Days 429 - 433: Angkor Bodhi Tree Retreat and Meditation Center

I had planned to do a meditation retreat for a few weeks at some point during my trip in Asia. Now that I could see that my trip might be ending soon, I was in a difficult position: I still wanted to do a retreat, but also wanted to be online and working for at least some of the time. Retreats in monasteries typically have strict rules - no electronic equipment, no contact to the outside world, no reading, etc. - which I didn't want to put up with at this point. So I was really happy when I found the Angkor Bodhi Tree Retreat and Meditation Center, which seemed to be more of a regular guesthouse with the added benefit of meditation, yoga, and stretching.

The daily schedule turned out to suit me very well: mornings start with stretching at 6:30, followed by some meditation and breakfast. The main part of the day is free, and in the evening there is yoga, followed by dinner and either stretching or meditation. The early start into the day calls for an early night, of course, and so I've been in bed around 10pm on most days.

I am especially happy about the stretching classes. The classes are led by a former personal trainer who really knows his stuff, and even in the short period of time that I've been here I feel I've made progress and learned a lot about stretching. The yoga classes are excellent as well - putting my muscles to work once again is absolutely lovely. To top it off, the vegetarian food they serve for breakfast and dinner is delicious. All in all, I am really enjoying my time here and have already extended my stay until after new year's.

Day 428: Bangkok - Aranyaprathet - Poi Pet - Siem Reap

This morning, I boarded my trip's second train. The train would take me to Aranyaprathet, a town on the Thai-Cambodian border. Sitting on the window, the train rattling away peacefully, a nice breeze coming in, and watching the lovely landscape pass by - is there a better way to start the journey to a new country?

Since there are only 3rd class trains to Aranyaprathet, we stopped at just about every village on the way. Some had nice train stations and English signage (like the one in the next picture), while others consisted of nothing more than a small shelter and a sign in Thai.

In Aranyaprathet, it was just about impossible to walk out of the train station: masses of tuk-tuk drivers were waiting to to take travelers the remaining 6 kilometers to the border post.

I had read a lot about this border crossing. In years past, the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap must have been one of the worst imaginable journeys. Today, everything went smoothly. There was a rather long wait on the Thai side of the border, and some corruption on the Cambodian side: they demanded an additional visa 'fee' of 100 Thai baht, which then led to extremely speedy processing of the visa-on-arrival form (This was only the second instance of corruption on my trip - the first being the border post when I exited Guatemala overland - which isn't too bad for a 14-month journey in developing countries, don't you think?). Once in Poipet, which is the border town on the Cambodian side, I boarded a minivan to Siem Reap and arrived there in the late afternoon. Welcome to my Holiday in Cambodia!

Day 426: On the Train

Believe it or not, up until this day I hadn't used a single train in over 14 months of traveling (There were trains in Vietnam, but they were about twice as expensive as sleeper buses, so I didn't bother). In Thailand, trains are very affordable and so I boarded a night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok last night. This is a train leaving Chaing Mai railway station:

The carriages were definitely not among the most modern, but built to the purpose, clean and comfortable. This is what they looked like during the day:

In the evening, the carriage attendant came along and converted the carriage into a moving hotel: he folded out the top bunk and made up the beds with mattresses, sheets, pillows, blankets and curtains - all in a rapid speed that must be the result of lots and lots of practice. In the end, my bed looked like this:

After a refreshing night - better than in any of the sleeper buses I've been in - we arrived in Bangkok in the morning with only about an hour's delay. Walking the few blocks to my hostel, I could already notice that Bangkok has a very different climate from Chiang Mai: much hotter, and much more humid. Luckily, I could spend the rest of the day inside, preparing for my job interview tomorrow ;-)

Day 425: Day of the Eleven Wats

After having visited none of Chiang Mai's famous temples in the past days, I spent this morning visiting eleven of them. If I had taken the entire day, I could easily have doubled the number - just to give you an impression of how many temples there are in Chiang Mai.

My first stop was Wat Kuan Kama, just across the street from my hostel. The temple was nothing special, but their entrance was flanked by two golden horses:

One of the most well-known temples in Chiang Mai is Wat Chiang Man. The interior design is different from other temples because the walls are decorated by full color paintings instead of the usual gold ornaments. 

