As usual, I've got a few miscellaneous anecdotes and reflections to share before getting to the main event: the ruins of Ayutthaya (the capitol city of Siam) and Angkor Wat (the world's largest religious monument).
My last day in Koh Tao, I was at a cafe killing time, and when I went to use the restroom, I noticed it had no toilet paper. (No biggie, I always carry some just in case). When I came out, I told the person going in after me there wasn't any TP inside, and handed her some from the travel kleenex pack I had, which she seemed really grateful for. Later, as I was leaving the cafe, I gave some kleenex to another woman waiting in line for the bathroom, and she too was grateful, and it made me feel like some kind of toilet paper angel.
I got to use my Go Girl for the first time during the bus trip across the Thailand-Cambodia border at a squatty potty. Since the Go Girl is supposed to be used while standing, it was a bit awkward, but it still made things easier than they would have been without it, since I was wearing a long-pants onesie. I probably shouldn't get into details, but basically I had to position the rubber funnel so that it flowed under my scrunched up outfit and into the squatty potty. I just rinsed it out with some water from the bucket and folded it back into its tube. Easy pee-sy. (If "Easy Peesy" isn't the Go Girl slogan, it really should be. Not because it's good -- it isn't -- but because it seems like the obvious choice.)
I really talk a lot of bathroom stuff, and I'm sorry about that, but it's just one of those things that occurs multiple times every day in ways that are so different from home, and there are a lot of observations to be made about it. I will try to tone it down though... I realize that it's probably not as interesting to you as it is to me, but if nothing else at least it is a reminder to everyone that it's not all glitz, glam, and adventure over here.
To get from Koh Tao to Bangkok, I had to take a three-hour ferry from 4:00-700pm (this time the boat swayed a lot from side to side rather than bouncing up and down on the waves), and then a bus from 8:00pm to 3:30am. Arriving in Bangkok at 3:30am was not the plan; it was two hours early, and I had no idea where it had dropped us off, but when the taxi driver asked for 3,000 baht ($85 USD) to get me back to town I was like “HELLLL NO.” I knew we couldn't be THAT far away from things. I talked them down to 1,000 baht but I think that was still too much.
I couldn’t check into the AirBNB until 2:00pm so I just asked them to take me to the Mo Chit BTS station, which is the closest station to the AirBNB. I felt very grateful that it was dry and warm enough to hang out outside during those early morning hours comfortably. I sat down at a street bus station near the BTS for about an hour because it had lights for me to read under. Despite having a huge backpack with me and my face in my Kindle, I may have been mistaken for a prostitute by a couple taxi drivers... it was hard to tell if they were asking if I wanted a ride or if they could have one (answer to both: nope). Either way, it never felt threatening, just amusing. Around 5:00am, I walked up to the BTS station to hang out there for another hour before the lines opened, and there were plenty of others doing the same.
If you only learn how to say one thing in a new language, make it “thank you.” Logistically and spiritually, knowing how to express gratitude is often all you need to get by.
Gratitude has been a consistent and powerful theme for me during this trip. Since the beginning, I’ve been waiting to have a “gratitude breakdown” about this amazing opportunity; during the ayahuasca ceremonies I was told to focus on love and gratitude to help me stay in a positive mental space and not spiral into dark and scary psychological oblivion; and when I’ve become unexpectedly and irrationally envious of people back home, focusing on gratitude has been the fastest way out of that icky emotional hole. The Book of Joy and The Energy of Prayer have also emphasized the importance of gratitude in a joyful life. So I dunno -- maybe gratitude is like, a big deal.
Whenever I try to develop a habit of meditation, I can't seem to stay motivated, but I think that if I make it a "gratitude meditation" I'll see the value and positive impact on my life more readily. I came across these two quotes recently about envy (which I'm realizing is essentially the opposite of gratitude) that I've found helpful:
"Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings rather than your own."
"Envy is ignorance."
I think it's so interesting -- and crazy/stupid/frustrating -- that I've been struggling with insecurities and envy more during my travels than I did back home. You'd expect the opposite, wouldn't you? That once I got out into the rest of the world and my perspective on life expanded, I'd sweat the small stuff much less, that my sense of connection to the rest of humanity would mean that I'd become less competitive with other people. Perhaps in the process of my psyche evolving, wanting to push through these mental falsehoods and become more aware of what really matters, there is also resistance as the mind tries to cling to the way it is used to seeing things. (The familiar is always comfortable on some level, even if it makes you miserable.) It makes sense that these things would need to come to the surface in an in-your-face, undeniable way before they can be resolved in a meaningful and lasting way. You can't just "get over" psychological hangups while minimizing or denying the extent of their power over you -- that's like trying to land a punch while looking away from the target. If you want to do some damage to a shitty belief or thought pattern, you have to look directly and squarely at what you're hitting.
The King of Thailand died recently at the age of 88, and there are displays all over that Thailand with his picture framed in gold surrounded by flowers and ribbons. Some people are also wearing black ribbons pinned to their sleeves as a sign of mourning. King Bhumibol Adulyadej was their king for 70 years (took power in 1946 when he was 18), and it seems that he was very well-respected and adored (although I've read that those who didn't feel that way were often punished or imprisoned, so it's hard to tell). In any case, I came across this shirt hanging in a cafe in Koh Tao and thought it might help convey some of the feelings surrounding the king's death. The whole thing actually reminds me a bit of Jasper (the guy from England who I hung out with during the Salt Flats tour in Bolivia) and his almost comical love of the English queen.
