Sight-seeing and Shopping 1

Sight-Seeing and Shopping 1
North to Chiang Rai

In mid-October I spent several days traveling with my school principal and eight fellow-teachers. With our driver, a principal from another school, that made ten of us in a rented mini-van. Our destination was supposedly Chiang Mai, a city I looked forward to seeing again. However, in the by now familiar Thai way, we spent very little time there, instead visiting several places farther north, in Chiang Rai province. It was a good trip.

The first day, we, that is, the driver drove through the night, stopping at some point when he got too tired. We dozed in the car until dawn, freshened up as best we could, and arrived shortly after 7am at Wat Phra That Doi Pui, high up on a mountain. While we were walking three times around the pagoda before lighting candles and joss sticks, I remarked:  “This looks a lot like Doi Suthep.” Nobody made any reply – maybe they were concentrating on the walk. Anyway, the explanation for the “similarities” is simple: The temple looked like Wat Doi Suthep because it’s the same one (duh). Doi Suthep and Doi Pui are twin mountain peaks (doi = peak), about 15 km west of Chiang Mai. During my first visit there a year ago, I had walked up 300 steps, arriving at the temple level from the Doi Suthep side at midday. This year, we rode up in a cable car on the Doi Pui  side early in the morning, before many tourists were there. So it took me a while to figure things out. Anyway, here are a few pictures – if you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen some of them already.

 The photo on the left shows people walking around the pagoda. On the right, me and some of my colleagues in front of the pagoda. The woman in the middle is our school principal.

The next pictures show a few of the many figures and altars around the pagoda. The reclining Buddha, below, is not very famous, but striking because, if you zoom in, you can see that he looks as if he's been wrapped, like a mummy. (Don't quote me on this.) I liked the little seated one on the right because of the green shield-type-thing behind his head -- very striking.

 

 

 

The guard standing in front of another reclining Buddha (above left) I liked because of his patient expression and double-fish belt.  Next to him on the right, you see me and my co-teacher Bussara in front of an ornate altar. I liked the Buddha figure in the center, above, for his bronze color and black hair. These are just a few of the images that crowd the temple area.

At temples and palaces, I'm always fascinated by the monsters and demons that guard the place. Below are a team of what look to me like dogs, but I'm told they are "singh" -- lions. Of course, lions didn't live in Asia, so artists used their imagination. The other little demon below has the Thai word "mom" on its pillar -- be assured that this is not the English word "mom;" but simply this particular demon's name. You see him often in paintings as well as sculptures.

 

 After leaving the temple we took a song teo up the mountain to what is billed as Hill Tribe Museum Village – lots of vendors selling handmade textiles, clothing, handbags, jewelry, knick-knacks, . . . you can imagine. We shopped our way farther up the mountain to reach the the Museum Village, which is actually more like a park, very beautifully landscaped with a few houses around – an ideal photo-op location. We rented Hmong traditional clothes for 50 Baht each. The first picture below shoes my fellow-teachers Ampai and Thanchanok modeling the clothes.

Above are some of my colleagues with Hmong children, whose job it clearly is to hang around and offer to pose with tourists. And there I am below, looking and feeling a bit sheepish in my rented finery.

Our next stop was several hours farther north, Wat Rong Khun in Chiang Rai.  It is usually called The White Temple. Designed in 1997, it is more or less the life work of the artist/architect Chalermchai Kositpipat. Some of the buildings were closed to visitors when we were there because of damage sustained during an earthquake in May 2014; repairs are already underway. The image below was my first glimpse of the temple -- this demon starting spewing water just as we crossed the street.

 

 Above left you see crowded figures in the moat, and to the right, the temple reflected in the pond.  The photo doesn't do justice to how the temple sparkles int he sun, because of the zillions of tiny mirrors embedded in the construction material.

Below is one of several trees festooned with skulls. An image of the artists stands at the entrance to the site to greet people.

In publicity about the White Temple, much is made of the fact that images from contemporary popular culture are integrated into the design (“A Buddhist Temple Inspired by Sci-Fi Movies” shouts one web site). To me, however, it seems all of a piece with the Candle Festival images, described in a post a few months ago. Like the candle carvings, the temple teems with figures – human, animal, mythical, imaginary – all engaged in some great effort or other.

Our last stop of the day was a tea-growing plantation and nearby park with a comically immense gold dragon standing alone in the middle.

To be continued.