This is one of the paintings in greater detail (as you can see, there are still plenty of ornaments around the paintings):

Behind the main temple building was a golden stupa ringed by stone elephants:

A little on the side, there was another temple building, very peaceful with lots of green surrounding it.

Wat Inthakhin Saduemuang is a tiny temple which appears to be standing almost on the street in the center of Chiang Mai's old town. 

Just inside the temple, like in many others, there was a table with an assortment of Buddha statues and bowls before them - unfortunately, I have no idea what their purpose is:

The main hall, while small in comparison, was richly decorated - and presided by a white Buddha statue (usually the statues seem to be golden, like most of the decorations):

On the left-hand side, there was an array of bowls, probably to collect coin offerings:

The next temple, Wat Phantao, had an ancient, wooden feel to it and was decorated with hundreds of yellow flags (yellow being the king's color, whose birthday it had been a few days earlier):

The inside looked rather sleek and was dominated by a golden Buddha:

To the sides of the Buddha statue, there were bowls containing offerings that lay people had given to the monks. The offerings were surprisingly practical: there was orange cloth, which constitutes a monk's robes, but also shampoo and coffee:

Behind the main building, another stupa:

Almost next door was Wat Chedi Luang, another of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai. The decorations on its front were simply stunning:

Inside, a Buddha statue coated with gold leaf greeted visitors. People seemed to be adding gold leaf to the statue, although I didn't see where they got it from.  

The front of the temple was populated by numerous Buddha statues who were surrounded by flowers:

This is one of the side buildings, with a decoration that was every bit as rich as the main temple's decoration:

Just across the street, there was the next temple, Wat Chang Taem. This was a little more modest - but mainly in size. The Buddha statues adorning the main hall were still gleaming as golden as usual:

Inside Wat Phabong, I saw this tree of sorts - no doubt people making wishes and combining this with an offering to the monks who then pray for the people's wishes:

Almost back at my hostel, I visited my last temple, Wat Lok Molee. The front wall was beautifully decorated with two stone elephants:

The temple's main building was the one that had been so nicely illuminated last night. The view in daylight was very pretty as well:

On both sides of the path leading up to the entrance were artificial trees with silver and gold leaves. You could buy new leaves at a small shop on the side, write your wishes on the leaf and add it to the trees. 

Behind the main building, another stupa. Just compare this one to the two other stupas in this post. Amazing how different they all are, isn't it?

Notice all the stuff that is going on around the stupa: there is a table with small Buddha statues and bowls to the left (similar to the one above), and there are two big strips of orange cloth on which people write things (wishes again, maybe?)

All the temples I've visited in Chiang Mai were very much living things, populated by monks and visited by lay people making offerings, burning incense, and praying. And, of course, a fair share of tourists getting into everybody's way, as usual ;-)

Day 424: History, Bureaucracy and the Cinema

Today marked the day where I had to deal with the hassle of mailing a printed job application for the first time on my trip - mind you, I'm applying for jobs in computer science where you should think that the days of 'paper' are long past. But alas, bureaucracy is a beast that is hard to kill, and so my quest on this fine day was to feed it with more paper instead of attempting to diminish its health.

So, the seemingly trivial act of mailing a finished job application turned into a half-day hike around Chiang Mai. First, I had to find an office supply shop to buy an envelope and a professional-looking folder to ship the application in. The envelope was simple enough, but to find a suitable folder...! The one I chose at the end turned out to have the characters "ipopo" printed on its front - which I found out only after unpacking it, of course. I hope the search committee is sensible enough to work with the electronic version so they may never get to see the folder. In line with ridiculously designed folders, the department store also had a decorated Christmas tree that was only slightly over the top ;-)

The second step was finding an internet cafe with printer. The first few ones I found were more like gaming cafes and didn't have printers. When I finally found one with a printer, I went ahead and printed the thing on the standard paper they supplied instead of shopping around for 'nice' paper. Finally, I had to find a reliable courier service that would get the application to its destination in less than a week's time. Reliability and speed had their price, of course: I paid about 30 euro to get a small stack of paper posted. The paper version's added benefit? My signature! Bureaucracy be praised.

