Visit to female monk monastery (Peeksuni)

On December 4th we were invited to a ceremony call Taut Katin. This is the ceremony to bring necessities to monks after they have completed their 4 month annual rains retreat.  Our friend Rachanee Valls was one of the sponsors.  The temple is about 1 hour south of Chiang Mai near Chom Thong.

It is a real family affair with people from all walks of life and all ages taking part in the "merit".  What was very unusual is that the monks at this temple are women not men.  When first entering the temple we thought we saw monks eating breakfast, but at some point I guessed they were women not men.  The robes are the same color and of course all their hair, eye brows etc  are shaved.  The lineage of female monks was lost in Thailand but not in Sri Lanka, so the "abbot" of this monastery went to Sri Lanka to be ordained and that then allows her to ordain others.

The role of female monks in the Thai Buddhist bureaucracy is still hotly debated, some monks recognizing the women while others do not.  And even in Thai lay society the role of females as teachers of the Dhamma is open to debate.

Here are some photos of the day



Here is some video of the event.  I love the music ....


click here to see a map to the temple

View trip to Wat Nee Taraam in a larger map

Marisa's and Emmett's surprise wedding gift

My younger daughter Marisa was married on July 14th and I wanted to surprise them with a Thai frizbee themed gift since that was how they met and I was wracking my brain as what we could do. Then I saw a guy doing some silver work and an idea came together. I worked with him on the design and I had a wooden frizbee shaped base made. Then Bev and I wrote a story to introduce it. The story is below and then some pictures follow:


As many of you know Thailand has a special place in our heart – it is where I met Bev, it is where we were married and where Marisa, and Amara, were born – so it seems fitting that on this occasion I should tell you a little known Thai folk tale.  


This folk tale is about elephants and of course you know that elephants are widely revered in Thailand – in fact white elephants are considered royalty and are treated very, very specially with their own houses in the grounds of the royal palace.  Also our family loves these animals too!  But this story is about ordinary elephants. 
In the olden times elephants  were the work horses, the war cavalry and even though revered were often killed for their ivory tusks.  This tale is about 2 elephants who grew up in the forests of Thailand who played together and both lost their parents when they were quite young – how,  the story doesn’t say – but the young elephants were found and taken away to be trained to work in the logging industry.


The mahouts who worked with the elephants named the elephants Bee and Flitz and for many years the two elephants worked in different logging camps and did not see each other.  One day both mahouts took them to participate in the Surin Elephant Round-up in north-east Thailand.  This round up has become a huge tourist attraction not to be missed and it takes part every November where you can see literally hundreds of elephants. At this round up the elephants show off their skills – there are mock battles, tug of war between one elephant and hundreds of men and women and I will give you one chance to guess who always wins – and games – the elephants play football and you would be amazed at their skill.  


Now another well known fact about elephants is that they have amazing memories so now I bet you think you know where this story is heading!  Of course Bee and Flitz did see each other and did remember each other – so now what!  As you also know elephants can be quite mischievous and playful.  At the beginning of the event the elephants are presented with a large plates of fruits and other elephant goodies and a shaman does an opening ceremony.  As the elephants were enjoying their feast Bee picked up a plate and tossed it into the field.  Flitz then ran and threw it back much to the entertainment of the audience!  


Well they continued playing but left all the other team members out of the game!  They had such fun throwing the plate back and forth to each other so that from that day on the game of “jahn bin” became known as FlitzBee!


Well this is so relevant to us because had they not created this game Emmett and Marisa might not have met! So we are so happy they did meet playing this ancient Thai game and becoming part of our family!


To commemorate this we commissioned this plaque for you both showing Flitz and Bee 

World War - D

This is a very interesting book!

A VERY thorough and compelling overview and history and concrete suggestions for solving the worldwide problem of drug prohibition.  He lays out the enormous problems that have been created by the "War on Drugs" and how it can be turned around.  

Click on the image to get more info. 
I just ordered the Mobi = Kindle version






tom

Fungus can save the world ?

This TED Talk is Extraordinary and exciting

Chiang Mai Flower Festival 2012

Chiang Mai Flower Festival Feb 3-5, 2012

The annual flower festival on the first weekend in February is always something to look forward to and this year the floats seemed to be much better and the sound systems not so crazily loud. We watched the parade when it was further on from the start where there were mainly Thais lined up to watch or sitting on chairs which they had brought. Some were even sitting on cardboard or paper at the side of the street and there was a picnic atmosphere to the whole event with food vendors selling their wares. We are always amazed at the creativity of the design of the floats and how the flowers are used, and this year there seemed to me a greater use of "live" flowers. We enjoyed watching one young vendor selling ice-cream; she was beautifully made up and remained calm, gently smiling amidst the throng of her customers and the heat. Every customer was served in the order they arrived and she handed each customer their ice-cream with a gracious smile.

