Chiang Rai

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Rice in monsoon country

Friday, September 20, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand

rice paddy, Thailand

Workers transplanting rice seedlings in paddies near Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand. Photos by David Lansing.

Before I came on this trip I asked my daughter, who has spent some time in Thailand, what I needed to know. “Be prepared to be overwhelmed by rice,” she somewhat cryptically wrote back.

I think I now know what she meant. Rice is ubiquitous in Thailand. It’s part of almost every meal, of course, but it also shows up in their art, their music, their festivals, and even in their religion.

There is a particular Buddha image—a standing Buddha with both arms pointing to the earth—that is particularly popular here in Northern Thailand. It is known as the “Calling for Rains” Buddha because the rice crop is so dependent on rain.

The rice goddess must be honored before cultivation if the crop is to be bountiful. The rice grain contains a spirit (kwan) and is planted in the rainy season to become “pregnant.” The Thai word for irrigation (chon prathan) translates as “gift of water.”

It is the rainy season here in Thailand. Every day it rains. Sometimes for 20 minutes, sometimes for two hours. We drive through the countryside and see mile after mile of rice paddies. And in the paddies are the workers, transplanting seedlings in row after row as the rain comes down. All part of a cycle that has gone on here for thousands of years.

Terraced rice paddies, Thailand

Terraced rice paddies. Photo by David Lansing.

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House of Opium

Thursday, September 19, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand

The House of Opium in Chiang Saen, Thailand. Photos by David Lansing.

Unbeknownst to me, Ketsara evidently decided last night that we were not going to the opium museum in Chiang Saen today.

“But why, Khun Ketsara?”

“Why you want to go?”

“I think it might be interesting.”

Ketsara doesn’t say anything. I think she’s protecting me. I think she’s worried about the effect certain dark things on this trip might have on me. It’s true I’ve been a little moody lately. But what does she think is going to happen at the opium museum? Certainly they’re not giving away free samples, are they?

In the end, she relents. “Quick stop,” she says. “Fifteen minutes.”

Diorama of an opium den. Photo by David Lansing.

The museum is dark—literally and figuratively. In small rooms they house hundreds of opium pipes, many charred and thick with old opium paste, porcelain jars for storing the drug, and the elaborate scales used to measure the opium. But what I find particularly spooky are the dioramas of opium dens, some so realistic looking that it takes you a moment to realize that the drugged out Chinaman lying on his side lighting an opium pipe isn’t real…is he?

I walk briskly through the museum. Ketsara was right, I really don’t need to see this. Or at least, I don’t need to linger. After about ten minutes of wandering around, I am dying for some fresh air. And light.

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Finding my sanuk

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand | 2 comments

 

Perched atop a faux elephant in Chiang Saen, searching for my sanuk.

These last few days I have not been myself (or maybe I have been myself; remember that Khun Ketsara, in revealing the dark side of my Buddha nature, said that I do not know nearly as much about myself as I think I do). My mood has been as dark and heavy as the monsoon sky.

This morning as we were walking around Chiang Saen, trying to make sense of this oddly empty Buddha theme park along the banks of the Mekong River with its faux dragons and faux temples and faux elephants, Ketsara asked me what had happened to my sanuk.

Sanuk is the Thai word for happiness or pleasure. But that is just the half of it. Sanuk is a central part of Thai life. In Thai culture, you find sanuk in all of life. Daa sanuk means to enjoy giving someone a hard time; thuuk daa sanuk is to be the person to whom someone is giving a hard time and enjoying it.

If you’re someone who just likes to talk it’s called khui sanuk; if you like to work it’s thamngan sanuk. The concept of sanuk goes way beyond just enjoying a good laugh or having fun at a party; in Thailand, sanuk is almost like a form of religion (and, really, sanuk is part of Buddhism—finding the enjoyment in all of life, the good and the bad).

So when Ketsara asked me what had happened to my sanuk, I knew what she meant. I’d lost my mojo.

