Day 2 (5 Jan) Posting

What is a temple?

That was the thought running through my head as I scrutinised the mural in the ubosot: there were paintings of Elvis Presley, Spiderman and Batman amongst other modern figures of pop culture. All along, my impression of temples were along the lines of solemn wooden structures with plain walls and statues of Buddha situated in the main prayer hall. Juxtaposed against this impression and the Wat Rong Khun in its flamboyance and utter disregard for tradition would seem like a travesty. Yet what is a temple but a place dedicated to the worship of Buddha? If the Wat Rong Khun, in its glistening beauty, can attract and inspire people to devote themselves to Buddha, it should be regarded as more than just a regular art exhibit or a tourist attraction. It really is a temple.

The aforementioned episode was an example of my attempt to keep an open mind and to be accepting of unfamiliar phenomena. The man behind the Wat Rong Khun might be rather eccentric but his willingness to dedicate a significant portion of his fortune and time can be taken as his devotion to Buddha as well. That much can be seen from his paintings which were on display at a gallery next to the temple. I wished that I had allocated more time to appreciating and admiring his artwork.

Our next stop was another temple dating much further back into the past. Wat Chedi Luang was ancient and majestic but we were there for work, not sight-seeing. Immediately after lunch, we interviewed, rather than chatted with, the monks. The experience was rather intriguing as the monks were quite open with their views and not as reticent as we had expected.

However, our efforts were jeopardised by a Thai passers-by who saw that one of the monks had posed with the word “make-up” in our footage. Claiming that association with females would tarnish the reputation of Thai monks, she requested that we delete any recorded media with such association. At the same time though, we had heard that it was permissible for the monks to talk about secular topics. That made sense to us since the monk chat programme was targeted towards secular beings.

From this episode, I wondered about the potential trade-off between reputational damage to our research subjects and collection of data for our research. This cost-benefit analysis motivated our eventual decision to delete some of the recorded media. Furthermore, this episode changed my understanding of cultural lag; I used to think of religion as a more backward institution compared to society. Hence, it was ironical to me how religion (as represented by the monk chat programme designed to promote understanding) was more progressive than society (as represented by the passer-by’s view that monks should absolutely not be associated with mention of females) in this case.

Our next stop was a café frequented by students of Chiang Mai University (CMU). Fye, our student translator and 4^th year Political Science student at CMU, recommended that location as a place for us to conduct our interviews and surveys. It was a goldmine. We landed a focus group discussion involving eight students within minutes of our arrival. However, we had not had such a huge group to work with before and experienced problems with coordination and communication. Nonetheless, we managed to capture some valuable responses. It was particularly interesting to note how all the males claimed that there was gender equality in society but the females tended to be more reserved in their answers.

I was really pleased that night. We had made good progress on the ground and our original research question still retained its relevance. On top of that, I found myself establishing good rapport with my group mates as we deepened our grasp of one another’s working styles, strengths and weaknesses. I also realised that it was probably a good idea to conduct interviews and surveys at places where people were seated, and preferably with a table in front of them. This seemed to induce in people a greater readiness to answer interview and survey questions as they would be more comfortable. It could be either that or that it was simply more inconvenient for them to turn us down when they were “trapped” at their seats. Perhaps this observation would be useful for the next few days…