Temple Tour 101

I think I’ve now seen more temples/shrines than my mom’s seen churches, no joke. And for those of you that know my mother (ps. love you), you know that’s a ridiculous amount. Don’t get me wrong though --- it’s been amazing. Considering it’s been a week we’ve been in Thailand, the following post is going to be quite long, but in the future I’ll write them every couple of days and probably post a few at a time, so the length is kept at a minimum (I’m trying, promise).

It’s crazy that our little group has been together only one full week. Crazy because it seems like so much longer; in a few short days we’ve done quite a bit and traveled a good ways.

We started off in Bangkok for two nights, the first of which Erin, Sarah and I arrived at the hostel at 3am. That was no problem, however, and we were happy just to get to the hostel considering that after an airport official looked at the hostel address gave us a ticket with a price on it and sent us to a taxi…the taxi driver looked at us like we had three heads when we tried to explain where we were going. I pulled out our lonely planet book and pointed out the hostel on the map and then he pulled out his cell and called a friend who spoke broken English and had me speak with him to give him the address. No worries in the end because we found the hostel on our driver’s map and made it safe and sound and were able to crash until the next morning.

On the 5th (Saturday) we explored Bangkok --- We saw Wat Pho (wat = temple) where the reclining Buddha resides. It was absolutely breathtaking how large and gorgeous this Buddha was and as Flynn said, for those of us who’d never seen a true Buddhist temple, Wat Pho was quite the first experience. We also hit up the Imperial Palace, where three of us had to ‘rent’ skirts because we had on capris, and the Temple of the Dawn, where we were able to climb up several stories and get a great view of Bangkok. I’ve attached some pictures to this post, but will add the huge masses of pictures we’ve been taking to my picasa page (photo link) eventually. I’m going to have to be in one place long enough to do that, so bear with me for a bit.
Sunday was also our first true thai food experience, from a nice little stand within a market near the Imperial Palace --- and everything you’ve ever heard about Thai food in Thailand is correct --- it’s incredibly good. I’m the only one of the five of us who opts for less spice when it’s a choice, so the others are slowly getting me used to spicy dishes (which is probably a very good thing considering I’ve heard food in Bangladesh is ridiculously spicy. Fabulous.)

Sunday we were able to leave for Ayuthaya, one of the old capitals of Thailand, because Sarah’s second bag (which Air China had lost along the way to Bangkok) was found and delivered to us at our hostel. We packed up our bags and headed to the train station. The railway system here in Thailand is amazing and even third class is a pretty nice ride. Granted, I’m of the population who usually opts for non air-conditioned cabins, and I’ll trade hard seats for large window that allows me to watch the beautiful countryside fly by. We were able to book tickets for FIFTEEN baht (50 cents) for the hour and forty-five minute train ride and it was rather painless.

One of things that has impressed all of us is the accommodating and helpful nature of all the Thais we interact with. The train ticket-collector took note of the fact that we were traveling to Ayuthaya and made sure we knew our stop was approaching when it was time for us to get off. We have only been further impressed with the locals thus far. Granted, tourism is a huge industry for this country and we are the ‘backpacker’s trail’, but it’s still rather impressive that we’ve had very few negative interactions with locals.

In Ayuthaya we stayed at this adorable little hostel that I found online, and it was right across the street from a huge ancient ruins site. Monday we rented bikes from our hostel and rode throughout the ruins, and even rode outside of town to one of the larger Wats in the area, which is right next to a monument to one of the ancient kings. Two things --- 5 girls riding silver bikes with huge baskets was going to be a site unto itself regardless, however, we also had to deal with a good deal of traffic AND the fact that in Thailand you drive on the other side of the road. By the end of the day we had gotten the hang of things, but it definitely took us some time. It was entertaining nonetheless. Secondly, and the irony was not lost on me, Erin and Heather (for those of you that were with us on the eventual trip back from Erin’s house during the summer of 2003 when we took pictures upon a huge white rooster we found alongside the road), the memorial to the ancient King was a gigantic statue of him on a horse, looking very fierce and threatening, surrounded by (and I kid you NOT) thousands of cocks. Little cocks, middle-sized cocks and gigantic, multi-colored cocks (or roosters). Whatever I’ll say won’t even do justice to the site, so please check out the pictures of it.

