Christmas in Thailand There is one nearby mountain range visible in Chiang Mai, and it has been sacred to people here for as long as there were people here. It really seems like one mountain, and it is called Doi Suthep. For the first two months I lived here, I did not ever see this mountain for various reasons. Now I see the mountain every day. My favorite meditation is to watch the mountain go dark. I do this at a most unlikely place: Maya Mall which is one of the new very nice shopping malls in Chiang Mai. There is a communal workspace on the 5th floor with outside seating, and I sit and watch the mountain until I can’t see it anymore. The mountain, being sacred, is not developed, so there are no lighted buildings on it except for the warm glow of the temple about 2/3rds of the way up. So when it gets dark, there is a moment when there is a mountain, and then one when there isn’t. I love to try to catch this moment. The temple appears to float in the night sky, which is now indistinguishable from the mountain. Today Ruby left for Beijing and in about half an hour, Elena will leave for Moscow. These are my two daughters in Thailand, and I can’t help getting a little weepy, especially with all the sappy Christmas music playing everywhere. All my expat friends are grumbling. We thought we could get away from the madness, but no. For Thai people, it just seems like a lot of fun. Across the street, the front lawn of the shops is covered in either sand or salt, to simulate snow, and it does really look like snow. It is actually cold in Chiang Mai now - into the mid-50’s at night. I carry around my new coat all through the sweetly warm day just in case I might get to wear it at night. When one’s blood is thinned from 42C days in the spring, 15C feels pretty cold. Several areas of Chiang Mai province have been declared disaster areas due to the cold. There is no heat (why would there be?) and there aren’t enough blankets. It gets much colder further north, in the mountains. Loneliness is a sweet warm feeling. It is the root cause of love. When I feel it now, I cherish it. It means my life is uncluttered enough to be open to all the simple loves I am floating in all the time, but don’t notice because of all the complicated loves I build up around me like cities. Cities at the foot of the mountain. I have been worried to not have any complicated loves around me on Christmas Day. Somehow all my holiday plans skirted around this day and left it blank, to make sacred in my own way. I think of Joseph Campbell and am grateful to him for his collecting and expounding on stories from all religions and cultures, and for how this perspective helped me to make peace with the stories of my own culture. A baby born in a barn with farm animals. No room in the inn. The child has royal blood and will be a leader, but will not grow up with the privilege of wealth. And another story - a child with royal blood, a prince born into privilege, who does become a leader but the first act of his leadership is to renounce his privilege. The very beginning of both paths is humility. Humility is the first great gift of travel. It came to me Christmas Eve in the form of a Thai family dining next to me in the Japanese restaurant where I get one of my main comfort food meals. Their young daughter, maybe 10 years old, actually spoke better English than me - because she learned it as a second language, and also because she learned it with a British accent, which is just ever so much more lovely. She noticed I was studying my Thai and offered to help. She taught me the word for “shit” so that no one would trick me into thinking it was the word for “delicious” as had happened to another farang she knew. She taught me how the words for “tiger” “shirt”, and “mat” were like Do Re Mi in their tones. (Otherwise these words sound exactly the same.) She helped me be sure that when I told someone they had a “beautiful shirt,” I was not actually telling them they had a “terrible tiger”. The words for beautiful and terrible are also the same except for their tones. When the restaurant was closing, she and her family wished me good health, and I was able to wish them happiness and good luck IN THAI, thanks to Noi at my guest house, who has been feeding me Thai phrases that will make me charming and kind when I say them to Thai people. Koh hai mi kuam suk, laa chok dee, ka. I wish all my friends happiness and good luck, and the humility of babies born everywhere, in all the stories of all the religions, and the humility of travel to all of us lucky enough to get it that way. And then, for me, the root of all humility: Nature - the mountain at the edge of the city, and how it is always present even when it goes dark.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 15:00:49 +0000
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