Day #149: Chiang Mai temples

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The old town in Chiang Mai has a high concentration of Buddhist temples, within walking distance of one another. The Thai school of Buddhism is Theravada, originating from Myanmar, and the style of the temples and worship is unrecognisable from the Buddhism I had witnessed in Mongolia and China. The temples, called "Wats", are high, spacious buildings with gabled roofs - more like European churches in structural design - decorated all over with intricate gold patterns. Inside the temples feel very large, light and airy, in complete contrast to the Tibetan Buddhist temples. Walls are often decorated with scenes from the Lord Buddha's life (or the lives of his notable followers), and there are statues of the Lord Buddha behind an alter. Disconcertingly, there are also often extremely life-like wax statues of deceased senior monks, which looked to me like live people at first glance. Typically there is a separate round building (called a Chedi) for holding important temple relics, that tourists cannot usually enter.

Monks hold an important position in Thai society, and it is common (the guide books say compulsory, but I was told this is not true) for young Thai men to live as novice monks for a period of time, anything from a couple of weeks to a year. They can either go down the route of meditation, living an ascetic life within the confines of their temple, or they can take a more social role, working and studying in schools run by the monks. In either case they shave their heads, wear the robes, and live off gifts and food donated by worshippers (walking around any Thai town or city, there are shops dedicated to selling these offerings, usually pots of food and toiletries wrapped up in yellow shrink wrap). There are strict Precepts governing the lives of ordained monks, but things are more relaxed for the novices - for example, they are permitted to eat meat. Monks enjoy various privileges in society - in stations and on public transport, seats are reserved for disabled people, pregnant women and monks, and they do not pay for taxi journeys (or, apparently, Indian visas, as they are considered pilgrims). Yesterday I witnessed a monk hailing a taxi: the taxi began to slow down, then the driver realised it was a monk who would not have to pay the fare, and promptly accelerated on past him. The monk just frowned, probably thinking about karma, in which Thai Buddhists have a very strong belief.

I met a Thai who had lived as a monk for two separate 9-month periods in his younger days. He described his morning routine: getting up at 5am for prayer, then taking a fruitbowl-like steel alms bowl (he pointed out an identical one in a temple) around the local village, for the locals to fill it with rice for him to eat. He explained his abiding memory of having to jiggle the bowl about in his hands, as being metal it quickly became very hot to hold once cooked rice was placed in it.

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