We’ve seen a good number of cocks throughout our travels thus far – it seems that for Thai Buddhists they symbolize protection, as well as royalty. As far as I can tell, when the memorial was built, many gigantic cock statues were placed around it, and people now bring little cocks as offerings. It was one of the craziest and most unexpected sites. In fact, Flynn and I had been riding along at a nice leisurely pace and had commented about how curious this statue looked in the middle of the scenery, considering the Wat we were heading towards was right next to it. It was absolutely priceless.

What made the ride completely worth it was the Wat we went to next --- it was absolutely breathtaking and we were able to climb up and get a great view of the surrounding areas. Additionally, and Heather was especially excited about this, there was a little room for offering to Buddha in the middle of the temple and accessible from the top level we could climb to. So Erin, Sarah, Heather and I each brought in a lotus flower and some incense and made an offering to Buddha. I am getting a first-class education on certain Buddhist practices from Heather and Flynn, and it’s been great traveling with Heather because she’s studied all these places for years but this is her first time visiting them first-hand --- don’t get me wrong, Erin, Sarah and I appreciate the Wats and can only marvel at all the ruins around us, but watching Heather get to see them for the first time is like watching a kid in a candy store. It brings a whole new level of appreciate to our ‘temple tour’.

Tuesday we left Ayuthaya and took a 6½ hour train to Phitsanulok, and spent most of the day traveling. Wednesday we got on a bus to travel to Sukhothai, another ancient capital of the area, where the ruins were amazing. We were let off our bus in front of a place to rent bikes and picked 5 hot bikes (they had ‘turbo’ and ‘charming’ written on their sides – expect for Sarah’s which apparently was simultaneously ‘turbo’ and ‘fA1ry’) to travel with all day. We didn’t even cover half of the temples that were in the complex, but what we did see was absolutely incredible. I can’t being to describe the overwhelming moment when you realize that the ruins you’re looking at were built as early as the 13th century, and they can still captivate people. It was really great to see throughout the compounds that people come to make offerings still; it definitely brought a living aspect to the ruins and temples we were seeing.

This morning we went and visited a Buddha casting foundry before heading to the train station to catch an 8hour train to Chiang Mai, where we’ll be for two nights. The casting foundry was great – we got a special little tour by a young woman who was sitting at the main desk when we arrived. It was a smaller, open courtyard but within it there were lots of people working on Buddha statues at all different stage of the process. There was a small display that showed the process of producing the casts, and we were able to watch as one woman molded a wax statue to make into a cast. Most of the courtyard was taken up by huge stoves and kilns, however, and we got to see the huge stoves in which bronze was being melted and the kilns in which the Buddha statues were being formed. Once they’re taken out of the kilns (which they have to partially rebuild for every individual statue, at least, the larger ones) they’re cooled and painted, which reveals the holes in the statue, which are then plugged by wax. They’re then covered with different materials, whether it’s liquid gold, goldleaf, bronze, or others.

We spoke with one woman who was covering a larger-sized small Buddha with goldleaf. It was such an intricate process, and she was flawless at it. She had a little sheet, which apparently costs 10 baht, and told us that she would use around 500 to cover the Buddha she was working on. When we pointed to a gigantic statue sitting outside the shed she was in, asking how many it would take to cover that, all she was “8,000”.

It was awesome to see how Buddhas are made at this point in time, but I couldn’t help to think about how much harder it must have been to make them back in the 14th century…craziness.

I’m writing this on our train to Chiang Mai, which arrived an hour and a half late, so we should arrive around 11 tonight. We’ve been floored – we did have to book more expensive tickets for this train because only express (fewer stops) trains were available – but it has also meant that we’ve already been fed twice, a meal and a snack, in the past three hours.

Please please please email me --- be patient with responses for the next month and a half --- but I will do my best to respond to every email I get as quickly as possible. And if you want postcards from SEAsia, send me your address ☺