All right, time to look at some crazy old buildings!
Ayutthaya: Temples of the Siam Dynasty
On my last full day in Thailand, I finally made my way to Ayutthaya. To be totally honest, Ayutthaya was only on my radar because there's a Thai restaurant on Capitol Hill in Seattle called Ayutthaya, but when I found out that it is ALSO an UNESCO World Heritage site, I decided it would be worth checking out. Turns out it used to be the capitol of the country (called Siam at that point); the Kingdom of Ayutthaya was established around 1351 and grew to become one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the East before being seized and largely destroyed by the Burmese army in 1767. From what I could gather, most of the ruins that are still standing are temples (not government buildings).
To get to Ayutthaya, I took a tuk tuk to the nearest MRT (subway) station, which has a stop right at the train station. From there, I got a train ticket to Ayutthaya, which took about 2 hours. The tuk tuk was 60 baht, the MRT was 42, and the train was only 20 baht, so it cost me about $3.50 USD to get from my AirBNB to Ayutthaya. That's crazy to me, but I am loving how easy it is to spend less than $20 a day here (not counting lodging).
On the train ride, I met Phillip, a young, friendly, red-headed guy from Oklahoma. We decided to explore Ayutthaya together, and when we got off the train we had a bite to eat and then rented bicycles for the day.
I mentioned in a previous blog how I was struggling a little with how to handle photographing sacred sites like temples or other religiously significant things without being disrespectful. My ever-wise mother has since suggested that it could be as simple as just not taking selfies with religious figures like Buddha statues, since that implies equality with the Buddha. To do so would be like if tourists visiting a Catholic cathedral took selfies with the crucifix or something, ya know? I feel like that's a reasonable approach: photos are fine, selfies with revered figures maybe not so much.
Take all my notes on the history of these ruins with a grain of salt (my sources are basically Wikipedia and Phillip), but here's one thing I learned: when Ayutthaya was conquered, most of the Buddha statues were beheaded. Phillip told me this was an act meant to replace Siamese Buddhism with Burmese Buddhism, but another explanation is that people cut the heads off just to sell them (the heads were easier to transport, I suppose, than the full statues).
Not sure who this is, but I like her:
Buddha having a St. Francis moment being adored by the animals.
Actually, I saw similar "Buddha with monkey and elephant" statues in Cambodia as well, so I looked up what it meant and here's the story:
The statue represents a time when the Buddha retreated to the wilderness of Parileyya forest to bring peace between two quarrelling factions of disciples. According to legend, a monkey and an elephant named Parileyyaka fed him during this time, the elephant bringing fruit and the monkey bringing a honeycomb. The monkey was so excited when the Buddha accepted his gift that he began leaping from tree to tree and fell to his death. But no worries, he was immediately reborn in Tavatimsa as a result of his generosity.
This Buddha head (below) has been around so long, it has been overgrown by a tree. This was my favorite part of Ayutthaya, because I immediately recognized this Buddha head from a photo I saw when perusing the markets of Khao San Road that I took a photo of...
... of three child monks depicting "speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil" in front of it.
Philip and I tried walking into one of these little temples but it smelled FOUL. Then we realized there were bats living in there and the foul smell was probably their droppings, and we got the hell out of there.
Not sure how much longer this one is going to last before it topples over...
Angkor Wat: One of the Seven Wonders of the World
(... perhaps more readily recognized as "the place they filmed the Tomb Raider movie")
"First, Angkor Wat was for Hinduism, then it was for Buddhism, now it is for Tourism."
- our cheeky and charming Angkor Wat tour guide
So it turns out there isn't really an official list of the Seven Wonders of the World, which is disappointing. I thought this was an official thing, but there are lots of lists of the "Seven Wonders," some of them ancient, some natural, some modern, all arbitrary. So Angkor Wat isn't consistently on the lists out there, but it IS recognized at the world's largest religious monument, spanning 402 acres.
I forget if I've mentioned this idea before, but we need an app that removes other people from your photos so you can take pictures of amazing places without all the other tourists getting in the way. But until then, you get to see just how big an attraction a place like Angkor Wat really is!
Renovations (easy to forget that these very old places fall apart and need to be maintained)
One of four "pools" in the main temple that no one really knows much about. Were they for recreation? For cleansing rituals? For storing water in case of water shortage? No one knows. Sometimes these historical mysteries and fun to speculate about, but sometimes it's like WHAT WAS THIS?? I GOTTA KNOW!
More Buddhas whose heads were stolen :(
There were lots of other temples other than Angkor Wat in the area; Ta Prohm was probably my favorite, because is has been left exactly as it was found, being swallowed by trees. (This is REALLY the temple complex where Tomb Raider was filmed, but people get it mixed up with Angkor Wat because Angkor Wat is more famous I suppose.)
The tour guide pointed out this carving and the fact that it has a stegosaurus in it, which kinda blew my mind... did the Khmer people who built this temple know about dinosaurs?? Or was this a depiction of a fictional creature that just happens to look a helluva lot like a dinosaur?
The Bayon is another temple, known for having hundreds (216) of Buddha faces carved into it. This was the third temple complex we visited, and I was feeling a bit "templed out" at this point, so there are fewer photos for this one. I'm sure you get the idea.
There you have it! Next post will be all about the Cambodian civil war and how brutal it was, so I'm glad I could share something less heavy and more fun for now!