Chiang Mai Oh My
A Visa Run, and Much More

Leaving town--and midterms. As I hastily scarfed down my curry at a food stall opposite the minibus station in my provincial border town, the driver beckoned across the alleyway that it was time to leave. Alright, I said, offering the rest of the fish and rice to my office's IT guy, who'd driven me downtown on the motorbike. In the approaching twilight, an aging gentleman ushered me into the passenger seat of the mini. He was the same man who'd told me an hour earlier that there weren't any more buses that night. Nuts to him!

As usual, I was flying by the seat of my travelling pants, unable to trust anyone, maneuvering through whichever late-night bus schedules would get me out of town and on to Chiang Mai so I could renew my tourist visa.
I needed to get out of town. I needed to travel again. I had had a rough week. I realized that if one isn't careful, midterm examinations can be as draining for a teacher as they are for students.

Travel. As I sat surveying the landscape from the van, I realized that I'd been stationary for the longest period in my life. For two months I had gone no further than a cave thirty kilometers away from my office. Even as a child I probably travelled further and more often than this. My bike here is my main form of transport and I had been living nose to the ground since early February. And those hills that appeared as mere mirages of forest in the distance bordering my town? They were real mountains--mountains I hadn't even known existed! And I was flying through them, reading every Thai sign I could like a child reading English for the first time.

It made me remember what my housemate here once said about travel: "Psychiatrists may not recommend travel as a means of changing your life, but it's always worked for me!" And so it was working. I had been more stressed out than I had noticed. My class load has been high, my attitude too serious, my midterm assignments too long and difficult. I had been a real hard ass, trying to cram as much English instruction into my three months here as I could. Language aquisition--life, even--doesn't work like that.

My minibus driver helped the situation. He had obviously made the choice to be happy. The portly fellow bowed and curtsied to the passengers and honked and gassed through the dry hills, speeding around corners like any good Thai driver should.

Chiang Mai, and a curious Thai monk: Upon arrival in Chiang Mai, I secured lodging, slept poorly (on account of the cheap hotel mattress, which I removed the night after that because I just can't sleep on fluffy things since getting used to the floor). I got my visa stamped, and made plans to visit a monastary in the hills outside of the city. A curious Thai monk had called me during my Thursday afternoon monk class and said he wanted to meet me.

When I arrived, I called Atcheetso on his mobile and the orange-robed fellow in blue aviator shades strolled up to meet me.

"Joshua?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You're not Burmese!" he laughed.

"No, I'm American," I smiled.

"I thought you were Burmese. We prepared a place for you to stay. I thought you were a Burmese monk...but you're an American boy!"

What could I say? Very little. We shuffled off to his second story classroom where he too was administering exams. We discussed the Dhamma at length. We drank coffee and soda and ate cookies. I met Lindas 1, 2, and 3 and other English teachers. The novice monks took their exams while we talked in hushed tones and he drew pictures about how I could only reach the metaphorical mangos if I am not too tall and not too short. And with it being almost mango season, I took note.

I told Atcheetso that I had a pain in my stomach, which had developed the week before. I told him I was thinking about going to the hospital. He said he to had gotten this pain when he worked in Saudi Arabia. The pain developed when he took his job too seriously. The hospital said there was nothing they could do about it. After a few days in a temple, he began to feel better.

"I tell you, Joshua," Atcheetso said with eyes gleaming. "I'm not like the other monks. I meditate during all my free moments. Others watch the TV or read, but not me."

Meditation: Hard core meditation has been my practice as of late. Whenever I have a free moment, I sit--and not usually in front of Blogger.

Atcheetso and I began walking across the courtyard to the temple, his dog--"no, my friend," he corrected me--lagging obediently behind.

"My students see me with you, they know I am a real English speaker," he said laughing.

We left Michael the friendly temple dog at the threshold and walked into the temple. After an hour in the dark and empty cavern of the temple and our minds, I felt completely miserable. The pain in my stomach had reached a new level of searing, burning agony, and I was exhausted beyond comprehension. Atcheetso too was rocking back and forth as if fighting off demons or the urge to sleep in that this drasted 100 + degrees F. heat.

