October 24-26
Chiang Mai is one of the most charming places I have seen. There are temples everywhere. There are something like 300 Buddhist temples in and around the city which has a population of about 150,000.
The temple walls may be dark teak or white masonry. The tile roofs rise at a sharp pitch. The eaves and points of the gables are topped by carvings—sometimes birds, sometimes feathery abstract silhouettes, sometimes small nagas, the fantastic snake guards.
Carvings in the gables are painted gold and inlaid with mirrored glass that catches the sun.
The roof tiles are colorful. A frequent color combination is red, green, and orange. That is the color of 7-Eleven.
Could that be why the franchise became so popular here? Buddha blessed it? Or maybe people thought they were going to church.
We leave tomorrow morning, and as usual, I wish we were staying longer.
The city is half closed today for King Bhumibol’s funeral. Many people from all over the country have descended on Bangkok to catch a glimpse of the proceedings.
Others are watching on television. As a result, we encountered very light traffic when we went out for a stroll this morning.
The park by Tha Phae Gate is usually filled with people playing with the pigeons. The birds are so used to being fed that they will land in people’s hands to peck food. It’s a popular photo op, like Trafalgar Square.
We were able to cross the road on the far side of the moat with little difficulty. The last time we tried to cross this road, a year and a half ago, a man on a motorcycle delivery vehicle stared me in the eye and ran a red light in front of us.
We followed what I later learned is Tha Phae Road. We passed more temples, including one, Wat Bupparam, with a small stupa dressed in gold foil. Monks were setting up displays of flowers, possibly for a ceremony relating to the king’s funeral.
Most businesses were closed along the road for the funeral day, but we found a place to stop for coffee.
We saw a sign for China Town and while we were heading that way, we came to the Warorot Market, the sprawling neighborhood of stalls and shops next to the Ping River.
We had been here before. It seems to be the chief marketplace for the locals, at least in this part of town.
Many of the stalls were shut, but many more were open. Televisions were tuned to the ceremonies in Bangkok.
We took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel and began watching the funeral procession for the king. All the Thai stations are carrying the same live program.
A long funeral cortege accompanied a chariot bearing an urn containing the king’s body to the cremation site. The chariot was drawn by files of men in red. At the top of the chariot, there was a monk reading scriptures.
It was a very slow march: Foot forward on the trap, foot down on the bass. A complete pace could take a full second.
Somehow they got horses to conform. There were only a few, and they were clearly reluctant. Their heads bobbed up and down with impatience.
Once in a while a horse broke stride and reared out of line. But the rider brought him back.
There was an array of uniforms. Many were Euro-style, with peaked caps.
Several units wore large egg-shaped hats that look like the black bearskins of palace guards in England, but the hats don’t appear to be furry. The similarity is heightened, too, because the black hats are worn with red tunics.
Others wore the same hat and tunic in blue. Some had red hats and white coats.
A unit formed of all three colors made a Thai flag: Thin red stripe, thin white, wide blue, thin white, then thin red.
Other uniforms may be based on traditional Thai styles—peaked helmets and full trousers, similar to the clothes worn by figures in old paintings and carvings. Some of these guys carried spears.
I gather from an article in the New York Times that the cremation will begin at 10 tonight.
We leave for Bangkok tomorrow afternoon and have no idea what we’ll run into there. At least a quarter million people have traveled to the city for the funeral, and for the many rehearsals that have been televised over the past couple of weeks.
The procession that will take the king’s ashes to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha takes place on the 27th. That’s the day we get back.
We will be some distance from the palace, in a hotel off Sukhumvit Road. It’s a Skytrain ride and a water taxi trip to get to the palace.
The streets around the palace, we hear, have been thronged, but very orderly. The Thai people genuinely loved this king.
His picture was just about everywhere when he was alive. Now it is absolutely everywhere. The caricature of the day was taken in a small air-conditioned shop of the Jhaban Road, where we had stopped for a quick beetroot juice.
One of the activities of the past few days has been to find who will be open on the funeral day. Archer’s, Annie’s, and the U.N. will be closed.
Cooking Love has a sign up that it is closed Thursday and Friday.
It looks like Lert Ros will be open to serve dinner, but we ate fish there last night. Girasole, the Italian restaurant not far from the hotel, will open from five to ten. Maybe we’ll go there.
No one is permitted to sell alcoholic beverages on the 26th. Many will be dry for a while longer.
I haven’t had pizza in a week.
We went to Girasole for pasta and wine on the 24th.
Joanna had a craving for calamari, and they did a pretty good job of it. It came with a tomato sauce with garlic, olive oil, and possibly a bit of anchovy.
The spaghetti Bolognese was OK. A little sweetness, but not enough to spoil it.
We followed that with ravioli in a marinara sauce, which had a small but very satisfying bit of heat.
The only red wine they serve by the glass is a South African blend of cabernet sauvignon and something else. It was far too acidic to drink by itself.
Food, though, even a little bread, made it much more palatable.
Breakfast has varied. We stopped one morning at Archer’s where I had an English breakfast (complete with tomatoes and baked beans) and Joanna had the healthy option: yogurt, muesli, fruit, and honey.
Another morning we went to Top Coffee for more cheok.
Yesternight, the 25th, we went to Lert Ros for fish. We reprised the stir-fried vegetables in oyster sauce (a broth that goes very well with the grilled fish, by the way) and tried a dish of pork and fun si, a transparent capellini made from mung bean flour.
I didn’t care for the last one so much. The pork was like pieces of hot dog.
Lotus, the Macau cable channel, had a “Godfather” marathon yesterday. We caught part of Part II before we switched to coverage of the funeral preparations. Later, we tuned back to Lotus for the beginning of Part III.
Coppola was once one of my favorite film-makers. I even sat through “Apocalypse Now" and enjoyed parts of it. Godfather III was the start of his decline.
Then came “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” when he was so focused on weird shadows that he didn’t bother to direct his actors. How can anybody get Anthony Hopkins to act as a block of wood?
The funeral procession has reached the cremation site.
Using platforms raised and lowered by hand cranks, attendants have transferred the urn to a cart and then, after a march several times around the crematorium, moved it to the place where it will be burned.
The crematorium is a huge structure called Phra Meru Das, the size of a small palace. It represents Mount Meru, the site of Buddhist and Hindu heaven. It is the same symbolism as the towers of Angkor Wat.
This one was built specifically for King Bhumibol and will be consumed when he is cremated.
No one is permitted to sell beer or any drink containing alcohol today. I have a few cans in the fridge. I can’t carry them on the plane, and I don’t trust baggage handlers. So I will open a few to keep them from going to waste.
Bhumibol lived 88 years, 71 as king supporting projects and programs that lifted the fortunes of Thailand. His life was good.
Life is good.
Stay well, all.
Harry
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