Lots More Wats to See
9th September, Chiang Mai, Thailand
After yesterday's soaking, we weren't sure what to do today. Would the weather be good to us? Who could say? Not us! Besides, my only pair of trainers were still soaking wet and I didn't want to go exploring in flip-flops (I must be in the minority - most people hate wearing trainers in the heat and prefer flip-flops, but I just find them uncomfortable and downright dangerous. The number of times I've tripped up in those darn things ...) So, we decided not to head off to Chiang Rai (either under our own steam or in a tour) and instead hired the moped for an extra day to go see some more wats. Yep, there are more to see, more than you could possibly imagine. To think that this is just one city in Thailand and there are literally hundreds of the things. Oh well, better check a few more of them.
First we took a look at Wat Phra Singh, which is within the boundaries of the old city (or in other words, it's within the enclosing moat). There is no set formula for the layout of these wats, as far as I can tell, but there do appear to be some conventions, some features that are common to all. For example, the biggest temple building usually houses the biggest Buddha figure on the site, while at the back of the building's exterior, facing in the opposite direction of the big Buddha is a smaller Buddha set in a recess. There's usually some kind of secondary temple building, and often a stupa outside. Wat Phra Singh is much the same, but the smaller temple building was entirely covered in scaffolding and undergoing restoration from a fire that looks to have almost gutted it completely. The stupa was nothing too special here, but what gave this complex character was the activity surrounding it.
Inside Wat Phra Singh.
In every direction we could see young monks in their bright orange robes. These were intermingled with the white shirts and bright blue shorts of the local schoolboys. The number of monks here suggested some kind of monks' school; there were literally hundreds of them. Inside the main temple building, a group of monks were talking with some visitors. This is known as monk chat. No, seriously - this is something that many of the wats encourage, and you will often see signs that read: "Monk Chat this way" including the 'hours of operation'! The idea is to help the monks practice a foreign language and generally to provide a method for cultural exchange; the monks might learn about what a Japanese teenager enjoys doing at the weekend, while the Japanese teenager gets to understand about the life of a monk, Buddhism or the best way of washing orange sheets without losing the vivid hue a little better. We watched the group of monks, laughing and smiling with their foreign visitors. As one of them understood a new word/phrase, he would laugh and animatedly tell the rest of the group. Meanwhile, we had our own little cultural exchange: Manda and I were pounced on by a couple of school kids asking if we could complete a questionnaire for them. I tried to complete the first page, but soon ran into difficulty because of spuriously-worded questions (for example, giving various choices ratings from 1 to 6, but the explanation as to whether 1 was best and 6 worst or the other way around was impossible to work out!). Then I realised that there were three more difficult-to-understand pages to follow. I hope we didn't skew their statistics too much by getting things hopelessly wrong!
We next looked at Wat Suan Dok, outside of the city moat area a little. According to one of the many leaflets we've amassed since getting here, this is the location of the ashes of Chiang Mai's royal family. The large stupa was covered with scaffolding here (well, they are all getting rather old) but the graveyard was quite an impressive sight. I also spotted the most unlikely use for a VW Kombi here - as we pulled in to the grounds, a beat up old Kombi was being attached to a trailer carrying an elaborately decorated coffin. Judging by the state of it, I wondered if this shabby-looking van might expire itself quite soon.
The graveyard at Wat Suan Dok
Finally, we made our way to Wat Chet Yot (Wat Jet Yot, Wat Ched Yot ... so many maps, so many different spellings!). This was one of the most antiquated-looking sights we'd yet seen; even the local stray dogs looked ancient. We did a quick tour of this one then made our escape - the sun was getting quite fierce again.
An old Buddha sculpture at Wat Jet Yot.
I then took us on to the 'super highway', wondering whether small mopeds like ours would be allowed on this route. Moments later I was overtaken by three people on a single moped (none of them wearing helmets) and figured that we were OK! We headed back through the city, past Wororot Market and a girl throwing up over the railings into the River Ping (I'm not buying any produce from that market!) and then back to the hotel. I managed to squeeze in about an hour by the pool in the largely obscured sun. I was trying to do something about the 'tourist tan' I've developed - tanned forearms, back of neck, and after today a very impressive pair of tanned feet (minus a glowing white strip where the flip-flops are held on). Then, predictably, the rains came down again. And boy did they come down. I truly have never seen the likes of this kind of rain, nor heard rain so loud before ... well apart from yesterday when we were right in the thick of it. The planned evening of scooting around on the moped and getting night-time photos went right down the drain.