Chiang Mai Part 1: Temples

 After 4 months in Thailand I finally left Phuket to explore another part of country. For Christmas break I flew up north to Chiang Mai, trading in beaches for mountains. I was thrilled to get off the plane and suddenly be somewhere new and different. Phuket is great but with a full time job and a 6:30pm sunset I don’t get out exploring much and was starting to feel stagnant, boring, and bored. The week long trip to Chiang Mai helped put my mind at ease again and rejuvenated my wilting sense of adventure.

I had decided not to plan anything for the trip, traveling without a guide book worked so well for Tonsai I figured why not try it again? During my last few trips guide books have started making me feel trapped or coerced into doing all the ‘coolest’ things at the sacrifice of letting me discover my own favorite places or exploring on my own time frame. I think most of this sudden distaste for guides comes from being a resident instead of a tourist, even in distant regions (24 hrs by bus), I still know that I can and will visit most of these places again, so I am in no rush to see and do everything exciting all in one week. I was also going on vacation with the ulterior motive of testing the northern region to see if I would enjoy living there more permanently, so I was trying to stay out of the super touristy areas.

Planning each day as it unwound, I had a spectacular time living from moment to moment, lingering indefinitely at places I liked, leaving quickly when I didn’t. Exploring in this lackadaisical style, going with the flow of each day, every day of the trip was so different from any other that I’m going to try to break them down into different blogs over the next few weeks.

 Day 1: temples. After only few hours of sleep I jumped out of my bed in a shared dorm room, excited to explore the new city.  After wondering about how best to start my adventure, I decided to familiarize myself with the city by taking a much needed respite from motorbikes and wandering the city on foot. While this was fantastic for 4-5 hours, because Chiang Mai is more conservative than Phuket and bare shoulders and shorts are not allowed inside temples, I was burning up wearing jeans and a jacket in 90 °F heat and exhausted by the end of the day.

  There are over 300 temples in CM, making them more profuse than McDonalds and Starbucks combined in the entire state of Indiana. I had heard about two especially noteworthy temples and my goal was to eventually wander to them, but without a map. Every temple had something new to see, whether it be deeply engraved gold doors depicting ancient stories, various famous Buddha images, fountains, or giant glimmering dragons guarding the entrances. However, even though each was unique, after 5 hours all the incredible statues and ornamentation that had awed me initially became blurred together with all of the other statues and reliefs of other temples. The day is a blur of gold decorations, stained glass dragons, giant Buddha’s, and monks swathed in orange.

There are two exceptions to this blur, even 2 weeks after returning home Wat Chedi Lueang and Wat Pra That  Doi Suthep still remain clear in my memory. Wat Chedi Lueang consists of many temples (Wats) of varying size and importance. While the main temple was similar to many of the other temples I had visited that day, there was also a magnificent and crumbling ancient Lanna style temple towering over it. Not having looked anything up in a guide book I had no idea what the structure was at the time. But I spent 2 hours wandering around it, utterly fascinated and awestruck.

                   (Wat Chedi Lueang)                                     (Wat Pra That  Doi Suthep )

The building is made of brick and appeared extremely old, the dome at the top has crumbled and only half remains, looking blackened as if it had survived a massive fire. There did not seem to be any easy way to get inside and what I initially perceived to be 4 entrances, one in each cardinal direction, turned out to be hollowed out shrines housing Buddha images. Each statue is ~50ft up the structure and leading to each is a long, very steep paved ‘sidewalk’ that would be absolutely terrifying to walk down.  Guarding the base of each were 2 six headed dragons that appeared to be slightly newer than the rest of the building. On the southern wall there were 6 beautifully carved elephants high on the rampart. One had lost it trunk and ears and had been worn smooth by time. While this was confusing at the time, later I looked it up and found that the temple had been built in the 14^th century but was partially restored in the 1990’s when it became a UNESCO world heritage site. The dome had not been restored because no one knew what the original looked like and one elephant was left untouched for reasons I don’t know.  The structure was incredible though and seemed to have a personality and aged grace that demanded reverence, even without knowing its remarkable history.

                              

The second truly remarkable temple was Wat Pra That  Doi Suthep, a temple at the peak of a mountain. In order to get to the temple each visitor must climb a 309 step staircase with magnificent stained glass studded dragons following the entire stair case.  Small children from the nearby Hmong villages are brought there daily in full black velvet clothing, intricately beaded hats and shoes, and heavy makeup. Most of the children were girls under the age of 5 and looked absolutely miserable, chided and told to stay still and smile at the tourists so that they will get money. Those little girls had some of the saddest smiles I have ever seen.  They would often get distracted from their ‘job’ and would crawl around comfortable on all fours, showing just how young they were.

                                                                                                   

(Hmong village children)

The stairs give way to a beautiful panoramic view of Chiang Mai and the most gold I have ever seen or will ever see in my life. Absolutely everything in the outdoor Wat was covered in gold and shone brilliantly in the sun, to the extent that I had to keep my sunglasses on throughout my visit. It was very crowded and between the crush of people, intense heat, burning incense, and the shining gold surfaces I was in a sensory overload and had to keep ducking off into shaded corners to escape the crowds and to view the temple from a quieter, more stationary position.

 My favorite part of the temple, outside the fact that it was like being in King Midas’s palace, was a large trough of oil with 7 lamps, one for each day of the week. Similar to Ghana, the day you were born is very important in the Buddhist tradition. Luckily, thanks to Ghanaian culture I already knew that I was born on a Monday so I knew which Buddha position I should light a lamp for (or keep alight).  In this temple people took turns ladling oil into shallow lamps to keep the flames burning ceaselessly. It was a pleasant and peaceful tradition and one of the few I felt comfortable doing. Most of the time I feel like an idiot or a fraud when I participate in any Buddhist ritual, no matter how minor, unless I am with one of my Thai friends and they explain what to do and why . Even though I enjoy watching most rituals and would probably enjoy doing them, I am very uncomfortable mimicking religious rituals with no idea what their purpose or importance to the religion is.

 The other very memorable part of the temple was its long exit, rimmed with bells of varying sizes and voices. As you exit the Wat you can ring all of the 100 bells that are strung out in rows 2 bells high. I was impressed with how many people went through the effort of crouching to reach the low bells and make every one chime until I started doing it. It is highly addictive and I was laughing as I rang the bells, waiting patiently as little kids ran past me, darting their tiny hands into the bells as they raced to chime them all as fast as possible.