White temples to Black Pete

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Still on the bus journey from Chiang Mai, destined for two stops and then Laos. Laos, the place I never knew existed until it came up on this tour – maybe I should have paid more attention in geography! I know nothing about this country, I have no expectations and journey blindly towards it…

I forgot to mention that when we hopped on in Chiang Mai we also added some more people into the mix, some girls and guys… Brazilian, English and Australian

Before we arrive we stop at a place called hot springs for a half hour as a pit stop. This place is a hot spring geyser that spurts out of the ground in a place where they have built a set of shops and food places around - of course, because that’s what you do to a natural attraction. The geyser is a little underwhelming because it is quite literally a place where hot eggy smelling water jettisons out of the ground into the air where they have placed a few stones and fencing around. No, I do appreciate it really. The good bit is they have tapped into it and made shallow canals with benches next to the flowing water so you can sit and dip your feet in the warm spring water, strategically placing pumice stones (gross now I write about it) so that you can gently rub your feet on whilst relaxing them in the warm water. Although the water is free flowing so it’s not like stagnant warm water filled with skin and yuck like the bit of water your left with when you have finished your bath… So, Cleo and I sit and relax with our feet in the water whilst the girls do some shopping. We grab a quick snack and its back on the Stray bus.

We arrive at I think my favourite temple yet. This temple is only 18 years old, was designed and funded by an artist that is still alive today and is the most modern temple in Thailand, I guess you can say it’s a modern art temple both inside and out and most definitely unique. All other temples are made in gold colours and areas within have dome like tops, yet this one is the perfect combination of white and silver (my favourite combinations, never was a big fan of gold. Always found gold a bit tacky and showy, well adorn Chavy fingers as sovereign rings anyhow). The temple quite literally shimmers and twinkles in the light as it is incredibly ornate in design and has layer upon layer of twisting, jagged forms within it. Upon the edges you can see what I am told are Elephant-Nagas, these are a combination of elephants and dragons and they look like a whispy winged dragons with twisted spikey horns and a trunk and breathes what looks like fire (that or its poking its tongue out). These to me look like the cooler equivalent of gargoyles on our churches.

The temple is surrounded with a moat like water piece which flows under a bridge made of what looks like two long snakes riding along each side. Guarded at the entrance by two massive set of teeth upon either side rising from the floor of thousands of crushed and contorted body bones and two large imposing man beasts holding weapons that look like they are going to whack you with them if you dare enter and attempt to cross the bridge. As you cross the bridge the snakes you can see are actually a number of snakes consuming themselves a bit like that film the human centipede and at the entrance they are the tail end of the bridge guards, this place surreal. This place is very imaginative, I mean a self-consuming snake tailed man-beast guarding a bridge entrance is quite a sight and they say drugs are illegal, hmm, I think this artist must have had one of those happy mushroom shakes… lol
Under the bridge you can see in the water the biggest cat-fish in the world that are so big they look like sharks… I know a few fisher people that would be salivating at catching one of these on a rod!

You are then at the temple entrance and your eyes are all consumed by the level of detail here, it is excessively busy and the whole structure is quite beautifully aggressive looking, so you feast your eyes on layer upon layer of 3 dimensional interlaced curves, point and spikes decorating every inch on this temple, with the elephant-nagas sitting along the temple roof edges.
The temple almost looks like it’s one of those incredibly intricately decorated wedding cakes with shiny white icing and then someone placed it in a blast freezer and the icing got coated in a silver ice that made it pearlescent. It is ineffable to explain in words quite how awe-inspiring this is and how it makes you feel, just wish the bloody Chinese tourists and their friggin selfie sticks would do one! Funny thing I learned is that the Thai and Laos people really tolerate the Chinese because they are rude, loud and take excessive pictures/selfies… You have to be here to see it and believe it, but Im seeing what they mean a bit. Although living 3 doors down from Bicester village, Im used to the Asian Apparel lol

The inside of this structure is completely different, its painted in an orangey/terracotta colour and depicts the world as is now and its evil with the journey to death, all drawn in marvel style cartoons. There is also Bin Laden, George Bush, Oil, famine and Marvel characters within the mural that spans the temple walls. In the centre sits a monk deep in meditation.
Additional the temple structure is an equally beautiful cremation area with a beautiful white and silver structure, similarly adorned with multi layers of curves and sharp edges. Our tour leader points out the humour in that they have also made their toilets in the same beautiful fashion, although they are gold and black and you can see the Chinese tourists taking pictures of themselves with the toilets. When I went for a wee one was inside taking pics – surely there must be a law against that, bloody pervert… back home don’t we call that cottaging lol
At the rear of the complex are these silver trees and they have thousands of these beautiful aluminium tear shaped earrings dangling from their branches. You can basically buy a silver leaf, inscribe your name on it and it helps to pay for the temple as well as giving you a blessing. I opted not to because I am not a buddhist (yet anyway).
Don’t know what it is about this place but it captivates me, maybe I’m like a magpie to the silver and pearlescent white but maybe it’s because I have never seen anything quite like this. I mean it’s essentially a modern art temple, you don’t see many of those. Can you imagine a modern art style church, that’d ruffle a few ‘stick up there are’ types back home hahaha

Now time to hop back on and the wonderful immigration crossing to Laos. I don’t think I have ever done an inland immigration crossing – another one of the firsts to tick off my list. Was fairly easy too, our bus dropped us on and we take our bags through (no scan/checks etc.), and get a bus across no-man’s land and the Mekong river to the Laos side, pay and get our Visas (begrudgingly pay and extra $10 for it being after 4pm) and get a tuktuk to our next guest house.

