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.

From Opium to Oolong: A Day Trip to Doi Mae Salong

The geometry of this region was just stunning.

The view from the Phra Boromathat chedi devoted to the Queen Mother.

As part of the weekly schedule at the Friendly Farm near Chiang Rai, we would work a brief morning shift on Saturdays and then had the opportunity to accompany them to the city for the late afternoon and evening, at the end of which we would meet up and ride back home. We had Sundays off.

One week, having read of the nearby historic town of Mae Salong—where some Kuomintang from China hid out following the 1949 revolution, and where one of the king’s Royal Projects has transitioned the mountain slopes’ agricultural production from opium poppy to tea and other legal cash crops, and where there’s a wat—we decided to check it out.

Having spent Saturday night in Chiang Rai so that we could rent a motorcycle and zoom up the mountain Sunday morning, we commenced our zoom: Step driving, Pil clinging with both hands to the seat-bar behind him. It was a long, buttbone-battering trip. Our poor little motorcycle huffed and puffed its way up a steep grade, and more than once I, at least, thought we were going to have to push it. We coasted on truly the ghost of fumes into a little village high on the mountain and successfully filled up the tank. “Mae Salong?” we asked, pointing at the ground where we were standing. They shook their heads and pointed farther up the mountain. Puttputtputtputtputtputt-puttputtputt...

No Hinting. Stay on Trial.

At Mae Mut Garden, we typically work six days per week and take Sunday off. (Partly this is because the Karen staff, being Christian, take Sunday off anyway.) On our Sundays, we go out and see the surrounding area. The first two times, Step and I went out on a motor-scooter by ourselves, to chase those infamous waterfalls. Since then, we have been fortunate enough to go out with the whole family, including Pii Hom and her 14-year-old daughter, Nong Nam.

No hinting.
Stay on trial.
Don't write.

One of our recent such outings was to Mae Wang National Park—home of strange, amazing sandstone-like formations as well as many ambitious pebbles. Originally, weeks ago, we had been discussing the aforementioned Sundays-out-in-the-world plan after lunch. Marco disappeared into the house and brought out a glossy tri-fold brochure with beautiful photos of this place and much writing in Thai. “Where is this?” he asked one of the staff in Thai, pointing at the photo, and thus our adventure was born.

Fast forward. After breakfast and watering, we pile in the pickup truck. In the cab, we have Marco, Nok, Her Highness Serena, Pii Hom, and Bruno. In the bed, facing backwards and waving at two intrepid Thai children doing the same thing but standing up, we have Step, Molly (our super-co-volunteer—American, my age, superb company, former New Orleans mule driver and tour guide), and Pil. We just go where they take us, you know? As we rumble down the road, all four dogs sprint after us. We discuss the logistics of stealing one and bringing it to Burma. We do not. (Editor’s Note: We haven’t gone to Burma yet, so the possibility has not been ruled out, and also, it’s not stealing if every other day your host tells you to take every single dog except for Spaghetti.)

I Ate All of the Bananas on Doi Pha Ngaem (ดอยผาแง่ม)

Happy New Year! To celebrate, the whole Mae Mut Garden Gang climbed up to the highest Buddhist shrine in Thailand, on Doi Pha Ngaem. The whole time we were hiking, I was deceived that this was Doi Inthanon, the most ultra prominent peak in Thailand, and even repeated multiple times in Thai, "We are hiking up Doi Inthanon, I am very tired!" but I guess I pronounced "Inthanon" with such mangled tones that it was perceived to be farang¹ gibberish.

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls, Because You Will Get Lost Repeatedly

Yesterday, Phil and I used our day off to hit the Mae Sapok Waterfall (nam-tok mesa-pohk; น้ำตกแม่สะป๊อก). Except first we hit a few potholes, and then we hit the sign for the Mae Sapok Waterfall, and then we didn't hit the Mae Sapok Waterfall, we hit a mini-waterfall, because if experience has taught us anything, is that we are terrible at finding waterfalls. Last week we tried to find this same waterfall and instead ended up at the Mae Wang Waterfall, where my camera died capturing Phil walking across a narrow bamboo bridge. It's an accurate depiction of how this feat made my stomach feel.

Image taken in-camera, no Photoshop applied.

Well, this week we decided we'd do it right. We followed Marco's directions to a tee, and then came to a sign that said in Roman characters (in addition to a thousand Thai ones): MAE SAPOK WATERFALL. We registered that it was in 500m, but failed to register the arrow pointing right. So we turned left.