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Published: November 20th 2009
Donald Duck and the Monks
This was my favorite temple statue - Donald Duck eating Thai noodle soup, while the monks swept up and tidied the monastery. We’re still in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We like it a lot. We’re having a great time, as fun as we’ve had the whole time.
Chiang Mai is a good sized city. It’s maybe the size of Raleigh, a bit bigger than Asheville, but not too much. It’s big enough to always be interesting, yet small enough to not be too chaotic or overwhelming.
Chiang Mai is in the north of Thailand, in the mountains, up near Burma and Laos. It’s cooler than central and southern Thailand - 85-95 during the day, 65-75 at night.
Chiang Mai is a traditional center of what’s called Lanna culture. The Lanna are the Northern Thai people. Their temples look slightly different from the rest of Thailand, and the food here is quite different.
Our lovely apartment. We’re renting an apartment for five weeks. It’s a very nice apartment, right in the center of things but also tucked away down a quiet alley. We have 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a nice big living room, and small kitchen. After living in guesthouse / hostel rooms that were basically the size of a
Monks Praying for Donor
When people give them food, they take off their shoes (because the monks are barefoot) and bow, and the monks chant a prayer for them. bed (and sharing bathrooms), it seems like we’re in a mansion now.
Eating in Chiang Mai. Since we can cook, we’ve been eating in a lot. We had previously eaten out for 2 ½ months before getting here, and we ate some good food, but it’s been good to cook our own food.
There is a grocery store about a 20 minute walk from our apartment. It’s unbelievably nice, nicer than 90%!o(MISSING)f US grocery stores. It’s like a Fresh Market, maybe. It stocks pretty much everything we could ever need, and it’s as oriented to Western tourists as wealthy Thais.
So we buy boxes of French red wine, fresh-baked bread, very good Thai-made cheeses and salami and pate, pasta and sauce, beans and rice, cereal, and so on.
There’s a Thai market too, about a 10 minute walk away. We buy our fruits and vegetables there. It’s cheap, and the fruits and veggies are delicious.
We’ve also been eating out, because Thai food is delicious. The tourist food is good here too - we’ve eaten at a Mexican restaurant that is as good as any we’ve eaten at in the US.
Reading in
Monks' Temple
This is a smaller temple off to the side of the main temple, which was specially for monks. Chiang Mai. There is a library that’s within walking distance, a library sponsored somehow by US universities. It’s like a branch library in Asheville - small, but with a good selection. So we check out books and read a lot, and enjoy our apartment.
Walking in Chiang Mai. We also take lots of walks, because Chiang Mai is a great city to walk through. One of the defining features of our walks is the many wats, or Thai Buddhist temples, that we see as we walk along.
Chiang Mai has to have more wats per square kilometer than any town in Thailand. There are apparently 300 wats here. Often we will walk by 2 wats right next to each other, and there will be a third wat right across the street.
Wats in Chiang Mai. So, it seems like there is a wat every block. Our apartment is tucked down a back alley, and when we emerge onto the main road there is a wat and monastery to the right, a wat to the left, a wat across the street down to the right, and a wat across the street down to the left. I don’t really
know why there are so many.
All of the wats are basically the same, yet each one is a little bit different too. Also, as mentioned, the Northern Thai wats are a bit different from wats in the rest of Thailand; here they resemble the wats in nearby Burma and Laos as much as the wats in the rest of Thailand. The pictures here hit the highlights of what a wat in Chiang Mai is like.
All of the wats are enclosed by a rectangular white wall, which has flags running along the wall, the flag of Thailand and a flag representing Buddhism.
The main building. The main building is called the viharn. Most of the pictures here are of a viharn, either the exterior, details on the exterior, or the interior.
There are usually lions, or singha, guarding the front. There are also these naga, or snake-gods, on the stairs as you come up the stairs.
All of the Northern Thai viharns (main temples) have roughly the same look and shape - there are lots of pictures that show what they look like.
We usually go inside the temple. You take your shoes
Main Building - Wat
This is at sunset, so you can't see the bright colors, but this gives you a sense of the shape of the main buildings in the wats. off before you go inside, out of respect for the temple and the Buddha statues inside.
Inside there are always Buddha statues: some very large, others very small. Sometimes there are 25 Buddhas, one to three large ones, ten or so medium ones, and 15 or so small ones.
Often too there are these odd, realistic-looking, life-like statues of a monk. One of the pictures shows one of these. I assume it’s an important Thai monk that they’ve chosen to honor.
Many times the temples are empty. Sometimes there are a few people in there praying. A few times we’ve seen them busy and full.
