Too Many Temples? No, Too Few!

        

Wat Umong, photo by D.R.R.

            One of the biggest reasons I wanted to go to Chiang Mai was that I knew it had lots of cool temples. Even though I’m not religious, when I went to Japan, I loved visiting temples because they were beautiful and serene. They represented a way of thinking and a way of life. In Bangkok I found that the temples were equally important or maybe even more so. In Bangkok we noticed that people came to temples such as Wat Pho and the Grand Palace with the full intention of spending a whole day at the temple site. The temples were places for people to get together and relax as well as to meditate and pray. 

            Thus when we reached Chiang Mai, I had a full plan for which temples I wanted to see. Of course this was not as easy as it sounded. We arrived at the first temple, which was supposed to be Wat Chedi Luang—or did we? We saw red columns. We saw doors with big figures in gold. There was a Buddha in the earth position. On the right were cabinets with religious urns. But something seemed wrong. We asked a school girl, but she laughed and said this was the temple we were supposedly looking for. So we took a few pictures and then we kept walking. 

Wat Phra Si Luang, photo by D.R.R.

            We got to Wat Phra Si Luang, one of the main temples. The red-carpeted structure had a Big Buddha inside with ten or so little Buddhas below. The roof had red beams which contrasted with white columns.  There was a pretty, smaller temple to the left side, and a smaller Buddha flanked by two more Buddhas and gold lotus blossoms.  A man and his son unwrapped lotus blossoms in big leaves to put in the pots before the altar.  In the corner was a vacuum and a monk.  Even temples get dirty!

            Then I had to let my poor tired friends stop for lunch even though I hated wasting the time for something so mundane. But then we proceeded to Wat Hua Khuang, Wat Lam Chang, and Wat Chiang Man. Wat Chiang Man not only had elephant statues, but it had its own elephant temple! It was very cool.

            By the time we’d visited Wat Umong, a temple whose name we couldn’t discern, and Wat Phan On, I conceded we might be done for the day. We headed back towards our guest house, but when we stopped for postcards at the edge of Old Town, I found views of the real Wat Chedi Luang. That’s not where we’d been in the morning at all!

         

Wat Chiang Man, photo by D.R.R.

   While my hot, tired, and footsore friends returned to the guest house, I retraced my steps until I finally reached the elusive Wat Chedi Luang. Luckily, it was worth the extra effort.

            For my fictional version of Thailand, a novel called THAI TWIST, please see http://www.drransdellnovels.com. Indeed, the protagonists visit a couple of temples--but not all of them!

            When have you had the most trouble finding an iconic site? If the Eiffel Tower weren’t so high, I would probably have trouble finding it too!

My New Year's Day in Bangkok

Grand Palace Guards, Photo by D.R.R.

Before my friend and I traveled to Thailand, we’d already read about the famous sanuk, the fun-loving attitude of the Thai people. We’d heard that they liked to make jokes and have big get-together. Our own fun started when the cab driver who took us from the airport to the city insisted on treating his cab as a roller coaster! But where we really got a sense of this Thai spirit was on New Year’s Day in Bangkok.

We had decided to revisit the Grand Palace that day because we were sure we’d missed a lot of details during our first visit some time earlier. We also wanted another chance to glimpse at one of the most famous icons of The Grand Palace, the statue of the Emerald Buddha.

This Buddha carved out of jade was only two feet high, but he was culturally important because he’d come to Thailand in the late 1700s after residing in several other countries along the way. He even had different clothes to wear according to the weather: summer, winter, rainy season. He sat high up in the corner of a temple where a light shone on his case. Normally people would go into the temple, say a quick prayer, and then make way for other visitors.

Wat Phra Kaew (left), Photo by D.R.R.

The only problem was that my friend and I had made a grave miscalculation. We didn’t realize that Thai people celebrate Western New Year’s in addition to their own New Year’s, known as songkran, that would take place in April. It never occurred to us that many townspeople would have the day off or, even more importantly, that they would all be piling into The Grand Palace to see the Emerald Buddha.

Model of Angkor Wat, Photo by D.R.R.