To reward myself for successfully mailing the application, I visited the Chiang Mai arts and cultural center which is a museum explaining the history of Chiang Mai and its surroundings. There was a lot of audio and video content in the museum which is usually really good but wasn't optimal today: I didn't have much time before the museum closed, and reading would have been much faster. But even when I started skipping the watching and listening, there were a few interesting exhibits. These, for example:

I had already seen these in Laos, in a museum that didn't allow photography, so I was happy to see them again. They are bamboo pieces containing old Buddhist scriptures, and thus quite a valuable treasure.

Another room that was very interesting for me was this one:

The room's theme? Thailand's king. The artwork on the far wall depicts him (the figure that is brightly lit up), and the remainder of the room is decorated with pictures of the king and queen, predominantly taken during their visits to Chiang Mai. Could you imagine a room like this in any Western museum?

In the evening, I went to the cinema - for the first time in more than a year! I had found a movie theater in a mall close to my hostel that was showing an English language version of The Hobbit, and spontaneously bought a ticket for the evening screening when I passed the mall in the morning. The cinema was huge, but almost empty - just a few expats and Thai people wanting to improve their English. There were no advertisements except for a few movie trailers - and then came the highlight of the evening: everybody had to stand up while the cinema played the king's anthem - specifically the king's anthem, not the national anthem. As soon as the anthem was finished, the movie started. I enjoyed it very much, but was a little annoyed by the fact that there was only a single woman in the entire cast. I'd never noticed before, but now that I think about it you can probably observe a lack of women in every single one of Tolkien's books. Sad, isn't it?

On the way back to the hostel, I noticed that one of the temples on the way was beautifully lit up:

Day 423: Adventures near Chiang Mai

Realizing that my time in Chiang Mai was running out - crafting academic job applications and preparing for interviews does take quite a bit of time - I booked a day trip for today that included several activities. After we drove out of Chiang Mai, our first stop was a visit to the village of a local hill tribe, the Long Neck Karen. They are called long necks because their women elongate their necks with a set of metal rings worn around the neck. Kids only have four or five rings, but older women may have many more - like her, for example:

The visit to the village felt a little like a visit to the zoo, however, especially because the guide constantly pressured me to take pictures.

Our next stop, after another seemingly endless drive, was whitewater rafting. At this time of year, the rapids were almost nonexistent, maybe class II but no more. I imagine that the river really gets going during the rainy season though. Some of the girls in my boat had never done rafting before, so even the tame rapids were greeted by screams, which I found rather hilarious ;-)

After rafting downriver for about an hour, we got out, had lunch, and were hurried to the next activity: elephant riding. This was quite fun because it included feeding bananas to the elephants. The elephants were trained to put their trunks over their heads and expect bananas to be put there.

Compared to my elephant experience in Laos, however, this was definitely worse because the elephants were much less well-treated. Some of them were trained for a dancing show - which wasn't included in my tour, luckily, but I still saw it from a distance. In the afternoon, when almost all other tourists had already left, it became apparent what this training does to the elephants' natural behavior: even when feeding, they were swinging their trunks and tails and legs like they had done during the show. They even include baby elephants in the show. This is one of them:

The next activity promised much more fun and less concern about mistreated animals: ziplining! I was with a rather big group of Chinese people, some of whom had even brought their moms along to join in the adventure. Not all of them were entirely sold on the idea of hurtling through the forest on a thin steel rope, and it was fun to watch how they were slowly convinced to try regardless ;-)

Even though the course was much less impressive than the one I had done in Ecuador, it was still good fun. And the view from the treetops was amazing, of course:

Just before leaving, we had the opportunity to walk around for a bit and get a last look at the elephants. I especially loved the baby elephants - so cute!

Day 420: Cooking in Chiang Mai

Another country, another cookery class! Today I joined a full-day class on an organic farm just outside of Chiang Mai to discover the secrets of Thai cooking. But first, we made a stop at one of the markets in Chiang Mai to gather ingredients. Two stalls were particularly impressive for me. First: the rice shop.

In the picture, the buckets in the front row have sticky rice, while the buckets in the second row have jasmine rice (each of different qualities, that explains the price differences). The prices per kilo are between 50 and 70 euro cents, with the highest quality jasmine rice (not in the picture) going to almost one euro. If you look closely, you can really see the difference between the two types of rice: sticky rice is very white, while jasmine is more cream colored. But the differences go deeper than just the visual: in the field, sticky rice doesn't need much water, while jasmine rice is grown in rice paddies that are constantly covered in water. In cooking, sticky rice must be steamed, while jasmine rice can be cooked in a pot or rice cooker. In usage, sticky rice can be used for desert (the high starch content makes it almost sweet), and it is eaten with the fingers (make a ball and dip it), while jasmine rice is eaten with a spoon, and only as a side dish for savory food.

