Thailand, Your Treasures are Endless...

I am still in awe of this place. The smiling faces I wake up to every morning; the beautiful temples that make my eyes glitter; the fabulous food that is sending my stomach in circles. I'm totally in love.

Classes have been great, too! We're doing a program through the Institute of Culture, Religion and Peace through Payap University and the professors teaching us through the program are amazing! The main one is an American-born man who came to Thailand as a Protestant missionary and now, after 40 years in the country, considers himself a Christian Buddhist. He took us around Doi Suthep, a temple on top of one of the biggest mountains to the west of Chiang Mai and basically told us the life story of The Buddha. The temple was one of the reasons I decided I had to come to Chiang Mai in the first place and its beauty did not disappoint.

Yesterday, we had a lecture from an Australian-born man who has also lived in Thailand for 30+ years and started an NGO that focuses on educating Buddhist monks on HIV/AIDS issues so that they can work to halt the spread of the disease in their communities. He was stunning to talk with and a real pleasure to listen to. In the afternoon we visited a clinic that hosts an HIV/AIDS group and heard stories from people living with HIV from the group.

We had a day off today, and I decided to take a Thai massage class with two of my friends here. We were taught by an adorable, tiny Thai woman who owns her own massage place right near our guesthouse. We learned the basics of body, head, and back massage and practiced on each other all day. On top of being completely relaxed, I am now equipped to massage friends and family, assuming I keep practicing for the next few months.

All is well, all is wonderful,
B(ee)

Lanterns, Dancing In The Sky, Like Fireflies...

For the last week and a half, people in the Chiang Mai area have been geering up for Loi Kraton (the "Lantern Festival"). Every night, more and more lanterns filled the night sky and fireworks were going off from sunset to sunrise. It all culminated tonight in one huge soiree of lantern and firework lighting all across the city. We also bought round bamboo boats decorated with flowers, incense and candles and let them into the river carrying our wishes to the water gods.

When I say lanterns, I don't mean dinky little lights. These things are made out of tissue paper and measure anywhere from 0.5 to 4 meters wide and twice as tall as they are wide. They work kind of like hot air balloons, gathering enough helium from the fire at the bottom to rise up for a while and eventually, inevitably, fall. The first night we were in Chaing Mai, we saw maybe 50 or so throughout the course of the night. Tonight, at any one point, you could look in any direction and see at least 150 without moving your eyes. Accompanied by fireworks or assorted sizes, sounds, and types, the night sky was lit up with all kinds of fire, making the scene almost magical.

If I hadn't already fallen in love with Chaing Mai, this festival would have thrown me into this city's loving arms. The charm of the scene and the atmosphere of the whole night threw me into a dream world that I can still hear happening outside my window. The lanterns rose up into the sky and danced their way along with the wind and created beautiful designs in the sky. The way they danced, it was like fireflies that never stopped lighting up. Magical. Brilliant. Dreamy.

I do have to get up at 6 o'clock to head to a meditation retreat/to teach English in a Burmese refugee camp in Northern Thailand, so we'll see if the charm of the fireworks has worn off any after a night of trying to sleep with the constant booming. But considering the short time I slept last night, getting to and staying asleep tonight should not be a problem.

Charmed,
B(ee)

And Then I Fed An Elephant...!

Someone asked me today to describe my vacation week in one word and I chose "life-changing". And it really has! In the last week, I have worked and relaxed, been revitalized and energized simultaneously.

The Elephant Nature Park that a spent my last week at is a truly remarkable place. Their mission is to provide an alternative to the typical experience that tourists have with elephants in Thailand (i.e. trekking, circuses). They had identified major problems with the way working elephants in Thailand are trained to: carry passengers, perform tricks, paint, beg on streets, etc. and are providing an alternative to those methods. They don't force their elephants to work or perform, but instead let tourists interact with the animals on a more personal, physical level.

