Thai(m) for a Change

“You ain’t gotta go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Those barroom closing calls that I heard all too often back in my drinking days echoed through my head during the final few weeks I spent in India.

I probably could have lingered around a while longer but I knew I had soaked up enough of the culture for this trip. But more pressingly, the 180-day validity of my visa was drawing rapidly to a close. I either had to leave or do what is called a visa run – a short trip out of the country before coming back.

So in planning my next steps, I asked myself what did I want to do that I had not accomplished to date. The answer was Vipassana, which is a type of Buddhist meditation retreat. But India does not have a monopoly on Vipassana. While it is offered in many of the Buddhist monastery communities I visited earlier in my trip, India is not officially a Buddhist country.

So why not do this in an actual Buddhist country? My Kiwi friend Benjamin introduced me to the concept when we first met in Dharamshala back in September and he had done his in Thailand. I found an international Vipassana center called Wat Phra That Si Chomtong, near Chiang Mai, Thailand, and signed up to arrive in mid-May.

And here we are. In a Chinese hostel in southeast Asia, getting ready for 10 days alone with our thoughts. No cell phones or computer blogs, no books or journals, no yoga classes, no coffee or cafes, no talking or socializing with fellow participants, no eating past noon, no napping during the day.

Just 16 hours a day of sitting and walking meditation on the grounds of a Thai Buddhist temple, two modest meals a day and the daily lesson and meetings with meditations coaches.

At least that is what I understand of the rules for Vipassana.

But the first two weeks in Thailand, I set aside a bit of time to explore the cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Big City Bangkok

The flight, which left Trivandrum late in the evening, connected through Mumbai in the wee hours of a Monday morning and arrived early in the capital city of Thailand.

By late morning, I had found myself at a hostel in the area of Khaosan Road, which is a touristy area with a lively nightlife. It was very quiet the day I arrived. As it turns out, May 1st is the national Labor Day holiday in Thailand; so I could not get to a bank to pick up my cash transfer. I was operating on limited funds that day but as it turns out, the jetlag from the overnight travel combined with the tropical summer heat deposited me conveniently into a bunk bed for most of the day.

I did get out to Khaosan Road to explore a little that evening and saw the street vendors selling scorpions and other crunchy insects as reggae music played from the local weed shops. Prior to arriving, I was of the understanding that cannabis was still illegal in Thailand but it turns out that it was decriminalized about eight months ago and the dispensaries are already on every city block in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Regardless, I have no real desire to visit one of these places. The novelty wore off back in Vancouver in 1999.

The following day, I got my cash and set out to explore the capital city and found my way around almost entirely on foot or by using the efficient metro trains to get from place to place. There are also inexpensive private transportation services called Grab and Bolt, which are akin to Uber or Lyft in the U.S.

While the city is big, it does not feel as crazy as the big cities of India. People are more spread out and traffic flows in an orderly direction along designated lanes of traffic. There is almost no honking of horns on the streets. There are real sidewalks along the streets, designated crosswalks for pedestrians and less congestion in general.

You can tell it is a big city, but it feels a lot smaller after all that time in India.

Chilling in Chiang Mai

While I spent a total of three days in Bangkok, Most of my time in Thailand was set aside in the northern city of Chiang Mai, which is where I waited for my Vipassana retreat to begin.

Chiang Mai is a city of maybe 200,000 people and I stayed in the Old Town, which is a roughly one-kilometer square surrounded by a moat and the remnants of a brick wall. The airport is less than two kilometers from the Chinese hostel where I stayed and there is a swank neighborhood to the northeast owned by a world famous barista.

It’s a lot more mellow than Bangkok and has all the allure of a medium sized city without being too big. Unfortunately there is no metro rail public transit but Grab and Bolt are both very active.

Temples Galore

Thailand is known for the many Buddhist temples that adorn its cities. Some are historic or house significant Buddha images while others are purely decorative, intended to draw in curious tourists.

I started my tour of these temples with the famous Grand Palace and the temple of the Emerald Buddha, which is also on the palace grounds.

The elaborate palace and temple were built by King Rama I after he ascended to the throne in 1782 and have served as the Thai royal family’s residence, ceremonial grounds and seat of some government functions since.

The temple is quite elaborate and features an emerald Buddha icon that is dressed in ceremonial clothing at the change of each season. There are also halls dedicated to religious activities and for housing artifacts or sacred scriptures.