Chedis or stupas. Most temples also include a chedi or stupa, which looks like a round or squared tower. Sometimes these house relics of the Buddha, maybe a hair or a piece of bone. Sometimes they are just part of the wat.
Often there is a small shrine of some sort at the base of the stupa. In one picture, there is a couple praying at a small Buddha, and there is a gong next to it. This is the sort of thing that is sometimes at the base of
a stupa.
At the top of the stupa is often a golden umbrella, called a hti. You can see this in one of the pictures. These are Burmese in origin. They’re often elaborate and shiny gold.
Libraries. Some of the older temples have these raised temples that are libraries, or repositories of the sacred Buddhist texts, when they were printed on these long board-books. Now most of them are in regular book form, so the newer temples don’t have these libraries.
Miscellaneous things. The most interesting things about the wats may be the various other things that you see around them as you walk around the grounds.
The grounds are usually quite large. There are all these nooks and crannies. There are interesting things everywhere you look.
Sometimes there are odd little statues. My favorite was a statue of Donald Duck eating Thai noodle soup. The statue was right in front of the main viharn at a fairly big monastery. I got a good picture of this, with monks in the background.
Sometimes there are just more Buddha statues, spread around the grounds, that for various reasons (a sacred tree, maybe) draw people’s prayers
Main Building and Monks' Temple
Here you get a sense of what a compound looks like - two buildings, a large stupa behind the main building, various other buildings behind and around these. and attentions.
There are often cats and dogs around too. When people can’t care for stray cats and dogs, they take them to the temple. One monastery near us has a litter of 8 or so puppies, and when you go in to the grounds the puppies come waddling up to see you.
There is always something beautiful or sacred-looking or odd to see. It’s always fascinating.
It adds a lot to walk around the town and see these wats every block or so, and wander in them and check them out. It makes a fascinating town all the more fascinating….
Chatting with Monks By May So with all these wats around, there are many monks. Monks of all shapes and sizes. All with very little to no hair and bright orange robes and cheap flip flops or bare feet. We see monks everywhere, at bank machines, walking down the street, in the pick up truck taxis and even at the technology mall.
We have taken early morning walks here and at that time we see lots of monks, all barefoot with silver bowls walking around. And often we see people stop the monks and
Tree Statue
This statue was at the base of a large tree, and was also very active. give them food and then the people kneel down and the monks say things to them. Early in the morning we see monks carrying bags of food back to their wats.
I had questions about this so I went to Wat Chedi Luang’s monk chat, every day 10-6, a chance to chat with monks in English. I sat down at a cement picnic table with 4 young monks. First they asked me, “Why is 9 scared of 7?” I knew the answer to this riddle because I had worked with kindergarteners last year. I proved my worthiness by answering their riddle and then sat down to ask my questions. (The answer is “because 7- 8 (ate)- 9”—ha ha.)
I got one question in, about the morning rounds. I learned that they are collecting alms. Almost all the monks go out near and far to collect food. People give them food because it earns the people merit in this life and the next. The monks say a blessing over the person who gives food, something like, “Keep on this path and you will do fine.” or “Peace to you.” That kind of thing.
The monks don’t have a
set route and don’t know what they’ll get any particular morning. Usually, they collectively, gather enough food for 2 meals. I was about to ask about where their other food comes from, when I was interrupted by the one monk who spoke the best English.
He said, “What does ‘check it out’ mean?” So I explained about libraries and also ‘checking out’ something like a restaurant that was recommended by someone else. The monks all nodded, seeming to understand and then our chat turned into an English lesson. It made me appreciate how hard English is.
We discussed:
• look it up vs. look at it
• hold on vs. hang up- I acted out a phone conversation
• decompose vs. deteriorate- from a Buddhist text, would the soul decompose or deteriorate from lack of meditation
• scalp vs. bald- this was a funny one, you can live when you’re bald but not scalped
• flip vs. snap- at first they snapped their fingers and asked if that was a flip, I got out a coin and taught them about a coin toss, flip, heads vs. tails.
It was a hoot. The one monk who was
Small Buddha Shrine
Many wats had small shrines like this one tucked away in corners. around 20 was the leader and the other 3, more hesitant English speakers, would cock their head as they listened, look up words in their electronic Thai/English dictionary, scribble down words or phrases that were said and generally look very pleased to have a native English speaker to chat with.
After about an hour, I left them to their English conversation worksheets they had been working on when I arrived. I will probably go again, this time without the questions, just for the fun of it.
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Jeanine
non-member comment
English lesson
Your english lesson story made me smile this morning. It reminded me of many similar lessons (minus the decompose/deteriorate one) in Japan with eager learners. what a hoot it could be. It does highlight how interesting/confusing our language can be when seen from another perspective. Thanks for the update! Love to all, Jeanine