The second stall that I found fascinating was the nut shop. They had many different kinds of nuts and snacks which looked really amazing on display:

I bought a bag of peanuts that had a unique mix of spices that I'd never seen on peanuts before: chili, sugar and kaffir lime leaves. SO GOOD! Especially the kaffir lime leaves were amazingly aromatic and added a great flavor to the peanuts.

After we were finished in the market, we got in a van and drove out of Chiang Mai to the farm. There we were greeted by a Thai welcome snack:

To eat the snack, you take the green betel leaf and fold it twice, then open up one of the folds as a pocket and add one cube each of ginger, shallots and lime, a little bit of fresh chili, three roasted peanuts and a pinch of roasted and grated coconut meat. On top of that you put a teaspoon of sweet syrup (which has fish sauce and sugar, and I'm not sure what else). Then the entire creation goes into the mouth - and chewing, you are greeted by an explosion of flavors. Yum!

Since the school was located on an organic farm in the countryside, there were all kinds of animals around. For example, these pigeons who were parading around with their beautiful tail feathers constantly on display.

After the welcome snack, we went to work on the first two dishes, a stir fry and spring rolls. These satiated our initial hunger and gave us strength to work on the remaining dishes - especially the hand-made curry paste turned out to be a good piece of work. These are the ingredients for three types of curry paste (top left: red; top right: green; bottom: massaman). To make the curry paste, all the ingredients had to be chopped up finely and then ground using a mortar and pestle. I already knew how to work a mortar and pestle efficiently (from grinding chocolate in Guatemala), and so my green curry paste turned out very nicely.

Having made the paste, cooking the curry itself was a breeze: add coconut milk, curry paste and chicken to the wok, stir for a bit, add vegetables, let boil for a bit, add seasonings (the standard Thai seasonings that are used for most dishes are sugar, fish sauce and oyster sauce), and finally add kaffir lime leaves and basil leaves - done!

The curry I made is in the lower right of this picture (it is eaten with rice, of course, which is not in the picture):

The other dish is a Tom Yum soup, also delicious but not quite as good as the curry. I think that being in Thailand may make me a major curry addict, it's that awesome!

Day 418: First glimpses of Chiang Mai

Today I finally decided to go out and see a bit of Chiang Mai - or rather, I met two people at my hostel who persuaded me to tag along with them ;-)

We walked around the old town for a bit, and then stopped to visit Wat Phra Singh, one of many big temples in Chiang Mai.

Like so many Buddhist temples, it was very beautiful, and very rich in golden ornaments - including the golden dragons that line all the staircases that lead up to the main prayer hall:

Inside, more gold awaited, along with many flowers that devotees brought in. The huge Buddha statue at the back of the temple is allegedly removed from the temple once a year and paraded around the city - although I'm not quite sure how they manage to get it through the temple doors...

Above the prayer hall's main area, there were a few wires where people came to hang streamers of some kind:

Each of these streamers carried cards on one side where people had written wishes, and five 20 baht notes (about 5 euro each) on the other side. Apparently, people come in on their birthday to make wishes - health, money, etc. - for their next year. On the following morning, the monks pray for all the wishes that are currently hanging there, and take everything down afterwards. The donations then go towards the upkeep of the temple.

Later, we wandered around the Sunday night market for a while. The market is huge, and it sells mostly souvenirs. Since it was the market's 10-year anniversary, it was even bigger and busier than usual. I'm still not interested in buying touristy dirt collectors, and so I decided to escape the market and its crowds and go for another massage. 

Compared to the traditional Lao massage that I had a while ago, the Thai massage today was almost gentle. It only really hurt in the one spot that I'm always incredibly tense in when I'm working on a computer and not doing sports (which is my shoulders) and was otherwise quite a relaxing experience. Like in Laos, massages in Thailand are incredibly cheap: about 4 to 5 euro for a sixty-minute traditional massage. Amazing, isn't it?