Wat Workout a.k.a. I can barely climb the stairs to bed

I woke excited to take my little day trip out of town. I tried to plan for everything: compass (would be good to learn how to really use that thing....), two kinds of flashlights, two whistles, lighters, cigarettes, a map, another map, and one more map, (all consulted multiple times), a sarong (sleeping/cold/towel), bikini (waterfall or hotsprings hopefully), phone with small 7-11 charge up (call Boy - that's his name people! if the cops try to pull another fast one), 1500 baht (budget, budget), long sleeve jacket, orange scarf, mp3 player, tennis shoes, rain coat, dry bag, mozzy spray, mozzy stick, tiger balm (for the mozzies that get through!), SPF, and a water bottle. Now that's a monk kit. Almost forgot, a bag of salted, roasted broadbeans too.

I got onto the minivan, filled her up, and headed out on the same highway I took to Burma, 118, northeast out of Chiang Mai. Gorgeous morning, the ricefields stretched out in both directions, dotted with surprising developments of suburb housing. Thailand was up and working this morning, the sun reflecting off of the flooded paddies with the occasional lone worker heaving a spade to redirect water, or a bent figure in straw hat plunging small bundles of green shoots deep into the mud.

The highway is broad here, four generous lanes of a variety of traffic. The air-con minibus with its typical overly agressive driving style cutting a generic and silver line as it dominates with speed and overtaking. The occasional work truck - semi trucks here are beautifully painted, every one, with a rainbow of colors and winding floral patterns. There's the motorcycle with a food cart attached to it, sausages waving in the wind, strung up beside fish balls, the driver usually the most covered with head scarf that has only an opening for the eyes and usually a small passenger or two holding on and starting at me passing with huge eyes. I passed numerous red truck taxis, the most remarkable one nearest the university and loaded with six (counted twice!) men holding onto the back alone. I noted the excessively low riding back tires as I zipped by.

It was easy to spot my first stop - Wat Saket was respendent on the hill with it's towering silver and gold chedi and the mammoth Wat sitting high in the morning sun. I parked at the foot of the many naga steps (the ones with dragon looking snakes) to the summit, and stopped to sit in the shade, enjoy a smoke, put my jacket away, and put Byron Katie's A Thousand Names for Joy in my mp3 player. With BK in my ear, I took the stairs as an impatient meditator might, slowly, but still breathing heavily at the top.

To the left of the stairs was a small, man-made cave filled with statues, so I caught up with my breathing checking that out and snapping some shots before I started to work my way around the Wat grounds. I took out the headphones and listened to birdsong, the occasional vistor's flat fist against a gong, the chatter of monks and Wat staff going about their day. There were only Thai visitors here. The devout with their cameras and offerings. I took off my shoes and climbed marble steps up to a very large and imposing Wat with soaring ceilings and what I came for - huge murals. There are 12 (a number holy beyond religions apparently as its shared by all) in total and I'll include a posting just to describe each and show it off.

I spent over an hour, first moving through the Wat and taking photos in order - the first to the twelth, then I went through again with the camera down and meditated on each image, each message. The painting were as good as I'd hoped, very much the same style as nondualist artists, modern psychadelic artists, and more directly, Alex Gray. Energy fields, the single focus of light, the patterned globes of light expressing energy, and incredible depictions of the human condition. Out of them all, two were directly not from my cultural experience/reference. One was the monk who used his robes to mask a dark spirit, dark arts. The other was the donate to the Wat to be a good Thai Buddhist mural. These two murals, however, were highly beautiful and spoke to finding the path as much as the others. In fact, had I not read the description of the mural from my guidebook, I think my interpretation would be very different indeed and definitely based on my cultural background.

I don't know how long I stayed. I know that I sat, I walked, I stood mouth open and eyes up, and that time passed, people came and went, monks did their daily routines, the sun reached it zenith and I finally stepped out. I was alone, no Thai, and definitely no farang. I walked on the marble barefoot, dodging the many bees and listening to their humming through the surrounding trees, and walked up to the monolith chedi. It had a door. Did I dare? Well, after a glance around to ensure I was alone, and I was inside and peering up, snapping photos, and seeing the usual candles, incense, donation boxes and what's this? Up on the wall were photographs, about 6, and what they were of requires a lot of explination. I took photos of these photos. Should you care to speculate on what this is, please email me at wex.rebecca@gmail.com or post on my facebook wall, or even comment here - please let me know, this begs discussion!

Wat is going on???

Wat?

I'd made it around the corner, documented more of these pictures on the wall, and snapped a quick shot of a 5 baht Buddha wheel of dharma fortune teller machine and I fled, feeling like I was somewhere I genuinely had no knowledge of and therefore no way of know how my presence or picture-taking would be received. I passed two very devout, elderly Thai women and promptly slipped on one of the marble steps and took a nice big step that stablized me. Graceful.

I passed through the gates at the top of the stairs and sat to rearrange my belongings. That's when I noticed my key were missing. For those of you who have been reading this blog, are probably doing exactly what I did - REBECCA!!! Not AGAIN!!!

