Ice Queen

It's pretty rare that I randomly run into people I know when I'm out and about running errands here in Bangkok, but today I ran into a friend of mine while at the pharmacy. It is always amazing to me that I never seem to run into people I know when I'm there to buy face cream or nail polish. It's always when I've got the anti-fungal cream, stool softener, and a turkey baster* that I hear the familiar voice behind me and see that person's eyes glance down at the contents in my hand.

Anyway......

Yesterday I went to my favorite temple here in Bangkok. It's a temple made completely out of marble with absolutely beautiful detailing (I wrote about it once before here). It's like an ice castle. It has fountains that make quiet trickling sounds, and monks wandering around everywhere, and a graceful Buddha, and the ashes of Rama V. I thought that it would make a nice mini-retreat so that I could do some prayer and meditation.

Getting there is an adventure in and of itself, as it requires taking a motosai to the SkyTrain, changing lines on the SkyTrain, and then getting off at the river pier. It then requires taking a river taxi 15 stops, and once you get off you must amble through a flower market in order to find a tuk tuk that will take you the rest of the way. Planes, trains, and automobiles. It is a wonderful journey, perfect for a Sunday afternoon when I SHOULD be finishing my final project for my 45 clock hours of SEI training (which, um, I should be doing right now instead of blogging....). When I got to the temple, instead of the peace and quiet and fountain sounds I was expecting, I was greeted with swarms of people, and tents, and television monitors capturing what was happening inside. The people at the ticket counter said that it was a ceremony for initiating new monks, but that I was more than welcome to go inside and observe it from the back.

I took off my shoes and tucked myself away in a corner of the temple and watched. The monks had their BRIGHT orange ceremonial robes, bright yellow belts, and they were carrying their alms bowls in silk sacks that were slung diagonally across their bodies. I realized after looking through my Luang Prabang photos that I have taken an insane amount of monk photos over the years. I have also purchased many monk photos and monk candle holders and monk teak figurines, and it is pretty safe to say that I have a complete obsession with monks. I think they are absolute works of art--their robes and bowls and chanting and slow, flowing movements. This was the first time that I was ever able to witness, close up, a monk ceremony. The chanting was so beautiful, and the routine of it all was done with a choreographed reverence, and I just closed my eyes and listened. The inner temple is like a candy chamber--stained glass windows and gold dharma wheels and floral offerings--and it was an hour of pure and total peace where I just shut off my mind and absorbed everything in that room. The fluttering hearts and the growling chants and the two-part harmonies and the deep prostrations.

After leaving the inner temple I wandered around and looked at the Buddha images in the courtyard area, and photographed the red Chinese-style footbridges that arch over a small canal that flows between the temple and the monastery, and sat on a bench taking more photos of monks. I truly did not want to leave, but the sky was looking ominous and I had made plans to meet a friend for dinner.

I climbed back into a tuk tuk that took me to the river pier. I bought a green Fanta (omg....green Fanta is CRACK IN A BOTTLE, and apparently not available in the U.S.!!) and sipped it while watching the catfish in the river right below the pier literally climb over one another to catch the breadcrumbs that vendors were selling to passersby. Their bellies were flashing and gleaming like tongues, and the water was churning in a muddy sludge, and the entire mass of fish bodies was peppered with plastic pieces of trash, and they made a fleshy slapping sound as they struggled against one another, and really the whole thing was just terribly unappetizing.

I watched the sun struggle to set through the thick billows of clouds between the emaciated ribs of the Rama 8 Bridge. Once the river taxi came I sat behind an older foreigner with a tidy bun in her hair and a Nancy Chandler map across her lap and the two of us took pictures of river slums and fine hotels and fishermen and tugboats.

I made it home right before the torrential downpour began, and had a lovely dinner with a lovely friend (though the Fanta gave me gut rot and I could FEEL my teeth decaying).

I will miss weekends like this.

*Purely hypothetical :)