Ruined

Ok, let’s continue on my quest to catch up and actually blog about something that happened within the last week. Last Friday was the official halfway point to our program, and as a result we all gave our oral progress reports. This was strangely satisfying, since it was finally an opportunity to turn the tables on the grad students and watch them glaze over while we got to speak rapidly. As a reward, or possibly since the organizers of the program couldn’t come up with anything for us to do, we had the following Saturday off. Finally, my first chance to sleep in in over a month. As much as I’ve enjoyed running around to the exotic corners of Asia, I remembered, if only for one day, that I also really enjoy doing nothing.

With our nothing completed, we went back to the standard 7am weekend wakeup time for our Sunday trip to Ayuthaya, the old capital of Thailand about an hour north of Bangkok. The city is known for its vast stretches of ruins, mostly of religious sites, which were destroyed by Burmese plunderers in search of Thai gold in the 18th (I think) century. Before the ruins though, we stopped at the King’s summer palace. Between this place, and the winter palace at Phu Ping (look! that’s still funny!), it almost seems like they don’t really even need a regular palace. The summer palace is cool, mostly because it’s based on European and Chinese architectural styles since the original king who built it really liked to travel. As such, it’s also home to the only Gothic style Buddhist temple, which goes to prove that globalization has been around forever; a precursor to the Cheers restaurant in the Malaysian airport. Still my favorite example of “Thai-ized” western symbols has got to be “Sawadee Ronald McDonald”. Let’s just say I wish that I could still post pictures, because there’s no other way to describe him.

Speaking of pictures, I feel I should offer a handy travel tip: if you’re gonna take pictures of cool Thai flowers that look like they’re about to say, “Feed me, Seymour!”, watch where you stand. For example, it’s probably not a good idea to stand on a nest of fire ants. Based on personal experience, I can attest that this activity is just as fun as it sounds. ‘Nuff said.

After the palace, we stopped for lunch. Nothing special, but I bring it up solely because, at one point during the meal, Aeng, our tour guide, complimented my Thai. Me? The guy wearing a shirt advertising, “The Original American Ale”? Even though I was proud of myself, this clearly had to be a fluke. Turns out it was, since yesterday I think I managed to inadvertently swear at my boss. Apparently, my phrase book’s comment that most western speakers can make themselves understood without worrying about the complex tonality of the Thai language is a blatant lie. I didn’t cause an international incident (this time…), and instead I just apologize profusely. I still don’t know what I said, since none of them would tell me.

Anyway, back to Sunday. After lunch we stopped at a series of ruined temples, many of which are still venerated by modern monks. I won’t outline all the details of me running around these places, but I will say that on a few occasions I found myself in a similar situation as Dad did in Pompeii, when he took off to explore and lost the rest of our family. At one point, Joey and I ran into some Japanese tourists (surprise, surprise), who asked me to take their picture. Apparently, I’m very non-threatening and don’t look like I could outrun most tourist types, since I always get asked to take pictures. Once I’d taken the photo, they offered to take our photo, so Joey and I obligingly lined up in front of the temple. Right as the girl was getting ready to snap the shot, an enormous and unending procession of people filed right between us and the camera. It was certainly one of those, “well, this is interesting” moments. I wasn’t waiting around for them to pass, since I couldn’t see the end of the line, so I did what any self respecting culture nerd would do. I grabbed my camera, grabbed Joey, and hopped in the parade too. If they were going to ruin our photo op, we were at least determined to figure out where they were headed. As we followed the procession around, we passed by the rest of our group who were waiting in the shade. Needless to say, they looked at us a little funny.

Turns out that a new monk had just been ordained about 10 minutes earlier, and that the procession was in his honor. This whole spectacle was really cool, and I wanted to stay and watch, but we had to depart for our next set of ruins. My solution? Fake a bathroom stop once we got out to the parking lot. This plan did require an investment of 3 baht to use the bathroom, but I got to see more of the ceremony. I also got a chance to pee. If Aeng hadn’t followed me back in to make sure I found the bathroom, I probably could have stayed to catch some of the candy and money that the new monk was tossing to the crowd. I’ll remember this for the next time I crash a Buddhist ordination.