Here are just a few ways that the foundation is revolutionizing the elephant-tourist industry in Thailand. Instead of beating elephants into submission, they use positive reinforcement (and no sharp implements!) to train their elephants. They only chain the elephants to concrete pillars at night to give their mahouts a well-deserved break from following their elephants around all day. They let tourists feed, bathe, and interact with the elephants a bit instead of making the animals put on a show for the tourists. Yes, there is (as far as I can tell) only one place like this in Thailand.

I saw video footage of the brutality that potential working elephants suffer in their early years, and the only thing keeping me from dissolving completely was looking out the window onto acres of open land with elephants roaming free --- bathing, eating, relaxing in the shade. The contrast made everything so clear. These methods do work, and looking at the success of the relatively young organization, the tourists do appreciate the experience.

The last week has left me with a lot to think about, to say the least. I can't say with any certainty that I'll devote the rest of my life to saving Thai elephants, but at least I have the outlet for that option now.

At peace,
B(ee)

First Full Day in Chaing Mai...

After being pleasantly woken up by some friend who got into town this morning, I had my first (of three) juice shakes of the day at an adorable little restaurant. I had one of their detox juices (carrot, apple, and celery) and felt pretty great afterwards. We took a walk to the area of town where I'll be staying after my elephant adventure and decided to indulge and get a massage...for 150 baht (approximately 5 USD) an hour.

The massage was at this place that is run by a community of blind men and women. They do all of the logistics of running the place and also all the massages. The man working on me cracked my back harder but less painfully than it ever has before. He also made me aware of parts of my body that I didn't even know were in pain. I was told that it wasn't true Thai massage, but more a hybrid of pressure-point acupuncture and Thai massage. Whatever it was, it was a fabulous hour and my body felt very renewed afterward.

On top of the great massage, it was an incredible experience. When we walked in, they immediately felt our presence and jumped up to help us. As they worked on the three of us, they chatted and laughed. There was another woman in the corner doing intricate beaded sculptures. There were some examples of her work for sale and it was phenomenal work.

After two more juice, much more exploring, and a night market that could have easily made me clear my bank account had I not resisted, I'm off to bed to get some quality sleep before leaving for the elephant park in the morning.

I'm ecstatic, to say the least. I love this place, despite its oddities, which I'll discus later.

B(ee)

Swaritka Chiang Mai!

First impressions? Laid back, happy-go-lucky, delicious...wonderful things!

In fact, Thailand is so laid back, that on the bus ride from the airport to the train station (that was already 30 minutes late because of traffic) with ten minutes until our train was scheduled to leave, our driver stopped on the side of the road, talked with a street vendor, went into 7/11 to get change, and walked back out to the bus, picking up food from the vendor on the way. We ended up making our train still, but would have had a fight to pick if we hadn't because of the short pit stop.

We took an overnight train to Chiang Mai and I had the pleasure of waking up to a Thai sunrise! Windows!!! How I love you!!!

After cramming 9 people into a red truck, baggage and all, we arrived at our guesthouse, which is a pretty nice place. A very different kind of "nice" from our last place...bright colors, lounge areas, a pool table, and backpackers galore! It should be a great weekend.

From what I can tell so far, Chiang Mai is about half foreign people (including residents and tourists) and half ethnic Thai. It gives an interested flavor to the city. But so far, I'm absolutely in love! I could not be happier with my new location! Did I mention there are pictures and statues of elephants everywhere?!?!

Blissfilled,
B(ee)

In Love With The World...

So I hit the 2,000 word count on my final paper today and decided to take most of the day off to "reflect" on it...aka come up with 500 more words to add to it...

My time in Taiwan is almost up and I think I'm ready to move on. The bar of soap I started when I got here is almost nonexistent, just another sign that I'm ready to move and go somewhere else, get new experiences and start all over again.

Although I really should be looking back at the last six weeks right now, all I can do is think about the future. I'm yearning for the place that I fell for immediately when I saw it for the first time just over a year ago --- Chiang Mai. I'm trying not to anticipate love, but it's hard to fight instinct. Even looking for hostels for next weekend made me happy, knowing the environment I'll be apart of this time next week.