The entire outer wall of the temple is painted in murals depicting scenes from the Ramakien, which is a Thai version of the Hindu tale of the Ramayana. Later that day, I would also visit a theater for a sample of a Khon dance performance in which Hanuman – the monkey king hero of both versions of the tale – battled a sea nymph who was hampering construction of the bridge to Lanka.

I knew little of the tale of the Ramayana before I arrived in India, but it has grown to be one of my favorite pieces of classical mythology and it is kind of cool to see this Thai take on the legend.

In addition to the palace grounds, there are several temples in the vicinity, including the Wat Pho temple, which is home to the world’s largest reclining Buddha statue and the War Arun, or the Temple of Dawn, which requires a short ferry ride across the canal to the west of the palace.

I also found one other temple near the studio where the free musical performance took place. A group of monks there were performing an ordination ceremony, including the a young monk who appeared to be about seven or eight years of age and whose mother looked on proudly.

The following day, I would also visit Wat Traimit, which is home of the world’s largest pure gold statue, weighing in at 5,500 kilograms and worth an estimated value of more than $250 million by today’s gold prices. While no one knows exactly when this massive gold statue was created, it survived conquests by invading armies only because it had been covered in a layer of plaster to hide its solid gold identity from the foreign looters. In addition to the statue and museum of its history, this temple sits on the northern edge of Bangkok’s Chinatown district and has a museum dedicated to the Chinese immigrants of the capital city.

In Chiang Mai, I visited several temples, mainly those around where I was staying. After seeing four or five similar temples, though, they all start to blend together. One unique temple here is the Silver Temple, which as the name suggests, is all silver but inside, there are pictures of UFOs etched on the floors and one engraved door panel shows a deity of some sort with an electric guitar. There is also a large and old wooden temple.

There are basically temples on every corner and in every small town. You never know what you will find what you walk into one, but it could be very cool, or it might just be a traditional place of worship without any buzzers or bells to try to draw in the tourists. Those, however, are usually the best places to take a few minutes and just sit back and meditate, away from the people and activity that swarms around the more popular sites.

Buddhist Does not Imply Vegetarian

While Thailand is a proudly Buddhist nation, it does not mean that the people strictly follow the teachings of the Buddha. I’m referring here specifically to ahimsa, or the principle of non-violence that is the cause for many devout Buddhists to be vegetarian.

Even without the language barrier, finding vegetarian options at Thai restaurants can be even more challenging than it is in the United States. And street food almost always features some kind or meat or seafood.

There are a fair number of vegan or vegetarian restaurants tucked away on the city streets and some market vendors will have vegetarian versions of their staple foods, like the gyoza, which was called a mo-mo in India.

Since I am not a hard-core vegan or vegetarian, I am willing to fudge the rules on this a little bit. Like a bit of seafood here or there is not so bad; and I just got done eating a really good bowl of mushroom rice porridge from a Michelin-rated restaurant that was made with pork broth.

All that aside, Thailand does have some really good food for relatively cheap. And when I say relative, I mean relative to U.S. prices. Don’t get me wrong, food and most everything else is considerably more expensive here than it is in India, but you can get a really nice and filling meal for between $5 and $10 or a lighter meal for as little as $2.

Of course, there is pad thai – Thailand’s staple noodle dish that most Americans are at least vaguely familiar with. But there are lots of other yummy options for the adventurous eater. Khao soi is a coconut-based soup with crispy noodles on top; pad see ew, a soup with wide noodles; tom yum soup; and red, green or massaman curries. There are also lots of Chinese-style dishes like spring rolls, steamed buns and fried rice dishes as well as the Thai take on continental food.

And it is all quite yummy, but be warned that it can be quite fiery.

Ayurveda Out the Window

Since it is all so wildly different than Indian food, it is very difficult for me to discern what might make for good ayurvedic food choices here. And despite the fact that I just had a panchakarma cleansing done less than a month ago, I think between the general heat and humidity of the southeast Asian summer and the spicy food that my pitta dosha is way out of whack again. My digestion seems healthy but I can feel my agni, or internal fire, move in less than desirable directions.

And that brings me to coffee, which is ubiquitous in Thailand. For as popular as tea was in India, coffee is equally popular here. It is everywhere, and of course, I have been indulging, probably too much. And of course this only adds to the pitta imbalance issue.

It probably doesn’t help that my only friend here, Andreu, a Russian who is the only other current denizen of this Chinese hostel, is a huge coffee lover too.

