Beautiful people

Day 79: Monks

This morning we woke up at 4:30am, got ready, and grabbed the bikes we rented from our hotel to bike 20 minutes to town. Every morning in Luang Prabang, the monks walk in a procession from their monasteries through the town with their alms bowls, and the townspeople sit along the sidewalk on their path, and offer them rice and other foods and money for their daily sustenance. The monks walk from all directions through the town to collect their food for the day, so they are dependent on the generosity of the town’s people.  It is such a beautiful tradition to begin the day donating to the monks, and really shows the character of the people here.

Once the procession was over, we walked through the morning market where all the sellers had their fruits, vegetables, and various animals (some alive, some dead) and animal parts for sale. Since it was only 6:30am by the time we were done, we biked back to the hotel and had breakfast before going back to bed for a few hours!

Once we re-awoke, we hopped on our bikes and biked back to town to start visiting all the temples (there are tons of them) around town. The heat was already blistering as we visited the temples, and after a few of them, we had to stop to rest and regain some energy with lunch.

After lunch, we continued visiting temples, including one at the top of a mountain (although we realized afterwards that we completely missed the main statues on the other side of the mountain)! We saw the royal palace museum, with relics from the various kings’ reigns, and then, utterly exhausted, biked back to our hotel to relax for a few hours. 

At night, we went back to town, and walked down an alley full of people selling food. We had dinner at a buffet street stall, which made us feel like locals, and then walked through the night market again, before taking the shuttle back to the hotel and sleeping. 

Monks' procession through town

Morning market

Frogs for sale at the morning market

Temple in town

 Dinner buffet at the night market

Intense heat

Day 76: More templing

This morning we had breakfast and headed out for the day on our tuktuk to see… more temples! We went to two places we hadn’t gone to before, and walked through old temple ruins with huge trees growing inside, on top of, and through them! The trees were so big, and we could see their roots finding their way in and around the ceilings and walls. It was spectacular and just what we had come to Cambodia to see! The temples we saw were beautiful and made us wonder how they must have looked at their prime. The sense of awe was back. It was also interesting to learn that countries around the world had each, in essence, “adopted” a temple to restore to help with restoration efforts. It shows the importance of these temples and their historical significance.

We went back to Angkor Wat to see some of the ruins we missed yesterday and afterwards, returned to the hotel, had some lunch, and rested after walking around all day in the intense heat. 

In the evening, we went to town, where we walked around the shops and the touristy area. We had dinner at a cute little restaurant and then walked around the night market before going back to the hotel. 

 Trees growing around the temple ruins

The rain won’t stop us now

Day 67: Group templing in the rain

We allotted today to walk around and see the sites around Bangkok, so we started up in the morning and walked to our first stop: the Jade Buddha and the Royal Palace. The grounds of the temple were majestic, and everywhere you looked, there was beautiful traditional architecture to see. Inside the main temple, we saw the Jade Buddha, which is actually called the Emerald Buddha because it was originally thought to be made of emerald instead of its actual jadeite. The Royal Palace was nice, but we weren’t allowed to go inside because a funeral was going on, so we only saw it from the outside. It was raining while we were there – the first time it has rained on our trip when we were doing an activity (we secretly blame Kyung for this, since our luck has been really good so far)!

After this, we walked over to the next temple, where a man suggested we go visit two other temples first. So we took his suggestion and went to see a few other Buddhist temples in town, which were quite nice. One of the temples was quiet and peaceful, without the throngs of tourists, and held a beautiful white marble Buddha, which we were happy to have seen. Our tuktuk driver asked if he could bring us to a few shops for foreigners, where if we purchased something, he would get a commission. We obliged, though we didn’t buy anything so unfortunately, he didn’t get anything either.

On our way back to town, it started pouring heavily, so we sat down for lunch at a restaurant across from our next stop, and had a little break. When the rain subsided a bit, we walked over to a temple with an enormous Reclining Buddha. It was huge and just magnificent. We walked around the temple grounds, where all the inner and outer walls were lined with tons of Buddha statues everywhere. It was quite the sight! So far, the temples in Thailand have been beautiful, especially compared to Bali, mainly because we could actually see the statues!

By the time we were done, the temples had all closed so we walked back to our hotel and tried to plan the rest of our stay here. After a short rest, we walked around the market in our area, had dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel, and just enjoyed being in the centre of all the action.

 Statues along the edge of the temple

Jade Buddha

 

Marble Buddha

 Reclining Buddha

Bye Bye, Chiang Mai

Day 66: Templing

It was our last day in Chiang Mai, so we rented a car to take us around to all the temples, which we have not yet had a chance to see, with all the tours we’ve been doing! The morning started off with rain, and we almost had to cancel our visit to the biggest temple at the top of the mountain, but right before our car arrived, the skies cleared up and we were able to make our way up the mountain. The fog was thick, so we couldn’t see the views of the city on the way, but we arrived at the mountain and walked up the many steps to the top, where the temple sat. The temple was beautiful, and we walked around the grounds, and offered a lotus flower, some incense, and a candle, and said a little prayer with a monk blessing us by tying a protective string on our wrist.