All I can say is it’s amazing how quickly a country can go from first world to 2nd world in a matter of a few kms. Lovely country but it very quickly has gone into an impoverish surroundings where the standard of living has become more like rural England a hundred or so years ago.

We arrive at our guest house and I’m sharing with Cleo in a twin room. When we get to the room I want to check out the view (well I say view, however it was just the arse end of broken houses) and the mosquito screen comes off in my hands, I manage to quietly replace it and fancy winding up Cleo knowing I haven’t replaced it properly. I sit on the bed and get my phone out, poised to get the shot I knew was coming and I tell Cleo to have a good look at our amazing view. Cleo goes to open the window and the whole thing quite literally comes away in her hand, she has a mix of OMG and hilarity on her face as I tell her she broke the window and they will make her pay for a new one, watching Cleo try to replace the window screen was the funniest thing I saw for a while… I guess this is one of those moments you had to be there, however I think I peed my pants a little bit with my mini set up. But did come clean and she found it funny after she worked out how to reinstall it…

We make our way to the cash machine to get out the Laos currency and all form an orderly line at the machine. I patiently wait in line, it gets to my turn and I take out my Laos Kip and I withdraw the maximum and I am now holding in my hands 1.5 million Laos Kip, for the first time in my life I am genuinely a millionaire… Ok, so it’s not worth that much, however I am now officially a millionaire (another first ticked off my list)… So want to go back to my room and roll around in it, however its only about 15 notes and I would look like a twit lol

Group dinner at a local place by the river and I really fancy fish because I haven’t had a good fish meal for a while (not that kind of fish either before your filthy mind wanders down that path!). Diner ordered and have my first large Beer Laos, waiting for my fish and vegetable supper, I can’t wait to get something healthy for food. Well, being from the first world, I like my meat filleted and served not looking like its true form and I was a bit worried when I ordered it what I was going to get. However true to foreign food form my dinner is served and my large plate of vegetables and what looks like a garrotted fish lays out in front of me. Nope, this is not the filleted, deboned nice piece of white fish I was praying for. Instead my plate hosts the grim heated grave site of a garrotted river fish, head and eye intact. It looks like it has been slit up the under and its bits ripped out and then thrown on the coals alive. My fish is staring at me in an all to realistic fashion, I’m convinced this thing’s soul still resides inside as it stares at me like one of those portraits that’s eyes creepily follow you no matter where you are in the room.

This meal cannot be wasted, no matter how I feel about it and this fish’s life and suffering will not go to waste, so I cover its head with table tissues, however its oily and wet so now it looks like I have mummified its head with a putrefied body laid underneath it. Nope, I still can’t waste this, no matter how my stomach and heart are churning right now. Man-up Jason! Gently I peel back the scales and pick out the hundred thousand bones carefully as the last thing I need is to choke on a fish bone this far from a clinic to fish it out (pun intended!). After some careful surgeon work I finally get some fish morsel and give it a whirl, well, all I can say is nasty river fish… Bleurgh, this fish tastes like a muddy puddle, I guess I didn’t factor into the equation we’re on the Mekong delta and it’s a river fish as opposed to a fresh/salt water fish. I just can’t eat this, sorry fishy you taste like I imagine licking the bottom of an Aboriginal hikers bare foot tastes like, so I pass it onto the table and just have beer instead… Although the beer here is quite strong and a liquid dinner leaves me feeling squiffy, guess every cloud has a silver lining ha-ha

The group is deep in conversation and the most random thing comes up and totally makes up for fish gate on my plate. Now then you would think that of all the European countries the Netherlands would be the most politically correct place of all wouldn’t you?! Well, yes I guess it is, however underneath this pc exterior lays a dark secret they are battling every year. Cleo tells us about the controversy every Christmas because of Black Pete. Black Pete I hear you say, who/what is this…?! Black Pete is essentially Santa’s help. Yep, you heard that right, the Netherlands Santa has a slave to help, sounds no different to elves I guess, except as we all know elves don’t exist and they love Santa and the children around the world and do it out of their pure hearts. Still, maybe Black Pete is harmless enough and just Santa’s helper. It doesn’t end there, every year the Dutch celebrate black Pete by dressing up and don black face/body paint and wear those gollywog style wigs and they all take to the streets in celebration. Bless them, to their defence they saw this as an innocent childhood figure but not so innocent when you google black Pete and see the white folk dress up as this. They tried to get around it by saying black Pete is a white guy that got soot on him when he went down the chimney, well I guess it frazzled his hair too… mwahahaha, I don’t think so lol

I’m not laughing at the racist side of this, I am laughing at the shock factor that The Netherlands of all places has this celebration every year and the way they try to argue it as innocent. It’s so not and I can totally see why people are in uproar about this. Not like people in uproar about baabaa back sheep, that little lamb just happened to be a black sheep and rare, therefore worth a lot of money in impoverish England back then and symbolised wealth (or at least that’s what I read once – correct me if I am wrong though!). Guess Europe isn’t as politically correct as you think… lol

We all find this incredibly funny and Cleo does agree it is a little racist and I assume the annual battle continues back in Holland. We finish dinner (well my beer anyway) and make it back to the guest house, thankfully there is a shop and I get a packet of chocolate cereal to eat to soak up all this Beer Laos currently teeming its way through my veins.

I make my way up to bed and have to chuckle to myself how today went from opulent looking white temples depicting the struggle of life, through to Santa’s little Black Pete. This journey is teaching me so many things with each step, who knows what lays around the next corner…

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