5/7.01: A Warm Bowl of Vegetable Noodles

Quiet, rather peaceful. Those were the impressions I got off the small glimpses of Chiang Rai. No longer a hub for drug trafficking during the Opium Wars, it is now an attraction site for tourists to experience more of Thailand. Today, we were to visit 2 of the more popular heritage attraction sites, the white and the black temple.

I had heard much of the white temple and it’s beauty, but experiencing it upfront was certainly a greater sight to behold. I fell in love with the painstaking detail of every sculptural element. I can say I really liked it, perhaps on a superficial level, for its beauty and fantastical elements, but also how it was able to blend tradition and contemporary arts together. It adds to the richness of Chiang Mai’s cultural identity, and gives me a new interest and perspective in its heritage. The style, form, shapes of the temple were certainly different from a typical traditional temple that we have seen. This can be observed most notably in its colour – white, for purity, the silver specks dotted around, and perhaps most interestingly within the temple. Images of superheroes dotted the walls, right opposite the sculpture of Buddha.

At the same time, it was still a temple, and it kept religion at its core. Ideas of heaven and hell, Lord Buddha and the Mara (demon) as murals were painted within the building, and noticeably thai designs embraced the walls and sculptural elements. With this temple, I feel that the artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, has certainly contributed to Chiang Rai’s tourist economy.

I have always been attracted to beauty, on certain levels. What people may deem to be superficial, such as fashion, to me they represent a potential for expression, and transgression. How much the boundaries can be pushed and be kept pushing on a visual level. Here, I could spend a lot of time just observing the different artist decisions in sculptures. I feel that the artist here was similarly pushing the boundaries of thai art. Having bought his book at the souvenir store, it stated that when he first started out, the traditional Thai conservationists did not accept his art as thai from the start. But I feel that it is necessary to evolve and bring in new elements to enrich the past, which was what I feel he has achieved through his body of work.

There were certainly many tourists too. It made me think about the nature of tourism again and how, just like what we were almost doing now, we move from one site to another, expecting to be entertained and wow-ed, and sometimes we learn little of the heritage of a given culture.

I read this book last year, called the Mcdonaldization of Society, which made me realize that I observe this phenomena everyday. It addresses the phenomena of Mcdonaldization – and how our culture and society has adapted to suit the characteristics of a business model. Experiences are now predictable and controlled, just like at a fast food joint. For instance, when we enter a McDonald’s or Starbucks in any part of the world, we can still feel at home (every one of them is made to feel and look the same) because we can expect the same service and almost the same menu, same setting, anywhere else. It is almost the same with tourism. Today’s tourism has been made to be efficient, and has been shaped in such a way that the tourist is always comfortable, experiencing the same things with slight differences each time in a different culture. Tour groups, guides, cater and add to this phenomenon. But how much can we say about really understanding another culture, when we do it from our own comforts?

Heritage, to me, is still a complex term, but i think i am beginning to understand it better, and why it was so confusing to me. Heritage has a symbiotic relationship with culture. But culture is always evolving and shifting over time. I now see that heritage can mean the physical object – a relic of the past, cultural or artistic practices, even a modern practice that has been influenced by the past. It is also now a commercial activity, with heritage as the goods. The people define heritage, and I am learning more and more everyday whilst conducting interviews with the people, and the tourists at each site.

Thereafter, we visited the black temple. As with their names, the temple was very different altogether. Belonging to another contemporary artist, this time the temple wasn’t shiny, but darker. A strange collection of furs and animal skin filled the main hall, as well as strange sculptures – i saw a penis-shapes handle on one of the large tables.

I have to say that I personally did not like this as much. Yes, there was a lot of oddities to see, but I couldn’t make much out of it. Seeing all the dead animal parts also made me feel unsettled. I hope they died before he took their furs out.

I felt something a bit dark, or eerie, to the place. In the midst of it all lay 2 cages. One with pythons and one with birds. Animal choice aside, here was living creatures in the midst of all this death, similarly in cages of their own.

I left feeling a little strange, because I couldn’t make much out of it. But it certainly does introduce another dimension to Chiang Rai, or my experience of Chiang Mai so far, as this temple is very unlike everything else that I have come across.

Later in the night, we visited the Student Night Market. One of the better night markets ( I mean please, the ones located near our hotel feature pretty much the same touristy things. Scarves, bracelets, etc..), I certainly got my money’s worth here when it came to shopping.

One of my better experiences though, came when I was trying to look for vegetarian food to eat. As I was walking around, the lady from the curry noodle store beckoned for me to buy her noodles. I had been walking around aimlessly, getting increasingly hungrier. I had no hope at all that her store had any vegetarian food, and I said I was vegetarian. She did something really unexpected. She offered to make a new broth for me that was vegetarian, making sure no fish sauce and oyster sauce went into the mix as well. It really made my night – not so much the food (which was really yummy), but that gesture of kindness.

Looking at the heritage sites were an experience, but I can say I felt rather disconnected to the city if I were just to experience that. I feel that its these human connections that make me really appreciate a certain place more. And that cannot be experienced through typical tourism, going to a site through some tour package. It is certainly multifaceted, and I too, am learning more about Chiang Mai everyday that we are here.