow PCV, Kathleen, and I agreed that the best way to visit the ruins was by bike, and booked a tour online. However, there was a communication malfunction  -- the other two people in the group had requested a tour through the countryside. Since they were leaving the next day and we were staying for two more days, we opted to go with their plan – the guide could obviously do only one tour at a time. It turned out to be a super all-day tour.

We set out through villages, along the canal.The guide, who is excellent and speaks very good English (learned, he said, from watching American movies), explained that the canals were the primary means of transporting people and goods to and from the old kingdom. Our first stop was a furniture-making cooperative -- a loose organization, open to any craftsman or –woman who needs space to work and a means for sharing the expenses of the buildings (work space, storage space, show room), permissions to sell or to use specific woods (e.g., teak), and other costs. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

Woman working on a cabinet

Wood curing

Showroom

Continuing the tour through rice fields, we stopped to hear about the storks that eat the snails infesting the fields. Our guide said the storks had been imported to the area, though it wasn’t clear whether from somewhere else in Thailand or from another country. Here is a picture of a rice field with mountains on the horizon. I think the white specks in the distance (on the right) are storks – but I guess you know what storks look like anyway. Every time I tried to take a picture of storks that were closer by, they flew away disdainfully. Hmph.

 Our next stop was a family-owned and operated business that makes rice wine and schnapps (called lao in Thai). The smell of the mash cooking was quite, um, pungent. We each got a small glass of the wine to sample (mild-tasting with no discernible intoxicating effect), and a sip of the lao (burned the tongue as you would expect). Here are a few pictures:

Sipping and listening

Cooking the mash

Some of the pigs who eat the dregs from the process

The operation is very efficient, since the family makes only what they know they can sell and nothing is wasted. They sell their products only locally. Any aspects of the business that might perhaps be questionable are overlooked by the customers.

At some point we stopped for snacks, which the guide had brought with him – fried banana chips, mangosteen and other fruit, kanom (that all-purpose word for any sweet or salty snack food you don’t know the name of). We asked the guide what the people in the area think about the government and the plan fur returning the country to civilian rule. He almost started to talk about his opinions, then thought better of it. Not surprising.

Next we visited a family that smokes catfish for sale in Bangkok and other large cities. They don’t catch the fish themselves, but receive deliveries from their suppliers a couple of times a week. In the pictures below you can see one of the women tending a fire (picture on the left). Embers from the fire will be used to start smoky fires under the rows of fish on the table in the picture to the right.  It is hot, difficult work, but it seems that the finished product is much in demand and brings a good enough price to sustain the business.

Getting the fire going

Catfish waiting for smoke

After cycling a few more kilometers, we stopped for a great Thai lunch at a restaurant run by a friend of our guide. He ordered about 8 different dishes for us to try, half of them vegetarian. The variety was much appreciated by the others in our group, a young couple from Belgium, who had not been to Thailand before.

Riding further, we passed a temple where we stopped to listen to the story of this pig.

 The story is, she was in a truck with other pigs being driven to the slaughterhouse. Somehow she managed to jump out of the truck and run to the nearby wat. When the monks found out where she had come from, they bought her because, they believed, the fact that she had escaped the slaughterhouse meant she has good karma. She has now lived at the wat for several years, relaxing in this puddle or other comfortable wallows, depending on the season. No picture of the wat, sorry.

The continuation of our bike ride included a visit to a temple founded by one of the royal princesses and a stop to chat with villagers catching fish. I have no interesting photos from either of those. However, here is a photo of farmers harvesting rice.

 You can see that the field is very muddy, but the combining takes place anyway. The men standing in the field are catching rats tossed by the combine or scared into jumping out of the stalks. Our guide said the men and their families would have the rats for dinner that evening – probably true; it’s well known that rats and field mice are eaten by rural families in the northern and northeastern provinces of Thailand. The guide assured us that these rats are quite wholesome because they eat only rice and other natural ingredients in the rice field. I suppose that rats with a diet of fresh foods (rather than rotten garbage, like city rats) might not taste much different from other wild game, such as squirrels. But let’s not pursue that line of thought any further.

At the end of the ride, we stopped to visit a couple who make baskets, fish traps, and frog traps out of bamboo – again, friends of the guide.

Our guide said we had biked about 50 km in all – not far when you have all day to do it and many stops for learning about small businesses in the area. Kathleen and I were actually glad the young couple had requested the tour of the countryside, because on our own, we would probably have overlooked it. And anyway, our guide gave us a short version of the historic parks tour the next day – see separate post for pictures.

Nang Yai Shadow Theatre

Nang Yai Shadow Theatre

Wat Khanon, Ratchaburi

Nang Yai is a form of traditional Thai puppet theatre dating back to medieval times, when it was an entertainment for royalty. The plays depict episodes from the Ramakien, Thailand’s national epic, with a plethora of gods, humans, and other characters of an intermediate status, such as Hanuman the Monkey King. In Thai mask theatre, Hanuman is always depicted with a white face, since he’s one of the good guys. There is also a black monkey who symbolizes evil. The color-coding helps you keep track of who is doing what to whom on the stage.

Today, the art of Nang Yai is preserved at only a few sites in Thailand, most notably at Wat Khanon, a temple complex in Ratchaburi Province. Wat Khanon offers Nang Yai performances at 10 a.m. every Saturday and maintains a museum to preserve and display original shadow puppets. The puppets used in the performances are replicas; the project of replicating the originals was funded by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. A few weeks ago, a fellow PCV and I attended a performance at Wat Khanon. 

The word nang yai literally means “big hide” – the elaborate figures used in the play are incised into cowhide, painted, and attached to a frame for carrying them during the performance. Here are a couple of photos taken in the museum, where you can get up close enough to see details.

As you can see, the figures don’t have moving parts. They are held and moved by dancers who act out the story recited by a narrator and accompanied by music.

The performances are free. My PCV friend and I sat close to the front of the auditorium, surrounded by schoolboys who had arrived in two large buses. I had a hard time keeping the taller boys' heads out of my photos during the performance. The students had no doubt been briefed by their teachers about what they would see. We, alas, had not -- so I can only show you some of what I saw, but can't interpret it for you. Here is a brief video of the musicians playing before the performance began.

 Sorry the video ends so abruptly – the music is quite repetitive though, so maybe this brief snippet gives you an idea.

As you can see in the videos below, the performers are all men and boys. In the first one, you hear the narrator speaking – his voice was so strong and his speech so clear that I could almost follow what he said – but sadly, not quite. For example, you can hear him say “keng kan” (=competition) but who was challenging whom wasn’t clear to me.

 In the next video, you see the performers assembling for some kind of crowd scene, accompanied only by the music this time.

In the next video, you see that one of the performers is behind the curtain, rather than in front. I'm nor sure what the significance is as far as the dramatic action is concerned.

I have quite a few more videos of this performance but, not knowing the story, don't feel comfortable posting them. I need to learn more about Nang Yai before writing more about it. I've read that the Ramakien epic was derived from the Hindu Ramayana, and that the shadow puppet theatre form was adapted from an Indonesian model. But I don't know what is considered to be the essential "Thainess" of either the Thai epic or the Thai shadow theatre, let alone how to interpret the performance we saw.  Stay tuned. Meanwhile, here’s a link to a website with some historical information if you are interested.

http://www.thaiwaysmagazine.com/thai_article/2410_nang_yai/nang_yai.html