The video is probably too long but I like the contrasts of the old and new and too many pictures so feel free to quickly hit the right arrow or just close it :-)  --- Tom

Here are some videos from the parade:-



Some pictures too

Xmas 2011 Trip in Western Thailand

The ghost of Wat Don Kaew - Mae Ramat

We left CM on Friday, December 23rd to drive to Mae Sariang, a sleepy town on the river Yuam and stayed at a lovely wooden guest house, the River House Hotel.  We took a walk around the town in the late afternoon visiting the temples Wat Jong Sung and Wat Si Bunruang, both in the Burmese-Shan style, and came across the evening market.

Here is a video of 21st century temple technology that I really don't like but it's not my temple!

After breakfast, which was included in our room rate we drove on a very bad road to Mae Sam Laep thinking that we might take a boat ride on the river Salawin which divides Thailand from Burma.  The village was interesting with houses built on the side of cliffs but after a walk around we decided to forgo the boat ride and headed back to Mae Sariang and onto Mae Sot.

Here are some slides:

The drive from Mae Sariang  to Mae Sot was long and over roads which were winding, steep, unpaved in parts, and full of pot holes – a recurring theme in our travels!
We wanted to get to Mae Sot in time to deliver some packages to the Borderline shop that evening as they were going to be closed for 2 days for Xmas.  We made it there in time – but by the time we arrived in Mae Sot it was dark and we had great difficulties in finding a suitable place for the night.  However, we ended up in the DK Hotel, which is part of the DK bookstore.  The room was OK (450 Baht/night with air and WiFi) and we stayed there for 2 nights.  The next day, Xmas Day, we had an early morning walk around Mae Sot after which we drove to the border town of Waley, not much to see there, except it was somewhat surprising how “open”’ the border is.  We saw rice being brought from the Burmese side into Thailand over a log plank bridge, while the “official” crossing with a soldier sitting on the Thai side was only a few yards away.  We then drove to the more popular border town to cross into Burma via the Friendship Bridge – the so-called market was very disappointing.  That night we had a very nice dinner at a Burmese restaurant after visiting Wat Mani.
Monday  was a long drive to Umphang with some beautiful scenery over roads with many, many curves (they claim 1219 curves) on very steep hills.


Some slides:
Umphang is another sleepy town, which has grown in the past few years to accommodate the tourists who want to trek, raft, and visit the largest and most difficult to access waterfall in Thailand etc.  We spent the night in a charming guest house Tu Ka Su and for the first time on our trip it was cold – that was the night that Tom had his feet in my computer case to keep them warm!  We asked about taking a raft / ride to the waterfall and was told the price was 4000 baht but after asking around we found another group that offered the same tour for 3000 Baht which seemed more reasonable. However once we were on the raft we noticed that the was a sound of bubble coming up a lot and the following video made wonder if saving 1000 Baht was a good decision!

The next morning (Tuesday) we took a raft trip to see the biggest waterfall in Thailand called Thilawsu.  It was a pleasant ride on the river in a rubber raft which had to be inflated every so often by the boat man!  Luckily, there were no dangerous rapids to navigate, and on the way we stopped to warm our feet at some hot springs. We traveled through some very tall gorges and you could see debris that was caught at least 3-4 yards above the current water level so it was clear that in the rainy season this was a raging river/stream!


Here is a video of some of the rafting:

Once we reached the park we had a very, very rough 14 Km (9 mile) drive to where we could start our walk to the falls.  It took us over an hour to cover 14 kms.  The falls were beautiful and very easy to get to as the 1.5 Km path was concrete all the way. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.


More Slides



We left very early on Wednesday for the long drive to Tak via Mae Ramat and the Phumiphon Dam.   In Mae Ramat we visited Wat Don Kaew with a white marble Buddha, one of 3 statues supposedly carved in Rangoon;  one image is in India, the other in Pakistan and the third one at Wat Don Kaew.  We also “paid” for some roof tiles with our names written on them.
On our way to Tak from the Dam we stopped at Wat Phra Borommathat, supposedly the most beautiful temple in the province.  
We arrived quite late in the afternoon and some monks were doing their evening chanting which was quite nice:

In Tak we stayed at Viang Tak Riverside Hotel,  the nicest hotel of our trip where we did not have to walk through a wet floor to use the toilet at night, but the guest house in Mae Sariang was more picturesque.  On Thursday morning before leaving Tak we tried to walk through the old Chinese district but the roads were all torn up; on the way stopped at Wat  where the Viharn temple building looks like a Christian Church.
If you are still awake here is the final set of slides

The drive back to Chiang Mai on Thursday was uneventful.  All in all,  a very nice 7-day trip. We drove over 1600 Kms (1000 miles) and 1000s of curves on steep hills and even more potholes!
Here is a map of the whole trip: