The Forty Third Story

This story is from the first time I went to Thailand.  Across the street from the Grand Palace campus is Wat Pho. This temple is only just bigger than the Buddha it houses. There are two doors, one on each side of the head, such that you walk in, do a "u" around the feet of the Buddha, and walk out just about 20 feet from the entrance. There is no point where you are far enough away to see the whole Buddha- instead, one contemplates details. When we were there the first time, there were scaffolds set up to do some upkeep on the Buddha. We walked in and heard this metallic "tiktiktiktiktiktiktik". I assumed it was tiny hammers, associated with the repairs, but it was quickly evident that no one was working. When we finally made it around to the other side of the Buddha, we discovered the source of the sound. Hundreds of tiny metal bowls were set on stands, and, for luck, many folks were walking down the line, putting 1 baht coins in each of the bowls. Bowls had different tones based on their own make, as well as how much weight was in them. Monks came along and emptied the bowls at regular intervals, updating the sound

A photo of a small section of the Reclining Buddha

The Twenty Eighth Story

My brother went to Japan for several years after graduating from college. The first Christmas he was gone, my mother and I flew to Thailand to meet up with him and his then girlfriend, Vika. There are lots of stories that come from that trip (the one about the hiking boots and lack thereof originates here). This is just a short aside, though. It is easy to lose track of days when traveling; Mom was more alert than the rest of us. Christmas morning found us on a plane on or way to Phuket. Mom pulled a tiny fake pine tree out of her carry-on and started singing christmas carols in the middle of the flight.

the eighth story

a longer story, today, but it's a good one. This is from a different trip to Thailand, though probably only a few miles from the other Thailand story.
Dustin and I were in Northern Thailand, and decided to rent a motorbike. We took it up the mountain to the temple we wanted to see, and on the way back down, decided to take a side trip to a waterfall mentioned in my guidebook. My guidebook was old, though, (from the first trip) and had already lead us astray several times, so all info from it was being taken as no more than a vague suggestion. The guidebook said the park the waterfall was in would cost about the equivalent of 20 bucks to enter, and that it closed at 5h30. We got to the park, and the gate was wide open, and the gatehouse unoccupied- further, it looked as though that gatehouse hadn't been opened in years. So, we continued on in, spent some time at the waterfall, and, when we were done, started back down.
The gate was closed, and really quite locked. I figured I had some cracker packets and a water bottle, and this was rather a nice spot, anyway, but Dustin was having none of it. The gate only went over the road- on one side there was a sharp cliff going up, on the other a 45 degree gravel covered embankment going down. He thought we could get the bike by on that side. The bike was not large- somewhat bigger than a vespa, not not even comparable to a Harley, and it didn't seem impossible. We got the bike down and in front of the gate, and started trying to get it back up. Dustin started sliding down the gravel. At that point, my goal, in total, was to make sure the bike didn't crush Dustin, and I ended up managing to hook myself to a tree and lock my arms around the bike. This stopped it, but we were MUCH further down the embankment, and had proven an inability to move upwards at all. Dustin got the bike stabilized, and thought he would try to turn it on and possibly use its own power as an assist. I thought this was a terrible idea, and got out of the way. It turned out to be a great idea. When the bike turned on, it's headlight automatically came on. The police/park rangers who had just closed the gate were still at the bottom of the drive. They saw the light in the trees, and came to investigate. I saw them coming (there were as many as twenty, as few as ten) and Thought "yes! It's the police! they've come to save us!" and ran up the hill to greet them. Dustin kinda stepped behind a tree, having possibly a different impression of policemen. The police had learned much of their english from pop songs, and assured me that I was beautiful (complimentary, but not helpful) and that I should stay right where I was (surprisingly helpful pop song lyric), and went down to collect the bike. They found Dustin, assured him that he was also beautiful, and put him out of the way with me. They got the bike up the hill and, with utter disregard for the geography and very clear evidence, decided that rather than us being in the park after hours, we must have had an accident on the road (at least 100m straight downhill). They were amazed that we were ok after such a terrible crash. They taught us how to use the brakes, using only the words "beautiful" and "eyes". We thanked them profusely, and, in the spirit of things, assured them that they, also, were beautiful. And then we road our bike back to our room.

the fifth story

Another story: Traveling with my mother in northern Thailand, we went on a five day walk. I honestly do not remember the purpose. What I do remember is that I had brand new, non-broken in hiking boots. I was young and stupid, and had not realized how bad an idea this was. In the first four hours, I developed a blister on my left heel with a diameter of almost two inches. This made it impossible to keep walking, not only in those boots, but in any shoes at all. I did the rest of the trip barefoot, which won me more young Thai friends than anything else I could have done as a 19 year old tourist. I got to play barefoot soccer at the top of a mountain (I was NOT the person who kicked the ball off the court, nor was I the person who managed to catch up to it, but I did go careening down the hill after it with the rest of the boys), and at the one point where I couldn't easily walk barefoot- there were very sharp burs on the path- I shared a pair of flipflops with a local young fellow. He would walk about 10 yards, clear a spot to stand on, and throw them to me, I would walk about 10 yards past him, clear a spot to stand on, and throw them back to him, etc. We had a grand time, and I was very happy to be free of boots in that weather, anyway.