Old cities and elephants

Right now we're in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, an old city surrounded by a square moat and remnants of a wall. On the way up here from Bangkok we stopped at two other cities rich in history, also both protected by walls and/or rivers--first Ayutthaya, then Sukhothai. The cities were all founded around 700-800 years ago as different Thai kingdoms became larger and more powerful. Ayutthaya has some impressive temples, both old and new, and is still a busy town where two (or three?) rivers intersect. Sukhothai, further north, is just a small town nowadays, and the impressive old walled city is a historical park about 12km outside the new city. All of the ruins demonstrated the skilled masonry of these old kingdoms. They used small red bricks to build the foundations of their monuments, then covered them with mortar to make them smooth. Many of the monuments were built either before or just as Buddhism began to spread throughout the region, so many were built first as Hindu temples, then "retrofitted" for Buddhism. Some temples had sitting Buddha statues encircling the entire wall. And of course there were plenty of enormous sitting or standing Buddhas almost everywhere. This all gets very confusing because as soon as you think you have seen the largest sitting Buddha in Thailand, you are corrected at the next temple when in fact you just saw the largest bronze sitting Buddha image, but this one is even bigger and made out of stucco. Ditto for standing and reclining Buddhas. In all cases, each image and temple is really unique and beautiful. There is so much symbolism everywhere that is easily lost on a westerner, so Julie and I feel we need to study up a bit since we will be in Buddhist countries for a while longer.

The other notable thing we did was a trip to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center which is about an hour from Chiang Mai. In Thailand, elephants are really treasured and they used to to be indispensible for jobs like logging. These days, heavy machinery has put them and their owner/trainers (called mahouts) out of work, so tourism is really all that's left to keep the tradition alive. Mahouts are usually father-son pairs because the elephant would otherwise outlive a single mahout. We saw some demonstrations of their talents, which in addition to lifting and dragging heavy logs included painting and playing musical instruments (probably not a traditional role, but neat all the same). Then we went for a short elephant ride, with the mahout sitting on the animals head and telling it what to do with verbal commands and gentle kicks and jabs to the ears and neck. The mahout also sang some tunes. Julie and i sat behind on top of a little bench seat and I wouldn't call it a gentle ride but boy was Julie in heaven.

Oh--and yesterday we did a Thai cooking class. Learned to make a bunch of dishes like red and green curries, tom yam soup, chicken with basil, papaya salad, pad thai, spring rolls, and mango with sticky rice for dessert. Making curry paste was really neat but where are we ever going to find all of the stuff that goes in it back home? It won't be easy. We learned about crucial Thai ingredients like kaffir lime leaves, Thai basil, a special kind of ginger, and chillies, of course. Best of all we got to chow on everything we made, lunch and dinner!