Monks and Chiang Mai
We had a nice moment two mornings ago when we were forced to wake up at 5:15am to catch a 6am bus (and no, that in itself wasn’t the nice moment…). We walked outside the guest house onto the street in Mae Sot, bleary-eyed, and looked down the road to find about 10 Buddhist monks – most of them ‘novice’ monks, some as young as seven or so – walking up and down the street seeking alms, as is their custom. Several people were up to greet them at this hour, giving them alms and praying to them. I counted three different women who were waiting outside their houses with a pot full of freshly boiled rice to give to the monks.
Buddhism is such a peaceful, gentle religion that often brings a smile to your face – this was one of those times.
We somehow ended up missing the 6am bus for what it’s worth, even though we were at the appointed stop before 6am, but got another at about 7:40am and were in Chiang Mai by the afternoon. Chiang Mai is hard to figure out – it’s obviously a tourist mecca, with over 200 travel agencies offering hill tribe trekking trips, and seemingly ever other building in the old city being either a café, an internet café, a massage parlour or a guesthouse. There are tons of foreigners about – if you walk by a café aimed at Western travellers there are always customers there, no matter what the time of day. Yet we visited five different temples complexes within the city and hardly saw any tourists at any of them. What do the gap-year-faux-hippy schlock (sorry Lucy, but I love this phrase) do with themselves all day?
So the city as a whole is not necessarily impressive, but the temple complexes are all quite interesting. Each of the five we visited (except perhaps the last one) offered something new and different, so all were quite worthwhile and enjoyable. At one temple yesterday afternoon, we arrived just as about 25-30 monks were praying inside, which was a nice experience and gave me a chance to get some great photos. Plus, we found the Chiang Mai branch of May Kaidee’s vegetarian restaurant so we had two really lovely lunches the past two days.
Well, after a bit of a whirlwind tour of Thailand, tomorrow we’re taking a bus for six hours or so to Chiang Khong and then crossing the Mekong into Laos. We have 30-day visas and will hopefully stay in Laos for most, if not all, of this time before heading down to Cambodia and the Angkor temples.
More photos are up here, but I haven’t had time to tag/label the latest ones properly…
Tags: Asia, Chiang Mai, monks, Southeast Asia, temples, Thailand, Travel
Nick