Though I wanted to go to the hospital then and there, Atcheetso invited me to take an afternoon shower and help him prepare for his journey to his homeland, eastern Thailand on the Laos border. We walked into the hills overlooking Chiang Mai. Scattered throughout were the barracks-like rooms of the 500 monks and novices in residence at Wat Sit So Dah. Cicadas chirped and buzzed from the treetops, practically overpowering our meditative conversation--and cooling us with their constant spittle.

The monk showered first, leaving me in a small room with four novices (his former students), their heads and eyebrows shaved, their eyes curious, their nature and their English reserved. Then I bathed and Atcheetso and I continued our Dhamma talk.

Atcheetso told me that the Thai-Burma border was not the right place to develope mindfullness. I live in the Wild West of Thailand where every opening of the house gate could bring Thai Intelligence to the door looking for a kickback--or, as often happens, to observe my English classes--where those noises I lauded before have begun to wear on me. My monk acquaintance said Burma has bad karma and there's nothing I can do to change the ethnic conflict and constant fighting going on there, so I should go inland to the center of a Buddhist land where it is safe and peaceful.

I took note of his thoughts and spent the next two days in Chiang Mai wandering from one temple to another. I saw a movie to escape the heat and to momentarily run away from my constant dread and anxiety. Pieces of lettuce arranged on plates entered my mind as manifestations of beauty. I began to reign in the wayward beast that is my untrained mind. I avoided the hospital and went to bed early. I still couldn't eat any mangos.

The bus ride back: On the bus ride back from Chiang Mai, I got stuck in my province's capital for five hours. Every bus to my town was crowded and it wasn't until the 3 am bus that operators decided to place stools in the aisle for us stranded passengers. Through the darkened mountain passes, I struggled to stay awake during those small hours of the morning, finally resting my head on the armrest of a Burmese man who told me he was going to Bangkok.

Poor fool, I thought. He's never going to make it.

And sure enough, about 5:30 am, he and about ten other Burmese got caught in a police dragnet outside my town. What happened to them I will never know, but the scene from my newly acquired seat was disturbing. Minions of Thailand's burgeoning Malaysian- or Singapore-styled police state were giving stern road-side interrogations and loading people into a caged-in flatbed truck.

I went home and collapsed. I've spend the week furthering my practice and thinking about what Atcheetso said. He often calls me to make sure I am ok. It's almost mango season, and last night I ate mango and sticky rice.

Politics of Thai Buddhism and Meditation: The Theravada buddhist tradition of Thailand is intricately tied in with statecraft. Thailand has a Department of Religion. The religion's Supreme Patriarch has close connections to governing bodies and massive sway over the populace. Every public school has a Buddha image or five. Even Catholic schools have Buddhas in the courtyards.

It's no wonder that flair-ups in four provinces along the dominantly Thai-Muslim, Yawi-speaking minority people along Thai-Malaysian border in the far south have resulted in more than one Thai monk being hacked to death with a machette. That's not only a religious message, but a political one.

Nothing like this happens where I live. We're much more multicultural. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Americans get along with a loud peace. More than Buddhism, we feel the presense of traffic cops.

These close ties between government and religion here explain a lot about why a monk like my friend Atcheetso can tell a person in this hyper-political age that it's ok to withdraw and go where there are fewer political struggles. Burmese monks were often highly involved with anti-government protests.

When ones freedoms are secured by the state and society, it makes it easier to withdraw to the peacefullness of the countryside without feeling the pull of obligation. I do not share that sense of peace. I feel obligated to be involved. Then again, the Natural Law Party advances the theory that meditation actually brings about world peace, so perhaps meditation does more for society than appears to the materialist's eye. Besdies if we are not healthy and happy ourselves, we cannot help others.

In the end, the world is like a stone and when we die, it probably won't mean two beans. Thinking is such a burden. I'm concerned with what's happening right now and that means I try to be more in tune with what my own body is telling me. Since I started being just a tad more selfish about my time and energies, my stomach has already begun to feel better. My classes are going better. We have more fun. We actually learn more when I don't try as hard. That's Taoism for you.

I am preparing to make some decisions about my future. I'm presented with a number of options, which I plan--in full ego-inflating, web-presense style--to bring to you, oh gentle readers, in the near future. :p