Into the Hills

Excursion Day:  Chiang Mai is geared up for travelers.  You can rent bikes and scooters, take hiking excursions into the mountains, or arrange shorter bus tours.  Today, it was time for a brief excursion into the mountains to visit a hill tribe village.  It turns out the tribe was the Hmong, one of five or six tribes living in northern Thailand.  Until a few decades ago, the basis of their economy was poppies.  After all, this is the ‘golden triangle.’  Now, they have transitioned to tourism and handicrafts.  In fact, to get to the real village everyone must pass through a gauntlet of shops offering lots of embroidery, traditional clothing, hats, and some jewelry; food, too.  I spent a few bhat on handicrafts in the hope of quashing any idea of returning to poppy cultivation, especially since the village had very few visitors today.  But, again, this is not tourist season here.  

We were fortunate to see a funeral taking place in the council house.  A body I could not see, but I could see the crowd of people gathered around the opposite side of the room.  Not much mourning, and I suspected a ‘celebration’ would come later because food was being prepared in lavish quantities on the back patio and decorations (I suspect for a funeral procession) were being made down a side alley.  The Hmong here are Buddhists, but they came to Thailand centuries ago from China.  So, they practice Chinese burial customs:  they bury their dead.  Thais follow the Indian burial customs: they cremate their dead, the Hindu practice. 

In Doi Pui we were maybe15 miles away from Chiang Mai, but you get to the village via a switch-back road that climbs and climbs into a rainforest.  It is both cooler and mistier in the mountains; I can see why we passed one of the King’s palaces on the way; it’s a relief being up in the hills.

Wat Prathat:  On the edge of the mountains that overlook Chiang Mai was Wat Prathat Doi Suthep temple.  A wat is a monastery temple. I cannot vouch for all these facts but essentially this is the story.  A monk discovered a relic of the Buddha and took it to the Lanna King.   The king put the relic on the back of a white elephant which was sent into the mountains around Chiang Mai.  The elephant stopped and died at what became the site of the temple here.  The first shrine built was to house the relic, a bone, but lots of other temples have been added to the site.  The aspect of the story that does not get mentioned prominently is that the monarch who commissioned the elephant and built the first part of the temple complex was the King of Lanna.  Any use of the word Lanna here in Chiang Mai hearkens back to the time when northern Thailand was a kingdom of its own.  When you visit Wat Prathat, you are seeing Lanna history, not Thai history.  The people of Chiang Mai take pride in their royal past. 

The most interesting part of the temple compound was the “cemetery” that surrounded a bodhi tree.  Remember that most Buddhists in this part of the realm are cremated, so the cemetery provided individually-size cubicles for the ashes.  The cubicles were arranged around the tree trunk.  The names of the individuals, including some Americans, were inscribed on the “front door” to each compartment.  Now, their souls are in heaven with Lord Buddha.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.