And then there is the Thai bubble tea, which is a tea with tapioca balls at the bottom, that has also been gaining popularity in the United States in recent years.

Yoga, Qigong and Tai Chi

When I was first dreaming of my trip to Asia, I envisioned spending a couple of these warmer months studying Qigong or Tai Chi Ch’uan in central China, where it would be cooler but not too cold.

Unfortunately, because of continuing coronavirus restrictions and the unfavorable political relationship between China and the United States, I decided early on that now is not the right time to visit Zhongguo, as the Chinese refer to their Middle Country.

When I arrived in Chiang Mai, I started looking for places to do yoga and during my explorations, I found a place just a block away from my hostel that taught Qigong and Tai Chi. I only had a week to devote to the practice, but it was a nice opportunity to expand my experience with this ancient system of energy movement, which is essentially the Chinese equivalent of yoga.

As a side note, I originally learned Tai Chi when I was a 20-year-old student at the Ohio State University and then when I ran out of Tai Chi courses to enroll in, I decided to explore yoga. This was at one of the major turning points of my spiritual journey in this lifetime and this trip feels like it is a cyclical extension of that crucial experience. It is, if you will, the fruition of the seeds of karma I was sowing at that time – although I have had some rough detours along the way.

Back to the point, I spent a week learning Qigong and Tai Chi. I won’t say I am a master or anything, but it is nice to have some real world experience in addition to the YouTube videos I have watched in recent years.

I also found time to do my Sudarshan kriya in the nearby parks of Old Town Chiang Mai, where two separate groups of Tai Chi practitioners were assembled in groups, moving fluidly in unison to Mandarin counting. It was really cool to get to see this. Maybe not as impressive as being in a city park in a major Chinese metropolis watching groups of hundreds of practitioners, but China is not in my karma yet.

I did also check out a couple of the local yoga places, including a nice Iyengar school and an evening class that was called an ayurvedic flow, in which we focused on cooling off the fiery pitta of the extremely hot day, along with practicing some of Raviji’s sequence during my morning meditations in the park.

12 Stepping

One of the nice things about both Bangkok and Chiang Mai is that they have solid recovery communities. With lots of western expatriates calling Thailand home, there are plenty of AA and other 12 Step meetings in both of these cities.

I found a nice recovery club in the heart of Bangkok that has a meeting every day at noon and in Chiang Mai, the park where I have been doing my morning meditations has a 9 a.m. meeting six days a week and there is a 12 Step Room about two kilometers from my hostel with noon and 6 p.m. meetings basically every day of the week.

The meetings are pretty much all westerners with the exception of the two local Thai guys I saw at the meeting in Bangkok, and predominantly men of my age or older. Anyway, it is good that the meetings are here and have given me a productive way to spend my spare time – along with an air-conditioned space to get out of the heat for an hour.

Elephants and Other Fun Stuff

I would be remiss to omit the Sunday morning romp I had at the Chiang Mai Elephant Home along with two young Australian newlywed couples. We were joined by five others, mostly Israeli travelers, at the site.

Before selecting the company, I spent a little time researching the most ethical elephant sanctuaries and learned that one of the best was just along the street I was staying on Old Town. I paid a littlre more than the 900 Baht ($25) advertised by the tour agencies, but I felt assured that the experience would be better for the animals.

During that trip, we got to prepare a vitamin ball, which we fed to the group of five elephants, which were brought in by the group of local men who cared for them. The family included three generations of elephants, including a 45-year-old grandmother, a mother of about 25 years and the youngest was a 6-year-old female.

In addition to feeding the elephants, who spend pretty much their whole day eating, we got to slather them with mud and bathe them in the stream. One also gave us kisses, but we did not ride them or anything.

We concluded the day with a swim at a nearby waterfall and still had plenty of time to get back to the city for the evening. It was definitely a pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning.

Some other pleasnat little diversions included going to see Marvel’s new Guardians of the Galaxy movie in 3D at the mall cinema in Chiang Mai, which was an excellent investment just for the sake of sitting in an air-conditioned theater for two and a half hours in the midst of a southeast Asian heat wave. I also visited a Mars-themed cafe in Chiang Mai and had a couple of really relaxing Thai massages over the course of the week.

So that’s basically how I spent the hours after 2 a.m. on this journey, as I awaited the 4 a.m. wake up gong for my first Vipassana meditation.