And then there's the whole week with elephants thing. How could I not look forward right now?

Although I've always enjoyed traveling and being abroad, I've never felt that the travel bug bit me so hard as it has right now. Home is a reminder of unconditional love and comfort, but the beauty of strange things becoming familiar is too distracting right now.

Strongly bitten,
B(ee)

Ask Me If There Is An Article of Dry Clothing in My Bag...

For the last five days, dry clothing has been harder to come across than water in the desert.

After a three-day meditation retreat at Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Education Center in a beautiful setting on the side of a mountain in a surprisingly expansive retreat center and monastery, we came back to Sinjuhang for a day of classes before heading off to Hualien, a beautiful nestled between sea and mountains in Eastern Taiwan.

Beautiful it was; rained it did. In fact, it rained so much that the road back to Taipei was blocked by rocks and mud and most of the exciting activities our guides had planned for us, which involved white water rafting and visiting the Toroko marble gorge, were cancelled so we had to rearrange our entire intinerary and trip route. In the end, we drove around the entire island of Taiwan. The entire island! Accumulating way too many hours in a bus along the way. At least the seats were nice to nap in...

But it was amazing to be among trees again. And more than just the ones in the park next door. The whole ride to Hualien, we took the road that hugged the coast. Looking out the left window, it was all sea; you had to angle your head down to see the road or dramatic cliff beneath. And to the right was all mountains, straight up. We wound around hairpin turns like I've never felt a bus wind before. It was fantastic!

The whole trip was filled with encounters with different types of healing. From aboriginal shaman women blessing us and ridding our souls of evil spirits, to hours spent in hot spring pools and showers, letting the sulfer seep into our skin and massage our muscles, to realizing how much this group of 20-odds has truly become a loving, supportive, cuddle-friendly family over the last five weeks: I was healed in every way.

One of the notable healing experience I had was a night we spent with some practicers of Tibetan singing bowls in Hualien. Although they were novices who assumed the roles of professions, cauing some inner controversy in me, the community of sounds that was formed as we sat among these practicers was moving, to say the least. It was different than the meditation we learned at Dharma Drum; I tried that type of meditation, and it didn't work.

But after I had found my place and settled in with the sound and the community, I got in touch with myself, through thinking about other people important to me, and realized how poorly I have treated my body over the last few months. My brief return into carnivorism has left my body full of toxins that make it harder for me to breath, sleep, and wake. I concluded, after coming face-to-face with the horrible way I'm treating my body, to return to my own eating habits after Taiwan and fade out of putting meat in my body for the rest of my stay here.

It will be very different, going back and explaining my habit as a health reason. Not "health" in the Western-sense, as an all-encompassing, universal state of the body, but a personal health.

In love and health,
B(ee)

This One Time, I Ate A Bagel from the Gods...

After only vaguely recognizing an earthquake that measured 6.3 on the Richter while slipping into dreams last night, the group went on a field trip to the northern coast today. Keep in mind, storms are a comin' our way; that typhoon that hit the northern Phillippines last night is headed towards Taiwan right now. We were shooed away from a cliff overlooking the turbulent waters by the police and then headed into the city of Keelung to see a procession of the gods at one of the bigger temples there.

The procession was such an experience. We got there, worked our way to the front of the umbrella-populated, poncho-toting crowd only to have a large firework explode in our faces and float up our nostrils. Smaller, higher-pitched sparklers went off for about 30 seconds. A series of shrines came and went in front of the crowd with policemen directing traffic around the path of the people carrying the shrines. I was without an umbrella and had given my rainjacket to someone else, so I was drenched by this point.

It finally came time for the big shrine to be carried out of the temple! About 10 men wearing elaborate facepaint carried the shrine, covered in plastic wrap, out of the temple and between the lines of the crowd. As they were affiting themselves with ponchos, I started taking pictures of two men in front of me. They noticed me and one of the men reach under his poncho, ripped a bagel-like bread off of a chain of bagel-like breads around his neck and handed it to me.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't the best bagel I've ever had, but it was at the time. I'm not sure whether it was because I knew that it was food from the gods or whether I was just in pure ecstacy after having been recognized in a ritual that I barely understood.

As the procession started its slow, stagnant march around the city block, a Taiwanese man, seeing me drenched to the bone, grabbed me and pulled me under his rainbow colored umbrella with him. He collected more and more of us until there must have been 5 of us squeezed under a cover meant for no more than 2. Huddled together, we started walking with the crowd. Out of nowhere a woman jumped in front of us and handed us her umbrella, insisting we take it from her. This was no dinky umbrella; it had room for at least 4 and a nice, solid wooden handle. She disappeared, leaving her umbrella with us.

Rituals. They are something I have come to love about Taiwanese culture that I don't feel have had a great presence in my life. At least, not in the way that they would had I grown up in Taiwan. Everyday, I see people giving offerings and lighting incense at a corner shrine down the street. Yesterday, when they celebrated the Autumn Moon Festival, the shrine was packed every time I walked by, fire so mighty it made me wonder about the safety of the burning tower in the middle of the sidewalk.

It was a great day in the rain. But it is nice to be showered and in the comfort of a dry sweatshirt.

B(ee)

How Many People Can Fit in a Temple Without Burning Each Other With Their Incense?

The other day, with sky threatening rain but thankfully hiding the sun, we took a field trip over to Longshan Temple, one of the largest temples in Taipei (and a Grade 2 Historical Site...whatever that means...). It was originally an unaffiliated Buddhist temple, but has become a site for all Chinese religions over time.

It was mad there. People everywhere. Tables were filled with plates of: fruit, flowers, candies, cookies, bottled water, Lays chips. The burning of incense made the air inside the top-open enclosure a little bit muskier, but pleasant feeling.

It was a true worship, to me. Everyone was included and did so in whatever capacity they felt necessary. Parents directed their little girls and boys around the alters to different gods, but didn't have to show them what to do when they got there. Along one side of the temple, about 20 elderly people sat and stood with prayer beads and what appeared to be Buddhist scriptures in their hands. Most chatted, laughed, and joked. A few were obviously praying, but snapped out of it when they heard a friend say something funny. At the front main alter, one woman was praying so ferociously, she was sweating visibly. A woman next to her was quietly kneeling, one hand against her chest, tears streaming down her face. Near the exit of the temple, a young monk in light blue robes sat perfectly straight with a set of prayer beads in each hand and an earbud in each ear. As I was watch him, slowly rolling the beads through his fingers, he completed his exercise, opened his eyes, sat still for a minute, then took our a thermos of tea and shared it with the boy next to him.

You could almost see the growth of a life sitting watch the people in the temple. From a young age, these people came to temples regularly for all different kinds of worship and prayer. This was routine for most, but also a place of comfort place to purposefully direct personal prayers and receive blessings.

I purchased some incense and walked around the alters with a few of my group mates. At first, I imitated the motions of the practiced worshipers. Then, as I began moving between the huge golden incense offering structures I took in my surroundings at each place, then closed my eyes and listened to the soft music that was hidden beneath the intense visuals with open eyes. Over the sounds of the crowd and busy street, I could hear myself grow closer to something sacred there. After I was content with my surroundings, I would move on and continue exploring the different parts of the sacred held in that one temple.

I'm not sure I would call it prayer, and I definitely wouldn't call it worship, but I connected to that place and something happened that resembled sacredness to me.

B

That "Continued" Part...

Talk about a rollercoaster of a day. I don't have a picture to share. You'll understand why soon.

This weekend, things just got better and better. On Friday night, we saw a classical Taiwanese puppet show at the hotel we're staying at. It was fabulous! So much more entertaining than I'd expected. It was two puppeteers, one doing all the voices for the puppets and the other just doing his puppet thing. Then there was a 5-person live band playing Chinese string and percussion instruments that was fantastic! After the show we got to play with the puppets. I was quite a puppeteering prodigy --- even the puppeteers were impressed with my ability to throw and catch the puppet on my finger! A few of you may be getting some DIY puppets when I get back. A lucky, lucky few... Friday night a bunch of us went back to a bar we'd stumbled upon earlier that is definitely home-y and wonderful and laid back and perfect for a group of us to just chill at after a busy week.