2 heart-pounding minutes later and I'd confirmed that my keys were no longer in my possession. I raced down the stairs, relieved when I spotted my bike still there through the trees, and got to the bottom, walked to where I had my pre-Wat cigarette and there they were. The keys laid there as I'd left them hours ago. I looked up and met the eyes of a Thai women hanging out at that very spot with her grandson. He walked over and in the most 3-year-old authoritative voice began to tell me the folly of leaving my keys there. His grandmother told him I didn't know what he was say, taking the tyke up on her lap and pointing at me as she said it, a nice smile on her face. He ignored the lecture and came back over, getting that sudden shy that kids do and continued to talk to me while looking at the wall. I thanked him for his sage counsel got on my bike, got turned around and started away when I remembered to stop, wai grandmother and say thank you. She had all of the world's wisdom in her face as she smiled back and gave me a little wai too.

Note to readers: Now this is the point where all of the items that have left my current possession while traveling in Thailand were again catalogued and I was infinitely grateful to the Thai people who left those keys there, who found my iPod and returned it to me, and generally have lived and let lived with a smile.

Naga eating flowers. awwwwww..... cute widdle toothy naga

The beginning

The middle

The top

Faux Cave

Faux Cave Interior

Purty

Purty2

grave? wheels? monk?

imposing

Wat circling

Chedi and Wat

Chedi

Little Door to secrets

Secrets semi-revealed

chedi interior

I had a stern talking to myself as I continued up highway 118 about keys and it wasn't long before I pulled off of the curvy upward-climbing road to head toward the Doi Saket hotsprings. The road was two small lanes here, steep and curvy in parts as it climbed high into the hills. The hotsprings were a series of man-made pools, some small falls of hot sulfured water, and signs everywhere with conflicting messages (as some were broken and some were in Thai) about hands and feet. When I finally decided that meant I could only put in my hands and feet and approached a pool, a little sign in English was there and very clear that no hands and no feet were allowed. I was confused, gave up, and got back on my bike.

The drive through these small valleys in the hills was a never ending poetic reading of Thai life of fields, terraces, people working, people eating together, people napping, soi dogs with ears in my lane as they slept, and all around was sporatic bursts of jungle. There were several homestays advertised, one boasting vipasanas as well. I drove slowly and drank it in, much as I did for my known life from the back seat of whatever car my father was driving at the time. He was fond of taking "drives" and we would get in the car for an undetermined amount of time, to whatever soundtrack we mutually decided on, talking, quiet, watching the scenery go by as the sun sank low in the sky. We would spend hours on these ventures, sometimes with an ice cream store as the end goal, or just to get out and see things and spend time together. I don't think I've ever mentioned it to my parents, but this reminds me of the early days of the car, where the drive was joy itself, not necessarily the destination, but the ability to go and see in a very American Frontier-esque sort of way.

For me, today, it was as simple and beautiful as that in a stunning small-town South East Asia landscape. It was the journey and the destination at the same time.

I did have one more destination in mind, however, and I bypassed the second hot springs, not wanting that long, sun-filled driving meditation to have to change into dealing with the loads of people I saw in that direction. I did stop for the Mae So Cave. My research into this destination said that it was incredible limestone cliffs that were the best climbing in northern Thailand and a cave in the heart of those cliffs was turned into a religious space. I pulled off at the top of a very steep hill and arranged my things and started towards a very steep naga staircase with a few vendors selling chicken and drinks as I went by. One woman seemed very insistant though.

It wasn't until I'd climbed all of the stairs and arrived at the mouth of the cave, soaking my clothes with sweat and gasping in a very unBuddhist way and I was asked for a ticket, did I get it. Here's my tip: if a woman is chasing you and saying in remarkably good English "chicken, chicken" what she's really saying is "ticket, buy a ticket!". The man at the top gave me a look best classified as "omg, you farang" and took my money and waved me in with very little patience. Of course the Thai people had thought of everything, took good care of their places, provided good refreshments, and had a ticketing system in place. This was not the wild south east.

I tasted foot as I descended through a remarkably narrow, steep, and uneven staircase to huge caverns. Unlike the caves I've seen in the Northwest, this cave was all smooth, beautiful arches and cavernous spaces. I thought I was at the bottom when I found there was so much, much more to see and I squeezed through a space small for Thai and discovered multiple landings, reclining Buddhas, and more and more. I stopped at a landing mid-way to the bottom and took some photos. At this point I decided I'd seen enough. I followed a Thai woman in mini skirt holding her toy poodle mix back up the stairs, out of the cave, and down a very long staircase. At the bottom, I found the ticket sales man, paid him (and I thought the last guy gave me an evil look!), waiied his very lovely elderly wife who was kind enough to wai back and forgive me for being ignorant (this is the woman who chased me down, by the way).

I was a sweating mess after all of these Wat climbs and embarrassment. When a woman opened her cooler, pulled out a tiny coconut and hacked it open for me, I paid whatever baht she wanted. I sat on a bench beside her and sucked out all of the coconut goodness from the straw while she laughed good natured at my efforts to cool down. We share a few smiles and I was on the road again.

The rest of the journey was a descent into the large valley of Chiang Mai, past baffling new construction of high end condos whose billboards made me wish for Superman's red lazer eyes to raze the whole thing down. No improvement is needed to this place. It's perfect as it is. But this is coming from the woman turning down chicken tickets and leaving her keys beside her motorbike for hours. It's obvious I don't know what's best for anyone! What is turning out to be what's best for me was coming the long way through town, dodging the flower festival still raging in half of Chiang Mai, trying to avoid the Sunday walking market taking up the other half, and finally getting a hot shower, handmade pasta from the Italian restaurant around the corner, and an ice cold Singha.

Mae So