Day 2 / 5th January

Today we visited the White Temple. A place of worship that is now a tourist attraction for many. What amazed me was the amount of effort the artist has put into the design for the temple as it was full of minute details that carried deep religious symbolisms at every corner. The temple was dazzling as it seemed to be sparkling under the sunlight due to the small reflective mirror pieces which adorned the walls. Being a Buddhist, even though I am a firm believer in my god, I am clueless with respect to the many teachings involved in my religion. It was interesting to experience and see how the temple has incorporated some of those teachings into its architecture. In fact, as one journeys throughout the temple, each step along the way, one would be able to learn of the different teachings.

The route starts off with the bridge of “the cycle of rebirth”, the bridge allows us to cross over a pond filled with hundreds of reaching hands. These hands symbolizes desire, and this area symbolizes human suffering and hell.  This teaches us that the way to happiness (at the other end of the bridge) is to overcome worldly things such as temptations, greed and desire. Isn’t this something all of us should preach? In a world where we are passing each day as it is, wishing for happiness in our lives? This teaches us that happiness doesn’t necessary come in the form of materialistic wants, but is derived from our attitude towards life. If we choose to appreciate the minor things, and do not always desire for more, we would be able to lead a simplistic yet happy life with our loved ones. Easy for me to say, but how difficult is it for us to do so?

In the temple, I was surprised by the murals on the wall as I didn’t expect to see cartoon characters on them! There were the Minions, Ben 10, Doraemon, Batman, Spiderman, and many more. These are actually modern representations of good and evil and as time passes, more and more characters will be added to the mural. The artist is hoping that the mural will act as a record for future generations to look back at what are some of our current contemporary figures. I have visited several temples but none of them was like the White Temple, the fusion of modern elements into its design and architecture is genius. It grabs onto the attention of the younger generation and raises their interest towards Buddhist teachings.

Besides the beautiful sights, what stuck to me the most, was the story on how the artist of the temple, Chalermchai Kositpipat, managed to overcome all obstacles in order to go after his dreams of becoming a visual artist. Our tour guide, Patt, shared his story to us, on the way to the White Temple. According to Patt, Mr Chalermchai went against his parent’s wishes of becoming a visual artist, as his parents only hoped for him to remain with the family and help out with their farm. However, he had bigger dreams of creating inspiring Thai art pieces and wanted to pursue this by leaving Chiang Rai to study in Bangkok instead.  In order to receive approval from his parents, he actually threatened to commit suicide by locking himself up alone in the room. Even though it was an extreme approach, it worked and now he is an artist, whom is known worldwide. I felt that his determination and passion for his work was something that simply cannot be extinguished and I admire him for that. Even if I do not agree with the extreme approach that he took, I feel that it is inspiring to see how he has reached the point where he is today, to be able to be working on his dreams. Is it envy I feel? Being someone currently still in the midst of discovering my dreams, I would love to be like him someday.

Moving on to the research done today, we headed to Warorot market to interview and survey some locals on what they felt about the nutritional labels. We aimed to target the various age groups, mainly students above 18, the current office workers, and the relatively older ladies, aged 50-70. This was because after the first day of interviews, we have decided to that it would be useful to include education as part of our interviews. We felt that it could be a defining factor on whether one understands the labels. Hence, we wanted to find out if the age demographics made a difference to the knowledge that they have and the education that they had received. The result of our interviews? The education that the different age groups had and is currently receiving clearly differed. The younger generation today have been taught during compulsory classes in schools on healthy living. One lady, whom was dressed in her school uniform, kindly shared with us that her school taught her to turn towards the back of the packaging to check on the nutritional labels, the ingredients and the expiry date, while the older generation shared that they did not receive any of such education.

I felt reassured knowing that the schools do encourage the younger generation to look at the nutritional labels, such that they are aware of its existence. In fact, all those surveyed and interviewed today were aware of the presence of the nutritional labels, just that they differed in their degree of understanding. The data we have collected was a contrast to what the situation, as understood by the General Practitioner whom we had interviewed on day 1, to be like. Therefore, I believe that it is important for us to obtain more opinions and information from various sources in order for our research to be able to cover more perspectives.

However, the fact that there is an absence of education campaigns to educate the middle to older generation on nutrition as a whole and nutritional labels specifically is still rather pessimistic. This is especially so since the human body tends to deteriorate as one gets older. Also, the growing attention placed on health education for the youth does allow them to be aware of the existence of nutritional labels, but it just ends there. No further education is provided to teach the youths how to understand the nutritional labels, which is important in order for the labels to affect one’s purchasing behavior. Exactly how much salt is considered high? What is the GDA? Does it differ from person to person? Is the information provided by servings? These are questions that I myself have, and I believe that many others would have the same questions if not provided with the education that we all require to read them accurately.

The interviews conducted today were indeed eye-opening. With Luk Pong, Prof Nat’s friend’s help, we managed to interview some office ladies to question how they usually settle their meals. Their answers corresponded to what Dr Jirayu Maneerat had mentioned about how the working adults find it hard to obtain healthy food for their meals. Their hectic work life has a direct impact on their health, not only with the heightened stress levels but also the amount of time they have to settle their meals. It was interesting to see how the information gathered matched and this helped us with providing a better guide in the direction for our report and media deliverables.