On Saturday, three of us went into Taipei proper to plan our internal community service project --- a scavenger hunt! We explored an area of Taipei that we've been to many a time, but never had time to look around. We ended up walking around for about 5 hours, in the hot sun/humidity, with a 45 minute lunch break in a food court where we found comfort in the seating area of a Dunkin' Donuts. Yes, the donuts taste different here; no, the coffee is still horribly burned but delightful for that moment in time. We ended up having a grand adventure, but I cannot disclose in case anyone from the trip is spying here...very secretive, we are...

I was determined to stay in and watch a movie that night, after a long day in the hot sun of the city. But when I found out that a big group of people were going out dancing, including our two professors, plans changed. We had a really great time, met some fantastically funny natives, and had a really great (but tiring) night in general, stumbling into the hotel around 3 a.m.

Slept until noon on Sunday (the ONLY benefit of not having a window in my room), and would have slept longer had I not been woken up by my doorbell being rung (have I mentioned the doorbells? No? Well we have them...) by a friend insisting that I go to Danshui, the town north of Taipei where the river meets the South China Sea. I ended up going with the group and having a great time! It was great to be by the ocean and explore an area where the bustling of people and the honking of cars didn't overpower the landscape. It was beautiful. I had my last meal pre-fast (I decided to for Yom Kippur, randomly, the day before) at a wonderful legitimate Mexican restaurant in Danshui.

This morning, I was greeted by a 4:10 wake-up call from the hotel, signaling the start of our early morning adventure to the Confucian Temple for a sunrise birthday ceremony. It was probably the worst three hours of my trip, thus far. The heat and humidity, on top of fatigue and lack of food got to me and I started feeling really faint when the ceremony started and we all had to stand for an hour and a half, starting around 5:45. About fifteen minutes into the ceremony, the pounding of the large drum near my ear made me physically ill, but I managed to hide it well enough that only three or four people around me, who knew I was feeling awful, noticed me get sick. It was a shame, really, missing the ceremony because I was either in an almost passing out daze or kneeling over to keep from passing out the whole time.

I felt pretty sick to my stomach and head for the rest of the day, even after getting some food in my stomach around 7 o'clock. I did complete my mission and fast for a day without too much trouble, other than the whole headache thing, which I'm pretty sure was more a cause of weather and fatigue than not eating. But I think I also got in my head a little too much. I was thinking about the concept of fasting and why I felt intrigued to do it on this particular day. It was almost like my body said: "Alright. You want to be purged of your sins? You want to feel what it's like to not be dependent on food? I can make that happen for you! Here! Rid yourself of the contents of your stomach!"

I apologize if any of this got too graphic. I'm actually quite amused by the way my body decided to treat me when I embraced the idea of fasting.

But really, it was a very revealing experience. I didn't get hungry, but I noticed myself wondering why I would have thought to eat throughout the day if I wasn't in need of food. I've started eating on a schedule, especially since coming to Taiwan. It's lunch time, I should eat. But do I need to eat? Am I eating because I know this is my only opportunity until I'll be hungry again? Or am I forcing food into my body because the two hands of the clock are both pointing upwards, signaling midday, and food time? Questions swirling in my head. Answers formulating somewhere in there.

To break the fast I had milk tea with tapioca balls (aka bubble tea) and fried rice. Not the best choice initially, but some of the better food I've had lately so it evened out nicely.

Finished the day off with a puddle jumping rendez-vous with a few girls from the trip. It was a wonderful continuation of the process of cleansing and renewal.

Happy Birthday Confucius! Happy Teacher's Day to those in my life (and in others' lives) who have given me knowledge, insight, guidance, and so much more. Thank you for your wisdom and willingness to teach me.

Feeling refreshed,
B(ee)