The Most Metal Temple in Thailand

The main vihara

Hands reaching out from Buddhist hell. And you thought this was a peaceful religion!

Thou shalt not smoke, drink, or offend Van Halen.

Off a highway thirty minutes south of Chiang Rai, on a street dotted with coffee shops and trinket sellers, lies Wat Rong Khun, one of the most bizarre and beautiful temples ever built. Beautiful, because it's ivory white and pristinely spiky. Bizarre, because you're as likely to see an image of Hellboy as you are the Buddha.

The 12-acre complex is the creation of Chalermchai Kositpipat, who believes the best way to honor the Buddha is to have life-size cardboard cutouts of himself scattered about the property. Including in front of the gold-leafed bathroom, which along with the "Hall of Masterworks" is the only structure done in anything but white.

The Buddhas and the Bats

Reflections.

Looking down.

The riverbanks of Wat Tham Pu Tu.

Phil considers the Buddha.

On the weekends during our time at Hans's farm, we would often rent a room for Saturday night and spend the weekend motorcycling around the countryside. One especially memorable Sunday, we took a lazy morning ride north of Chiang Rai to several caves in the hills dotting the riverbank.

The cold air of a cave takes on a religious quality in the hundred-plus degree heat of the tropics. Thais are not the only people to construct their altars in the insides of mountains, but their climate gives them the most reason to.

By the end of our travels, we would have seen a lot of caves, but these were the first. And for that, they'll always be a little special. We were the only visitors to several of these caves, excepting the scruffy guard dog to the steepest one. But at the largest one, in which the photograph above of the reflected monks was taken, a young family stepped in. There's just something about a small child's voice echoing in a cave, to the background of bats. Oh yes, how there were bats: dripping from the ceiling, clicking and chortling quietly to themselves and very rarely swooping to a new sleeping post.

That photograph of the monks is one of my favorites: the jumble of paintings and posters behind them, like a strip of a 70s living room transposed to the bowels of a mountain. And their faces! They looks so happy, so contented. The blessing they gave the young family sounded so sweet, too.

Even thinking about being there, all these months later, I feel my thoughts going slow, becoming wondering, feeling wondrous. I think of these words, by Jane Hirshfield:

An hour is not a house,
a life is not a house,
you do not go through them as if
they were doors to another.

Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,
four walls, a ceiling.
An hour can be dropped like a glass.

Finding an Old City in the New City

Exactly thirty years ago, in 1984, a lost city was rediscovered beneath Chiang Mai. It all began when some residents in a suburb of Chiang Mai found some ancient Buddhist tablets next to a temple. Abandoned to floodwaters and hundreds of years of silt, Wiang Kum Kam was held to be a myth….until archaeologists realized people were living right on top of it!!!

In 1286, King Mangrai built Wiang Kum Kam on the banks of the Ping River, to be to capital of his new Lanna Kingdom. But the rainy season was not kind to Wiang Kum Kam, and just ten years later, the King relocated the capital to the opposite shore, and the new city of Chiang Mai—which, hey hey, means new city in Thai—superseded its older brother.

Pil and I scooted out there one day in January during the dry season to avoid the flood. The ruins of Wiang Kum Kam are now (metaphorically) buried in the heart of a quiet suburb to the southeast. There are landmark signs pointing you in the right direction, but we got a little lost anyway, and made our way into the first complex of ruins via the backdoor of a temple (at the insistence of a monk). We had read that you can hire a horse carriage for a palfry penny, but there were none to be seen—just a few quiet noodle stalls also selling knick-knacks, and a lone group of Thai tourists.

On Doi Suthep; or: Gold and Elephants

Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, or Doi Suthep for short, is one of the most hallowed places in Northern Thailand, built in 1383 under the auspices of King Keu Naone and his elephant. As the story goes, said elephant was carrying a sacred Buddha relic on his back, and the royal party was following behind, with the intention of building a temple on the spot where the holy elephant stopped. Well, he made it all the way to the top of the mountain, then keeled over and died. Thus the temple was built right there. It's less than an hour away by motorbike, and those switchback turns are fun!

Another fun fact: when I tell people my name is Step, it is pronounced a lot more like Suthep than the part of a staircase, so the mountain and I feel much affinity towards one another.

Wats the Big Deal?

Dog days at the dog wat, Wat Ketkaram.

There are a few things that Southeast Asia has in spades: chilies, bananas, stray dogs, smiles, and temples. In the past three months, we’ve stepped barefoot into more Buddhist temples than we have in our entire lives. In fact, we went from zero to fifty-odd in the span of a few weeks, and we knew virtually nothing about temple architecture or practice before we arrived. We had a lot of learning to do, and luckily we were able to participate in a full moon ceremony in Mae Mut to see what active temple life is like. But there are still hundreds of details and intricacies—the symbolism of certain architectural flourishes, mysterious numbered boxes stuffed with paper like mail slots, the meaning behind poured water—that we’re still trying to unpack. Thus we preface this post with the warning that we are not experts, have probably gotten things wrong, and could have learned a lot more had we not been petting so many temple dogs.

Each temple has its own flavor, and sometimes even its own zodiac animal theme, but common to all of them is the sense of it being a living space. What felt really special to us about all of these wats was how there were so many people there simply to worship. Even at Doi Suthep, which is crawling with multinational tourist bugs, including ourselves, there were Chiang Mai University graduates in their robes, walking circles around the chedi for merit, giggling girls shaking out fortune sticks, people bowing their heads for a monk's blessing. Even at Chiang Mai’s so-called Silver Wat, which is lit up in rotating neons at night, there are monks engaging in nightly “monk chats,” where visitors are invited to chat with disciples about the way of the Buddha. We sat in on one of these and found it interesting, if a little difficult due to language difficulties. (This was before we learned any decent amount of Thai.)

The ordination hall at Wat Ket

A Buddhist Full Moon Service

Just to keep you on your toes about the details of our lives, welcome to a bonus post (it’s shorter I promise) from the thus far ghostwriterly Pil.

Another of the illuminating and heartwarming community experiences from our time at Mae Mut Garden was the full moon service at the local temple, Wat Wimuttikaram. As we may or may not have mentioned at some earlier time (I am illiterate), there are a lot of wats everywhere we’ve been in Thailand so far. If they were not large walled estates containing several buildings, you’d basically be tripping over them. They are fascinating, beautiful places with many doors, and we’ll have more to say about them in future posts. The point, for now, is that Wimuttikaram is the wat nearest to the house of Marco, Nok, and Her Imperial Highness Serena.

The first we heard of the service was the day before, when Nok invited us. That night, after the Ruler of All had fallen asleep, Steppil + Nok assembled small plastic bags containing smaller packets of rice, noodles, and instant coffee. These bags, Nok explained in a low voice so as not to wake the Serena-monster, are gifts that serve a double purpose. They are a contribution toward our own nourishment in future reincarnations—but in this lifetime, they are also presented as a gift to the hungry poor of the village.

Every family also offers flowers, which are added to communal decorative platters and somehow look like hour-long arrangements, despite being the work of minutes. The pink ones on the right were ours.