But I had a solution. I handed her my camera and told her to take my picture. “Where?” she said. I told her to just watch me.

I jogged over to a pair of 20-foot-high bejeweled tin elephants and climbed up the rickety stairs to the top, climbing in to a golden basket perched atop one of the faux pachyderms. I sat down and looking down at the plaza that was empty except for Ketsara standing there holding my camera, began a royal wave, as I imagined the queen did it, to my single loyal subject. I waved and smiled and Ketsara, giggling, took my photo.

My sanuk was back.

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Thai soap flowers in Chiang Saen

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand | 1 comment

A selection of soap flowers in the market at Chiang Saen, Thailand. Photo by David Lansing.

When our longtail boat got back to Chiang Saen, I went for a walk in the village. There were a number of stalls along the river selling the usual tourist crap. But there were no tourists. Most of the vendors had abandoned their stalls and were instead sitting in the shade of a café along the Mekong drinking tea.

One of the vacant stalls had hundreds of hand-carved soap flowers. You can find soap flowers all over Thailand these days but they say the carving originated in the villages around Chiang Rai. It’s one of those odd little tourist trinkets—like wildly-painted geckos in Mexico or soapstone elephants in Kenya—that makes you wonder, Who was the first person to do this? Who was the Thai guy (or, more likely, gal) who, with nothing better to do, sat down and used an exacto knife to carve a round piece of soap into the shape of a jasmine flower or a blooming lotus?

And then, how did others learn how to do it? I could sit and watch a guy carving soap bars in to flowers all day long and still not have a clue as to how to do it myself. When that first Thai made a soap flower, it must have been precious. And then they made a few more and sold them to passing tourists for a dollar or two and thought, Hey, maybe we can make a living doing this. And now every tourist area in Thailand from Phuket to Chiang Rai has guys selling soap flowers.

I took a few photos and then the stand’s owner came over from the tea shop and tried hard to sell me a soap flower. They cost about $5 each and come in little round wooden boxes hand painted with flowers and elephants and such. I didn’t want one. But I was still feeling depressed from the boat trip up the Mekong and bad about all these vendors with no customers. So I bought a very delicate soap flower, a jasmine soap with just a few petals instead of some of the more intricate, overwrought designs.

I don’t know what I’ll do with it. Maybe I’ll give it to Ketsara. Or hand it to a monk. As part of my education in dana parami, generosity.

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Up the Mekong River in the Golden Triangle

Monday, September 16, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand

A surreal Buddha theme park along the Mekong River in the Golden Triangle. Photo by David Lansing.

In the morning, I took a longtail boat out of Chiang Saen and headed up the Mekong River. The haunting notes of an electric organ backing Jim Morrison singing about the end, my beautiful friend, the slow thack-thack of Huey helicopters flying low overhead, the yellow marker smoke leaving an acrid taste in my throat—it all came back in a heady rush as we silently moved upriver.

For people of a certain age, even if, like me, you have never been on the Mekong before, you feel like you have. Déjà vu races up your brain cord like goose bumps on your arms. You hear Walter Cronkite’s sing-song voice announcing the Tet Offensive during the Lunar New Year in 1968; see the American gunboats on the cover of Life magazine in 1967 predicting “the widening Vietnam war”; and you hear Jim Morrison singing “The End” as palm trees along the banks of the river explode in orange fireballs in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”

There was none of that, of course, as our longtail boat headed up the river. Instead, there was an abandoned Buddha theme park, with a mix of Hindu gods, Chinese dragons, and a stoic golden Buddha; a desultory casino on the Burma banks that appeared to be empty; and a few Laos fisherman who stopped what they were doing long enough to suspiciously watch us pass.

No Jim Morrison, no Huey helicopters, no burning palm trees. Still, the whole experience spooked me and made me feel depressed. Before we got to Don Sao Island in Laos, where a loophole in immigration law allows you to visit without a visa and where, I’ve heard, you can buy famous Laos rice whisky, I told the boat driver to turn around. I’d seen enough.

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