We walked back down to our car, and drove over to a small waterfall before going for lunch at a small local restaurant. We then drove around town, visiting many different (but very similar) temples. By the end of our day, we were templed out! 

We made our last stop at the Sunday market just as the rain started coming down in buckets! The market was rained out, and although all the street shops were still open, we walked around a bit before deciding we were done! Our driver took us to the airport, and we caught our flight to Bangkok. 

We arrived at night, and grabbed a taxi to our hotel, where we met Kyung, who decided to meet us in Bangkok for our visit! Our hotel was in the middle of all the action, so we went out, had a quick drink, and then rested up for tomorrow. 

 Doi Suthep temple at the top of the mountain

Buddha statues at one temple

More temples!

Day 53: Jogjakarta

Last night’s sleep was horrible! There were so many mosquitoes in the room, we got eaten alive. Plus, we got up so early for our flight to Jogjakarta (a.k.a. Yogyakarta), we were exhausted! We got our taxi to the airport (which wasn’t open when we arrived!), checked in, and got on our flight.

When we arrived, we decided to just rent a car and get all the things we wanted to do done today! So after a lot of haggling over a reasonable price – in broken English since no one speaks English too well here! – we headed over to Prambanan, a beautiful Hindu temple complex built in the ninth century. The temple had been in complete ruins, but with major reconstruction efforts since the 1930s, they have managed to restore a lot of it to its original beauty. A lot of restoration work is still going on so some parts of the temples are inaccessible, but what can be seen was still so beautiful. The temples are made of stone, and all along the outside and inside walls are intricate stone carvings depicting various Hindu religious stories, with figures resembling the characters we’re used to from India. We saw the main complex and then three other temples under reconstruction, one of which was a Buddhist temple.

After this, we drove out to Borobudur, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia. In the late 18^th century, the temple was discovered buried under forest bush, and in complete ruins. Reconstruction efforts since then have resulted in the temple being almost completely restored. The temple is sectioned into North, East, South, and West, and has 8 or 9 levels, each of which has hundreds of Buddha statues lined along it.  We followed the traditional way of proceeding through the temple by entering from the East side, walking clockwise on each level up to the top, and exiting from anything but the East side. Interestingly enough, although it is a Buddhist temple, a lot of Hindu carvings are also depicted on its walls. While we were walking through, we also heard the melodic Muslim call to prayer – it’s so wonderful that the people here respect each other and their religious choices.

After Borobudur, we were exhausted and running out of steam, so we had lunch at a restaurant on the way back to town, and then drove around looking for a hotel for the next two nights. We found a place and checked in for the night. After such a long day and barely any sleep, we grabbed a quick dinner and called it a night fairly early.

The language barrier has been extremely difficult in Indonesia, and sometimes impossible to breach, but we’ve tried our best! Hopefully we haven’t insulted anyone along the way!

Prambanan Temple

Carvings depicting scenes from the Ramayan

Borobudur Temple

Carvings depicting various stages of human and saintly life

 Buddhas overlooking the landscape

Where are all the idols?

Day 47: Temple-mania!

Although Indonesia is primarily a Muslim country, Bali is predominantly Hindu, and is known as the island of 1000 temples. So today, we rented a car and driver for a long day of temple visits!

We started off with a nice breakfast and then headed out to the first of many temples on our itinerary. When we arrived at the first place, we were fitted with sarongs and a sash on our waist – worn as a sign of respect in Bali (not a practice in India) – and entered the holy grounds. We walked around and then noticed that there were no idol statues anywhere. Having been into many Hindu temples and worshipping areas, we were expecting to see idols, but there were none to be found. We let this one slide, and went out to the next temple.

Same deal. No idols.

We were extremely confused. Bali, the island of 1000 temples, had no idols. We’re Hindu, so we know that Hindus use idols in their temples, so this was all a bit new to us. But there we were, visiting temple after temple, continually wondering what exactly was going on. After much confusion, we finally asked and found out that there are no statues! The idols that do exist are closed up and only opened once a year (but we have a sneaking suspicion there’s nothing behind those closed doors either because one priest opened a door for us to do a private offering and there was nothing there)!

After seeing umpteen temples and paying hefty entry fees at each one, we finished our temple tour a bit disappointed. I guess we had expected to see some beautiful statues and architecture from the island that is known for its stunning stone carvings! But unfortunately for us, we had no such luck. The one cool thing we noticed in every temple, however, is that there are guides available in every language! It was so cool to see people speaking fluently in all kinds of different languages to tourists.

Right before we were about to call it a day, our driver suggested we go see a “Kecak” (pronounced kay-chuck) show. After the day we had, we would take any sort of culture or art! So we agreed, and thankfully so, because the show was pretty awesome! Basically, about 40 men provide background music, singing “chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck” while dancers perform snippets of the Ramayan – an epic Hindu mythological poem. It was so beautifully done! Then, at the end of the performance, they had a trance and fire dance, where a man meditates himself into a trance and then dances on fire and even eats it! It was crazy! A great end to our day.

We grabbed dinner after the show and then went back to our room to ponder the idea of Hinduism without idols.

Besakih Temple

Kechak Dance

Trance and Fire Dance