Today I really got a chance to explore the city under the attentive stewardship of Mao.
This day of biking around the city taught me a few important lessons about the traffic, and specifically about the place a person on a bicycle occupies in its larger scheme. First of all, in direct opposition to Boston and DC (well, America in general, I suppose), people are very open about letting one merge. Now this is true even if one happens to be riding a bicycle that may predate the first computer, as long as said one happens to have said bicycle up to the speed of traffic, despite the aforementioned shortcomings of said bicycle. The key, I have learnedregardless of the limitations of ones fitnessis to think of ones self as riding a moped, in terms of speed, lane swapping, and general disregard for ones personal well being, and then everything works out. The only close call (dont worry mom Im fine) that I have had, came when I doubted my own moped-ness, and acted like a normal bicyclist, passively allowing cars and trucks to have the right of way. That being said, I have started to make little-kid-motorcycle noises, while peddling, in an attempt to extend the ruse.
At this point it is important to give a quick overview of the city: The center (or centre, if you want to be like that) is a perfect square that marks the wall of the old city, which in places is still standing and is surrounded by a moat. The moat runs straight down the middle of the main road, with traffic running clockwise on the outside, and counterclockwise on the inside; I guess you could say it was a rotary wrapped inside of a roundabout. Up until this point, all of my time has been concentrated to the West of the box, as all English speakers so far have referred to the part of the city within the moat. However, in riding around for the better part of a day I came to this conclusion: Im happy to be outside the box. Much of the inside of the box was just like the East side of the city, only squeezed into a tiny box. It was hectic, and not in a good South African way, but in a “I am so glad I dont live here” kind of way. That being said, the box certainly has its merits.
While lazily exploring inside the box, I saw an alley full of carts reminiscent of two nights previous, and, testing the reaction time of Mao, decided to check it out. I found a woman selling a different version of the green mango salad that I had hadCat had explained that usually it was paw-paw (Papaya), and usually the mashed it up with a big mortar and pestle, and indeed this was the form it took. (Also, the salad is usually made with dried shrimp and fish sauce, which Cat had explained that we did not want).
Now, this particular lunch, without the help of Cat, marks a momentous occasion in my time here. After watching the women make one salad for the man in front of me, she looked up at me and I uttered the three words I had been trying to master since getting here, phom gin jae, which mean, “I am a vegetarian.”
And heres where it gets crazy She understood me.
Her eyes lit up in recognition and she repeated the words back to me. As she started to clean the seafood residue from her mortar (or is it pestle?) I felt like doing a fist pump right there. And let me tell you, that salad was delicious: both because it was made from fresh ingredients and right in front of me, and because I had earned it.
After lunch I went to one of the largest Wats in Chiang Mai, right in the center of the box, called Wat Phra Sing I knew, from reading, that right around now was the end of Buddhist lent, which was marked with the ceremonial offering of new robes to the monks from members of the lay community seeking to gain merit. At Wat Phra Sing, there were TONS of monks, and a load of tables loaded up with robes of all shades of ochre-yellow-saffron-orange, and I concluded that I had luckily gone on the day of this important ceremony. Alas, the ceremonial robes had been offered the week before, and what was going on here was some sort of monk convention (my words). The tables were set up like a Flea Market selling all sort of necessary monk paraphernalia (robes, razor blades, PA systems?). Monks continued to pile out of minibuses and trucks from wats all of Chaing Mai, and, brandishing wallets, purchased robes, and cell phone cases. This paired with the lavishly ornate wats, stupasthe Buddhist equivalent of a spire or a minaretand golden Buddha images presented a very different type of Buddhism than that to which I was accustomed.
The wat was beautiful, and as I was walking around the grounds I started chatting to a monk who had studied English at Chaing Mais Buddhist university. We sat for about 45 minutes talking about life and Buddhism, and he helped to clarify this Theravada type of Buddhism, to which pretty much everyone in Thailand subscribesthe number varies from 80-95%. As far as I understand it, the Theravada/Mahayana split is much like that of Reform and Orthodox Judaism; followers of Theravada forgo the stricter ascetic approach to Buddhism (taking a vow of poverty, and frequently silence, reclusing oneself to a monastery, remaining vegetarian, etc.) for a more modern, personal approach.
Theravada monks can have money, cell phones, drive cars and indeed eat meat, as long as they do not do the slaughtering nor are present for it. After talking for a while, but before we parted ways, the monk gave me a book on Theravada Buddhism in English, saying he had already read it and that it should help me further understand.