Thailand

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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.

Tags: Chiang Rai, Chiang Saen, soap flowers, Thailand

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.

Tags: Chiang Rai, Golden Triangle, Mekong River boat cruise, Thailand

Buddha and the snake

Friday, September 13, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand

Stairs, protected by Nagas, lead to a ruined temple in Chiang Saen along the banks of the Mekong in Thailand. Photo by Elizabeth Hutchins.

I am sitting on some moss-covered stone steps leading to an ancient temple in the jungle along the banks of the Mekong River in the Golden Triangle. The whole thing looks—and feels—like something out of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. An old creeping fig tree grows out of the ruins of a long-forgotten temple; a barely-recognizable stone Buddha head, four or five feet tall, sits upside down, half-buried in the rich soil, vines and moss growing on it.

To get to the ruined temple you have to climb those very same moss-covered steps upon which I am sitting. The stairway is protected on both sides by undulating nagas, those mythical snake figures that figure prominently in Hinduism and, at least in this part of Thailand, in Buddhism as well.

They say that many of the hill tribes that live along the Mekong River use nagas in their creationism stories; nagas live in the river and give life. They also take life. Some time ago, the villagers along the river started seeing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of flaming orange balls rising above the river. They attributed the flaming orange balls to the nagas that lived in the river and started a folklore about them. Then a Thai TV show picked up on it, investigated, and determined that the flaming orange balls were actually tracer bullets fired by soldiers in Laos over the river. Which really pissed off the hill people who continued to believe that the flaming orange balls had something to do with their sacred river snakes.

Perhaps the most notable naga in the Buddhist tradition is Mucalinda, King of the Nagas. They say that shortly after Buddha achieved enlightenment, he was meditating in the forest when a great storm came up. Mucalinda came to Buddha’s rescue by covering the Buddha’s head with his 7 cobra-like snake heads. Which is why, particularly in Northern Thailand, you’ll often see a Buddha statue with Mucalinda covering his head. It’s a little bit Hindu, a little bit Animism, and a little bit Buddhist. Like so many things in this part of the world.

Mucalinda, King of the Nagas, protects the Buddha at this temple in Thailand. Photo by David Lansing.

Tags: Chiang Rai, Chiang Saen, Mucalinda, nagas, Thai folklore, Thailand

Noodle soup for breakfast

Thursday, September 12, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand

Breakfast of champions at Anantara Resort in Thailand’s Golden Triangle. Photo by David Lansing.

At home I seldom eat breakfast and when I do it’s usually to pick at some of the leftovers from last night’s dinner. I love cold pizza and a strong cup of coffee. Or cold chicken and orange juice.

So Thailand is perfect for me because they serve dinner for breakfast: fried rice, steamed fish, pork-stuffed buns, and my favorite, noodle soup.

Noodle soup is the best breakfast in the world. It’s got everything in it: a fragrant broth, some veggies, rice or egg noodles, and usually a little bit of protein.

At the Anantara resort, they actually have a noodle soup station for breakfast where you can tell the guy exactly what you want in your noodle soup. I was standing there this morning looking at all my options (so many noodles! So many veggies!) and, having no idea what to ask for, told the chef to just go ahead and make me up a noodle soup like he’d make for himself. Which pleased him.

I went back and sat down at my table, ordered a fresh squeezed mango and orange juice and a Thai coffee, and before my beverages had even arrived the chef was back with a fabulous-looking noodle soup. Which tasted even better than it looked.

Tags: Anantara, Chiang Rai, Thai elephant camp, Thai noodle soup, Thailand

Elephant adventures at Anantara

Wednesday, September 11, 2013 in Chiang Rai, Thailand | 2 comments

Tramping off through the mud at the elephant camp at Anantara. Photos by David Lansing.

Americans have so many consumer protection laws that, I think, we are more susceptible to disaster than other nationalities. We ride roller-coasters that travel upside down at 80 mph because we assume the ride has been tested and deemed safe. We go white water river rafting on Class III rapids, smiling and taking pictures, sure that our river guide has been thoroughly trained to make sure our craft doesn’t flip. And we climb on the backs of wild elephants because someone says we can.

Early in our elephant adventure, Linda got hurt. She probably shouldn’t have even been participating (she’s of a certain age and certain body type that would suggest climbing atop an elephant was crazy) but what the hell, right? The mahout told her it was okay. He told her to try and lift her leg high enough to use the elephant’s bent knee as a step. And when she couldn’t pull herself up and over the elephant’s neck, three mahouts got behind her and pushed and shoved her from behind until she had enough momentum that she was able to get a leg up. And that’s when she screamed.

“Get me off…Get me off now!”

The mahouts smiled and nodded.

“I’m hurt! I’ve done something to my leg! Get me off!”

She was white. She was obviously in a lot of pain. But nobody seemed to know what to do about it. Once you’re on top of an elephant, it’s not like you can just hop off. Particularly if you’ve pulled a hamstring or something, which is what I suspected she had done.

Eventually it was decided to force the elephant to first kneel, and then when it became apparent that it would still be impossible for Linda to get off her pachyderm, the mahouts forced her elephant to lay down on its side. Watching this I kept thinking, the elephant is going to roll over her. Linda was panicking a bit at this point, yelling at everyone, gripping tight to the elephant’s ears, thrashing about (Rule 11 of the Golden Safety Rules for a New Mahout: Avoid sudden movements and loud noises close to your elephant). But the elephant did well. The elephant slowly lay on its side and the mahouts were able to pluck Linda off its back. Linda was immediately taken back off to a local clinic while the rest of us stood around looking at each other, as one does in these circumstances, as if we weren’t sure what, exactly, had just happened.

Nonetheless, the show went on. The others, still on their elephants, paraded down the muddy road towards a large, latte-colored pond in the forest, where the mahouts directed the elephants in to the water. Liz, surprised, said, “Wait…where are we going?”

The elephants continued in to the water. At first Liz was smiling. Then she gasped as her elie dipped his large head under the water and she began to slide off the front (I was wondering at the time if she remembered Rule 10: In the water, stay away from the legs and the trunk—if you fall off into deep water, swim away from your elephant).

“Okay, I want off now!” Liz yelled. The mahout, who spoke no English, smiled and nodded. The elephant completely submerged himself. Liz screamed and threw her hands up. I waited for her to go under the water as well. But she didn’t. Somehow she managed to hold on. Or at least stay on. Probably the worst thing would have been if she’d panicked and tried to jump off (Rule 6: Never jump off your elephant while they are moving).

Then the elephant came back up. Liz screamed again. No doubt she was thinking, The mahouts allowed the elephants to go in to the water with us on their backs—it has to be okay, right?

And it was. Nobody was injured (we’ll have to wait and see about Linda) though some were certainly shaken up. A good learning experience for all. Rule 14: Always trust your instincts. This isn’t one of the mahout rules on the board at the elephant camp—it’s mine.