Meditations in Northern Thailand

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Northern Thailand is a place of pause. The air is different, softer, quieter, touched with the scent of temple incense and the cool mist of the mountains. It is a land of gilded rooftops and open roads, of monks walking barefoot at dawn, of rivers that carry stories across borders. 

In Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, time does not rush. It lingers, inviting you to do the same.

Time does slow in Chiang Mai, or maybe it is I who am slowing, shedding the rush, letting the mind uncoil like incense smoke in temple air. The mountains rise mist-clad, and the temples stand not as relics of the past but as spaces where time stands still. Even the language flows differently, softer, unhurried, unlike the staccato beat of Bangkok.

14.jpgTHE LAND OF PAUSE Young monks in saffron-colored robes walk the streets of Chiang Mai in the early morning sun

In robes the color of saffron, monks walk barefoot through the quiet streets, moving with a grace that makes me mindful of my own steps. I follow, not in step, but in spirit, learning from their silence.

5.jpgINNOCENT BUDDHA More than a temple, Wat Rong Khun, otherwise known as The White Temple of Chiang Rai, is an installation symbolic of Buddhist wisdom, human greed, and pop culture
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Further north, in Chiang Rai, Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple, gleams like an unfinished poem, its beauty both eternal and fleeting. I linger, knowing that some things are meant to be half-written, left open to what comes next.

At the Golden Triangle, Thailand meets Laos and Myanmar at the Mekong River, a convergence of borders and histories, of departures and returns. Karen women of the hill tribes weave their stories into fabric, their hands moving with the wisdom of those who understand that life turns in circles, not straight lines. Their necks, elongated by rings, seem to stretch toward some unseen horizon, seeing beyond or simply holding tradition against time’s weight.

3.jpgTHE LONG-NECK WOMEN PTAA vice president Evelyn Dy Bondagjy (middle) with the women of the hill tribe Karen
10.jpgTHE GOLDEN TRIANGLE On this bank of the Mekong River at the Golden Triangle, you stand on Thai soil, look to Laos (right across) and stare far into the horizon at the silhouette of Myanmar (beyond the golden Buddha)

In Mae Kachan, the hot spring holds me without question. I do not dare to plunge, but I listen to its quiet wisdom gurgling from the earth’s core. It is a cycle neither beginning nor ending, and in that moment, the burble sounds like my heartbeat.

11.jpgSTARBRIGHT Entrance to the Michelin Guide-rated contemporary Chinese restaurant  Jia Tong Heng in Chiang Mai

But not all cycles are so easy to accept.

1.jpgSELF-PORTRAIT This Asian elephant wows the audience at the Mae Taeng Elephant Park with its Picasso skills

I watch an elephant paint on canvas, and also dance. A spectacle, no doubt, but one that leaves me uneasy.

These creatures, sacred in Thai culture, were once revered in war and worship. Now they stand before an audience, drawing self-portraits, performing the two-step, behaviors learned, rehearsed, expected, unnatural.

9.jpgFOLK ART Intricate carvings on the wooden doors of the Ban Daam Museum, featuring the elephant as an icon of strength, wisdom, and royal power in Thai mythology

And yet, what is the alternative?

13.jpgDANCING ELEPHANTS Never ride an elephant, it damages their spine and internal organs, but this dancing elephant helps make money for Mae Taeng Elephant Camp, which cares for so many elephants that have lost their instincts to survive in the wild. Each elephant eats up to 250 kilograms a day. It takes a fortune — and your help — to keep them alive

An elephant eats up to 250 kilograms of food a day. Imagine the cost of feeding even one, let alone the many that call places like Mae Taeng Elephant Camp home. Releasing them into the wild is not as simple as it sounds. Raised by humans, many have lost the instincts to survive. What seems like freedom could be abandonment. So I sit with this discomfort. The very performances that unsettle me also sustain them, funding their food, their medical care, their very existence. Is this a compromise or a necessity, a means to an end or a system that must evolve?

2.jpgELEPHANT SAFARI A tour of Mae Taeng Elephant Camp in Chiang Rai on an ox cart ride with Philippine Travel Agencies Association officers Jaison Yang and Evelyn Dy Bondagjy, and Lyn Ching-Pascual

There is no easy answer, only the responsibility to choose well. Of one thing I am certain: I will never ride an elephant. The weight of human leisure is too heavy. It breaks more than their backs.

I wonder if the same weight is breaking the backs of others, not just the beasts of burden but the people who carry knowledge passed down through generations, their hands steady even as time moves against them.

4.jpgUMBRELLA VILLAGE The old women of Bo Sang keep the long tradition of umbrella and parasol making at the Bo Sang Umbrella Village

In Bo Sang, the Bo Sang Umbrella Village in particular, the old women do not fade.

Their hands, still sure, still steady, turn mulberry bark into paper, split bamboo into bones that bend, cut and shape, tie and bind until an umbrella blooms like a second sun. No machines, no chemicals, only memory. How the bark must soak, how the paper must dry, how the frame must fold just so, or else it will never close again.

These women, craftspeople in their 70 or 80s, let me try, placing brushes in our hands, bowls of color set before us, as if paint alone could trace their knowing. We dip and paint, a flower, a swirl, a hesitant stroke where theirs are sure. The brush drags where it should glide, the colors bleed where they should have held. What they make so effortless, we make so clumsy.

7.jpgTHE BLACK HOUSE MUSEUM The Ban Daam Museum is a complex of 25 traditional Northern-style buildings and several adapted local-style buildings showcasing traditional folk art

By the time we finish, our umbrellas are far from perfect. Yet we held them with pride, not just for what we had made but for what we now understood. Beauty is not just in the final form but in the hands that shape it, in the years of knowing how.

And I think of home. I think of my country. I think of the Philippines. I think of hands left idle, of knowledge untaught, of all the things we used to make before we learned to discard.

8.jpgMINI PINEAPPLES Thailand is now one of the largest producers and exporters of pineapple in the world

If we had what Bo Sang has, would our elders still sit so quietly? Would their wisdom still go unheard?

12.jpgTHE DANCE OF SERPENTS Snakes in Thai folklore are said to have assisted people in establishing cities and citadels and bestowing prosperity on the inhabitants

Or would we see at last that what is handmade is never just an object? It is a life, folded carefully, waiting to be opened again.

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