The pickup trucks with their bullhorns going loudly are proclaiming something in the local language which I assume to mean, "Long live the King!" "May the people prosper!" "Health and Good wishes from a grateful people to our King!"
This is going to be great! Even Obama does not get anything like this!
And I was right....Obama does NOT get anything like this: turns out the police escort was for about 50 NEW Pizza Delivery motor scooters for Mr. Pizza! The entire delivery band of motor scooters with heated metal boxes for freshness was on an advertising binge across Chiang Mai today. They raced by, Mr Pizza banners flying in the breeze, police escort with sirens and pickup trucks announcing this glorious addition to the lives and hearts of the people of Chiang Mai.
Actually, it was a pretty good stunt and makes Madison Avenue in the States look like a backwater of creative ideas. Though I must admit: I have been in the heat of Chiang Mai for a couple days and the last thing a pizza delivery person needs on their motor scooter is a metal box to keep pizza warm. Though.....perhaps the box is solar heated and bakes the pizza on the way to the customer. THAT would be a break through greater than the presence of the King....even though he is greatly loved in this country.
Yesterday we walked the NE quadrant of the Old CIty and saw Buddha after Buddha. Great stuff. Today we concentrated on the NW quadrant. Once again, an astounding mixture of old and new, fancy and pedestrian Temples, images of Buddha, stupas and Monasteries. I enjoyed every one of them. How they packed so many temples in so little of an area is beyond me.
One temple in particular:the Wat Phrasingha Woramahawiharn was the most beutiful of the city. Let me put it this way: If Dublin were going to have a fantastic Buddhist Temple, this one would be it...if you catch my drift. If George Lucas designed Temples, this would be it.
I really understand very little about all the significance for each of the buildings and worship areas of the temple complexes but I do have a "feel" for the devotion which the populace places in and on these temples. I am not at-one with the Buddhists but I admire the come-as-you-are attitude of Buddhists to everyday life. Something that baffles me is the number of Buddhas in the front of the temple. It seems that if one big Buddha is good, then eight must be better and maybe 17 would be stupendous! And so they put all 17 up front...for starters.
Laura is pretty good at reading the guidebooks and intricate maps and spotting a place to see and so we wander down the street and find it. Such is the case with the Kids Ark Foundation It supports HIV/AIDS kids. They have all sorts of programs and a handicraft display where they sell spun scarves and the like. Very high quality and we made their day, if you know what I mean. The volunteers for the day were a couple...the guy was from Cincy and his wife from Guyana...both by way of the UK, Canada, Iran and Thailand and New England. Interesting folks. Good cause. You over achievers could Google Kids Ark Foundation.org.
It was lunch and we did what most tourists would do for lunch, we said: "Let's roam around Chaing Mai and see if they have a women's prison ministry inmate training program that serves lunches." Turns out they do! This too was on the map. This too was quite good. We sat in a little courtyard. The drinks and meals were quite tasty (Coconut smoothie and cashew chicken for me. Laura and Josh had similar meals. Josh had iced coffee.) Great place. We were ready for the afternoon in which we went to visit more temples.
Chiang Mai is a backpackers paradise. Cheap accomodations. Lots of cheap restaurants with good meals. Lots of coffee shops tucked in here and there with wi-fi. This place is more wired than Silicon Valley. Actually the whole country is. No matter where you go, people are on line. In the smallest sellers stalls in the market place, the teens are waiting on you and when they are just waiting on you to make a purchase, they are updating their Facebook page. I am not sure if the local populace interacts anymore, while people walk by, the owner of the shop is watching You Tube videos, the latest from Psy, scores of their Kickboxing heroes from around the world. We were at this shop the other day and they had a "traditional" weaver of cloth out front to show how it is all done. Her skill was amazing. The colors were vibrant. I snapped a photo and when I walked away she pulled out her cellphone from beneath the folds of her costume and updated her status. In any case, the Women's Inmate Training Program had great wi-fi, as did the little coffee shop later. It's a new world out there.
Daughter Laura is a Rotarian and we told her that she really should attend a Rotary meeting and do their "Hands across the border" thing that service clubs are always doing. Turns out the Cincy guy from the weaving shop is Rotary and he found that one of Chaiang Mai's 11 Rotary Clubs was meeting tonight at the Huay Kaew Falls Restaurant. We should go! We did.
The place was past the University District (think: Ohio State on High Street during rush hour) which made a slow going challenge for our taxi driver. Then a ways up the hill/mountain and one will find the restaurant. Chiang Mai is a bit out there and restaurants such as this apparently don't cater to the tourists so our mutual language skills added spice to the evenings proceeding. Besides not serving many tourists, they don't seem to serve the Rotarians either. We arrived, the Rotary sign was up in front of the "Banquet Room" but the Rotarians were a no-show. Nobody. How do you lose and entire Rotary Club in Chiang Mai? They have. It's interesting to note that this club called itself the Airport Rotary and hadn't met at the airport for years. Well, here is another place in which this club has not met also. Rotary International should be updating this clubs charter.
No matter. The atmosphere of the restaurant was one of faded elegance. Lights on the huge rock outcroppings and the noise of the waterfalls somewhere in the vicinity. Laura asked about a particular fish dinner which the neighboring table had and it appeared at our table. The language barrier made things lively as we discovered that any meal which our hands casually pointed to on the page, whether we wanted to order it or not, actually became our order. We had lots of food. Had the Rotarians ever appeared we could have fed a couple dozen of them with what we had on our table. But, there was Chang and Singha and night air and it was pretty nice.
Afterwards when we paid and walked out to the street, we realized that we were rather far up the mountain and the taxi's didn't come by very often. We wandered down the road. We could have used that Mr. Pizza police escort and contingent of 50 Motor Scooter delivery vehicles about then. Fortunately, it was all downhill from there.
Peace, Bob
Oh, my Uncle would be sad about the lack of Rotarians...he always visited other Clubs in his travels. Always funny stories from the Rotary Club : )
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