The Grand Palace is actually a huge complex that houses museums, the royal palace (now used ceremoniously), pagodas, a library, and a variety of courtyards. (It’s actually easiest to understand the Emerald Buddha from a life-size replica that’s inside the museum. The museum also has copies of the wardrobe.) The complex is filled with fanciful architecture including three-story high giants who guard the entrance and a generous supply of elephant statues. It also has a model of Angkor Wat, the important Cambodian temple that was under Thai rule until the French colonization.

The key attraction of the whole complex, though, is the Wat Phra Kaew, which houses the Emerald Buddha. It was hard to work our way into the temple due to an unruly line that stretched out the door and across the front of the building. Although we only managed to spend a few seconds inside before being swept back out by other visitors, 

Grand Palace Festivities, Photo by D.R.R.

I loved the enthusiastic crowd that bustled around. The day was bright and spirits were high. By visiting the Emerald Buddha, the townspeople expected to ensure themselves of good luck for the next twelve months. My friend and I were caught up in the same enthusiasm. We couldn’t understand Thai, but we could easily understand the cheerfulness radiating from all the natives.

Indeed, it was the start of a wonderful year.

Read more about Thailand in my novel THAI TWIST. The novel recounts the adventures of two sisters traveling through the country on a mission to deliver a small elephant statue to a long-lost relative. 

www.drransdellnovels.com 

How NOT to Get to Thailand’s Ayutthaya Historical Park

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Thailand was to visit all the archaeological ruins. The first set of important ruins, Ayutthaya, is situated a bare forty miles north of Bangkok. And according to my guidebook, it would be a short train ride to get there.

            However, I messed up on something crucial: getting to the train station. My first terrible mistake was agreeing with my friend, who thought it would be fun and easy to travel to the train station via the canal. In theory this should have been simple. We were staying near the Grand Palace. There was a canal stop only a short walk from our hotel.

Ayutthaya. Photo by D.R. Ransdell

            What we weren’t prepared for was the utter confusion at the water landing. People were scurrying to get into one line or the other, and there were several different express boats that stopped at the same place.

            But I was armed. I’d worked on Thai for over a month, so I bravely asked for the right boat to get to the train station.

            The first lady I asked looked at me as if I were completely crazy. The second lady looked away when I reached my second badly pronounced word. My third victim, a male teen, pointed to the boat that was just pulling away.

            My friend and I waited on the banks. Another line had already started forming. After a brief wait we were able to make our way onto the boat. But then came another surprise. The boats go SO FAST (after all, they’re express boats!) that the drivers have to put up plastic flaps so that people don’t get completely soaked with canal river water. This was bad for us because it also meant that we couldn’t see where we were.

Ayutthaya, Wat Mahathat  Photo by D.R. Ransdell

            We sped to the first stop, where our speed mobile paused for about ten seconds as people scrambled on and off. Then we were zipping through the canal again. Neither my friend nor I had caught the name of the canal stop, but we didn’t have a chance to communicate with one another. Instead we were thrown back into our seats as the driver gunned the engine.

            We reached the second canal stop and had no better idea where we were. Again our vehicle paused briefly before speeding away. But then I got a clue. I saw tall buildings through the cracks of the makeshift plastic awning. We were in the business district. We were in the heart of modern Bangkok.

            We were miles from the train station. At the next stop, we scrambled out.

            Smarter travelers would have found a cab and gotten to the train station the “easy way,” but now that we’d reached a modern section, we couldn’t find any cabs. It was only after a big fight that we even figured out where we were on the map.

Wat Rachaburana, Ayutthaya. Photo by D. R. Ransdell

            We were way off course. My friend had insisted on an early start, and I had begrudgingly complied only to lose everything by getting us so far of course that we had to find a bus to get back in the right direction of the train station, and after that we had to cover another few blocks on foot. By the time we got to the station, we found we’d just missed one connection and had to wait for the next.

            I was seething at my own incompetence, but my friend calmly took a seat at the train station after finding an English-language newspaper. By the time we finally caught a train, it was nearly noon.

            By then I’d made a pact with myself. No more attempts to speak Thai. We just didn’t have the time!
            Train stations aren't usually so hard to find--or are they? What's your own worst experience of trying to reach a train station?

For a fictional account of a trip to Ayutthaya, please see www.drransdellnovels.com/thai-twist.html