Yesterday I took a whirlwind tour
of northern Thailand, which consisted of about 8 hours of bouncing around in
the rear seat of a van that was in serious need of a new suspension system—struts
or shock absorbers or something—and about 4 hours of being whisked around the
several sites we visited. I won’t do
this again. Today, my back is an aching
reminder. Time for a Thai massage!
Anyway, the highlight of the tour
was The White Temple. Yes, sorry, one
more temple, but this one was very atypical of what I’ve seen so far. It’s a very comtemporary temple, the
construction of which began in 1996 and is ongoing.
The temple is the project of this
visual artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, and this visual image of him greets you at the entrance.
The temple grounds are chock full
of sculpture and visual imagery depicting Buddhist teachings about the need to
let go of human passions and desires in order to reach nirvana.
The pools in front of the temple
are full of these colorful fish.
The temple itself and the
surrounding grounds are beautiful.
This is the most glamorous
outhouse I’ve ever seen.
A warning message about one of the evils in the world than needs to be resisted.
There are lots of images of demons
and skeletons everywhere, and this ocean of hands reaching up from hell is
eerie.
We weren’t allowed to take photos
inside, so I borrowed a few photos to show you some of what I saw. The murals inside were a unique blending of
classic Buddhist and contemporary images.
You wouldn’t expect to see images
the collapse of the Twin Towers, Michael Jackson, rocket ships or cartoon
characters like Spiderman and Superman in a Buddhist temple.
In one eye of the demon face on this
wall is an image of Osama BinLaden and in the other eye an image of George
Bush.
In the “altar area” of the temple
was the classic giant Buddha. There was
also a very realistic figure of a monk sitting in the lotus position in front
of the Buddha facing the door. It was so
realistic that it took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t a real person.
This mixture of classic and contemporary imagery is very
controversial in Thailand. But the artist
is very committed to completing his project and has made provisions for the
work to continue after his death. There’s
an art museum on site, filled with his work.
I was disappointed with how
little time we were allowed to explore this very unusual temple. I had to borrow a number of photos to capture
the highlights of the story of this temple, and I had to almost run through the museum to catch a
glimpse of the artist’s paintings.
Our next stop was the Golden
Triangle—the point where the Ruak River flows into the MeKong, forming a
natural boundary between three countries—Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Laos.
Thailand is in the foreground, the triangle
of land is Myanmar, and across the river is Laos.
This, as many of you probably
know, is where a great deal of drug trafficking occurred, as well as trading in
other black market commodities, like precious gems and gold. There is still drug activity here, evidenced
by the number of police checkpoints we passed as we traveled into and out of
this area of northern Thailand.
Here we took a ride up and
down the Mekong River on a boat
like this one.
This is a casino on the Laos side
of the river, aptly named, for those of you who love gambling (and you know who
you are), Paradise.
The surrounding mountainous landscape
was really beautiful.
And we have Buddha on a boat.
We crossed the river and debarked
in Laos to roam around a market there.
Southeast Asian wares are very
colorful.
And I never saw so many purses in
one place. There were probably 20 or so
vendors with this many purses on display.
Most unusual were the bottles of whiskey. Laotians put all kinds of
reptiles in whiskey, believing that it gives them benefits like long life, virility,
power, etc., depending on the reptile.
This whiskey shared its glass
tank with a giant cobra.
A turtle in this one….other tanks
had a gecko, an armadillo, and one had the penis of a tiger (guess we
know what the imbiber of that one was after). Beats a worm in a bottle of tequila, I'd say.
There were bottles of it for sale
at several vendor sites. The choices here were various types of snakes.
On we go (I warned you that this was a
LONG day). The next stop was for lunch—very average,
but a chance to taste food representative of the Golden Triangle
countries. Then we went on to Mae Sai,
which is the northernmost point in Thailand.
It was another shopping stop, and
I ordinarily don’t like these, but I actually bought something here.
My closest friends know I’m a
sucker for rings. Here’s my latest
addition. It's a dragon, which is a symbol for good luck here in Thailand. I was told these are rubies, but for $25, I kinda doubt it.
Our last stop was the village of
the Ahka hill tribe, the most downtrodden and impoverished of the hill tribes
of northern Thailand. This tribe came to
Thailand from Burma in the early 20th century to escape
persecution.
The entrance to their village is
marked by this wood portal with the wooden statue of a woman on one side...
And a man on the other side…their
nakedness is somehow symbolic of fertility.
This village elder greeted us and
wanted to sell us bracelets.
Another woman was selling these
very colorful puppets.
And this elderly man was dressed
in traditional costume, offering his photo for money.
One of the other highlights of the
day was meeting an Italian in Thailand!
This is Fabio next to our tour
guide May when she was explaining the reptiles in the whiskey (that's the armadillo). Fabio is from Verona and works in
Human Resources for the Barilla Company (the pasta people), so we had a lot to
talk about. He has been dating a Thai
woman who lives in Bangkok for almost three years and travels here three times
a year to spend time with her. He’s
trying to get her a visa for Italy, and I can appreciate his frustration with
how difficult it is to accomplish that! (I
suggested marriage, but I guess he’s not ready for that.) I got a lot of good information about his
area of northern Italy, as well as his business card and an invitation to call
on him when I’m in his neighborhood.
Meeting him almost makes up for my sore back!
No comments:
Post a Comment