Clear Eyes

Two amigos came to town. Stayed a week. Had a fine time.

These are A-list friends, college housemates. Each traveled with a 13-year-old son. For them it was spring break. For me it was Thai New Year. Taking the week off to travel around and get into water fights was no problem. The five of us did some river taxiing and some wet bike riding and some kayaking and some waterfall climbing and a few other soggy activities.

Hosting newcomers to Thailand made me realize how much newness I’ve absorbed since Jip and I arrived in July 2005. My friends stopped and stared at things that no longer strike me as strange. They asked questions I used to ask.

Brad marveled at what seemed to him a mindful pace of life. Several times he commented on the daily routines that included time for offering incense to spirits, or for refreshing flower garlands that hang from taxis’ rear-view mirrors. By the end of the week, he was trying to figure out how to explain to his wife when he got home that he had become a Buddhist.

Edie appreciated the sensory stuff—“This tastes so great! That smells so great! How have we lived this long without feeling anything like this?! How come America hasn’t figured that out yet?”

The two kids also asked sharp questions about the language. “Are you serious that I never have to conjugate any verbs? I’m moving here.” They also got wide eyed as we moved to successively wetter parts of town during the height of the annual Songkran festivities.

One night we passed by a free outdoor concert. The performers were spraying spectators with big hoses from the stage. People at the back of the audience could choose to get soaked at their own pace under huge public showers.

As we used to say to each other back in college when our house would embark on similarly wacky adventures, “after this, reality is such a disappointment.”

Not Making This Up

Can your local cultural association top this offering?

The Thai Textile Society will present a lecture, “Lotus Stem Weaving from Shan State,” by Sylvia Fraser-Lu at The Siam Society on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. She will explain the development of lotus stem weaving for monk’s robes and its continued popularity today.

Lotus-fiber weaving takes place in the eastern quarter of Kyaing Kan village, the largest settlement at the southern extremity of Inle Lake. According to informants, this activity began around 1910 when a Daw Sa Oo (Madame Sparrow’s Egg) in the interest of gaining merit set out to produce a set of robes for the highly revered abbot of a nearby monastery, from the fibers of the local padonma-kya lotus plant, which grew wild in the shallows of the lake. The delighted abbot had the weaver’s name changed to Daw Kya Oo (Madame Lotus Egg) in honor of her pious achievement. Daw Kya Oo and her friends throughout their lives continued to weave with lotus yarn for meritorious rather than commercial purposes, producing one or two sets of robes a year for eminent local abbots. None of Daw Kya Oo’s progeny are currently involved in weaving, but the descendants of her friends have continued the tradition.

The obscure art of weaving monk’s robes from lotus stem fibers first came to national attention in Burma at the annual Shwedagon Maho-thingan Festival. In November 1981, a team of weavers from Kyaing Kan were invited to compete in a nation-wide weaving competition to honor a Buddhist legend that asserts that Maya, the mother of the Buddha, stayed up all night in the Tavatimsa heaven on the eve of her son’s Enlightenment, to weave him a suitable robe. Weaving in a rougher fiber than their competitors, who used milled cotton, they did not win, but their sturdy beautifully woven robe caused quite a sensation amongst the devoutly Buddhist on-lookers. Such an enthusiastic reaction was not unexpected, given the symbolic importance of the lotus in Hindu-Buddhist culture.

I didn’t make it to this lecture, but if you’re intrigued I can maybe scare up a lotus stem robe for you to honor the monk in your life.

Opening Day

Lots of people know that Thailand is famous for its elephants. Tourists often take in a show or a ride at some point during their stay in the land of smiles. Some visitors even schedule their visits around the various elephant festivals throughout the country, in order to watch elephants dance or race or play tug-of-war.

What’s not widely understood is how important baseball has become in elephant circles here. On Opening Day yesterday, the first-ever nine-inning game played only by elephants took place at a specially designed field outside of Chiang Mai.

Event organizers said that baseball was simply the next logical step in a sports evolution that began with polo-playing pachyderms. “We figured that if they could get good at swinging a mallet, there was no reason they couldn’t swing a bat as well. The ones with the sharpest eyes can even hit a curve ball,” noted Proboscidea Loxodanta, spokesperson for the group.

The baseball exhibition was part of a special once-a-year rollout of elephant talents. Alongside the display of pitching and catching, elephants were seen cooking pad thai, weaving silk pashminas, and demonstrating insight meditation. Plans for future years include elephant massage.