Day 3 – Meditation

Visit to Doi Suthep Temple. Climbed 306 steps to the top. Followed Peter our tour guide in the temple. He gave us a brief on Buddha, on how he attained enlightenment and the significance of each individual’s day of birth with respect to a Buddha image. Each person’s day of birth corresponds to a certain Buddha image and that represents certain characteristics and things to note for the person. This was very interesting to learn about. Went on with Peter to pray and get blessings from the monk in the temple. Although I am a free thinker, I have prayed with my grandparents since young and have no qualms about praying in a Buddhist temple. We then went on to the vista for a view of the whole Chiang Mai city. The visibility was not that great. Had a chat with May, the CMU student attached to the other sub-group. I learnt that all Thais have to learn meditation as students and they have regular meditation sessions in school which all students have to take part in. I also learnt from Yok that all Thai boys have to go through being a monk. I knew that they had to be monks but what I did not know was the duration. Yok told me that parents can choose to let their boys be monks for any duration, even just days. One reason is the belief that if the boy becomes a monk, the parents will go to heaven. It is not mandatory for girls to become nuns. It was very interesting learning about the Thai culture, especially that of Buddhism and meditation. I feel that Singapore schools should look at introducing meditation. It is a very simple technique and will serve them well, especially growing up in such a high stress environment. I learnt about meditation many years ago, but did not have the discipline to stick to it. I recently started practising meditation again and having the conversation with May just bolstered my determination to keep at it.

We went to the the Huey Kaew Waterfall Doi Suthep National Park during the free time slot. The climb wasn’t exactly easy and safe but we made it. It was a nice respite from the city. On the way down the hill, we passed by the Chiang Mai Tourist Police and headed in to get an interview because we thought it would be interesting to get a sensing of what kind of complaints the tourist police gets. It was very intriguing to see a tourist police because that is something I haven’t really seen in many places. This could possibly signal the increasing problems that tourists are causing, thus the need for a police unit.

We then went to Maya mall to conduct interviews and surveys. We split the team into an interview team and survey team. I was in the survey team, in charge of going around to get locals to do the survey on our handphones. I had to learn a few simple sentences from Yok before we embarked on the survey mission. It was not a simple mission, for identifying locals was not easy, approaching them was harder and getting them to complete the survey was even harder. I had many people reject me initially, but after a while, I got a hang of the questioning and was quite comfortable with it. This made me learn the importance of just taking the first step to get things done. Learning to take failure in the form of rejections was also a learning experience for me.

We then went to CMU for dinner. The street stalls outside CMU was AMAZING! It was literally endless. We walked for 30 minutes and we still did not see the end of the food stalls. The variety of food was just mind boggling! After dinner, we took the purple car, which basically was the CMU shuttle bus on campus. Yok introduced the school to us as we moved around the campus. We headed for the CMU night bazaar. The night bazaar was quite a nice area, peaceful and quiet with mainly students roaming the streets. It was very similar to Bugis Street, selling mainly ladies’ clothes. Overall, it was a fruitful day, leaning about the Thai culture and experiencing the food. Having the CMU student attached to each team is one of the best points of this TOPS trip because it really allowed the team to interact and immerse themselves better in the environment and culture.