I'm a member of the "Awesome Chiang Mai Raw Vegan Hippies Gone Bananas" Facebook group here. They organize weekly get togethers in the park or at local restaurants where they meet and share ideas, food and fun. This week, one of the members has set up an event called Fruit Winter that has people from around the world arriving here to participate. Daily meetings and events have been going on since Saturday and today, Brenda and I decided to take part. Starting from Chiang Mai University, about 2 kms from our condo, the group will hike up Doi Suthep, the mountain to the north of CM, and visit the Buddhist monastery located at the top. Brenda and I had intended to get up there since we first arrived, but something always seemed to come up and take priority. So today was the perfect opportunity.
When we got up this morning, we looked outside and saw the air was clearer than it has been for weeks. In fact, Wat Phra That was clearly visible from our balcony. The monastery is about 1050 meters above sea level and the base of the mountain is at 330. The climb is up the side of the mountain, through 3 kilometers of well trodden jungle paths.
Why on earth did the monks decide to built their monastery way up there? Well, according to Wikipedia, here's what happened:
According to legend, a monk named Sumanathera from Sukhothai had a dream; in this vision he was told to go to Pang Cha and look for a relic. Sumanathera ventured to Pang Cha and is said to have found a bone, which many claim was Buddha's shoulder bone. The relic displayed magical powers; it glowed, it was able to vanish, it could move itself and replicate itself. Sumanathera took the relic to King Dharmmaraja who ruled the Sukhothai.
The eager Dharmmaraja made offerings and hosted a ceremony when Sumanathera arrived. However, the relic displayed no abnormal characteristics, and the king, doubtful of the relic's authenticity, told Sumanathera to keep it.
However, King Nu Naone of the Lanna Kingdom heard of the relic and offered the monk to take it to him instead. In 1368 with Dharmmaraja's permission, Sumanathera took the relic to what is now Lamphun, in northern Thailand. The relic apparently split in two, one piece was the same size, the other was smaller than the original. The smaller piece of the relic was enshrined at a temple in Suandok. The other piece was placed by the King on the back of a white elephant which was released in the jungle. The elephant is said to have climbed up Doi Suthep, at the time called Doi Aoy Chang (Sugar Elephant Mountain), trumpeted three times before dying at the site. It was interpreted as a sign and King Nu Naone ordered the construction of a temple at the site.
Brenda and I showed up at the meeting place at 10:00 and, after some meeting and greeting, we set off for the summit at around 10:20. The event program said the 30 minute first part of the climb was an easy trek up to Wat Phalad, located half way up the mountain at 600 meters. Well, maybe it was easy for the younger hippies, but this first generation hippie from the 60's was suckin' wind pretty hard. I was very happy to arrive at our first stop, eat a few dates, drink some water and catch my breath. Once I wiped the sweat from my eyes, I realized how very beautiful and peaceful the site was. Fortunately, the usual throngs of tourists head straight to the top of the mountain by taxi or songtao and skip right past Wat Phalad. Had the other 40 hippies not been present, Brenda and I would have been the only people there with the monks. It was wonderful. Even from this vantage point, the view of CM was fairly spectacular, but there was little time to enjoy it. In short order we were back on the path to the top.
After the "easy" first half of the climb. I was a little apprehensive about what I would face on the back half. We had been warned that the path "becomes very steep after Wat Phalad, but only for 5 minutes". Five minutes!?! By whose watch? Sure enough, the first part of the climb to the top was very challenging, but it did ease up for a while. At one point, Brenda and I had lost the leaders and were far ahead of the hippies following us. We came to a semi-dried out creek where only a little water was flowing down its steep granite bed. We saw a red piece of material about 100 meters up the creek and figured it was one of the path markers, so we soldiered on. The footing was treacherous and we had to move one very slow step at at time. We had managed to cover about 15 meters when we heard the following group coming up behind us. They yelled up to us that we should have taken a left turn back at the base of the creek, so we had to retrace our slippery steps back down the bed. Fortunately, we got out of that one without any incident and then continued on our way to the top.
From that point on the trail went from steep to flat to very steep and to downhill. Pseudo steps had been cut into the dirt facilitating the more difficult stretches. We arrived at the base of Wat Phra That around 40 minutes later only to find we still had 304 stairs to climb before reaching the monastery. Unlike Wat Phalad, this temple was teeming with tourists arriving by the busload and in droves of songtaos. Admission to the monasery is free for Thai citizens, but a 30 Baht charge is made to the farang. What we found at the top of the stairs made it all worthwhile. At an elevation of almost 3500 feet, the views are spectacular and the temple itself is one of the nicest I've seen. There is also an incredible assortment of Buddhas here, in all the different classic positions and made up of any material imagineable. Very rare in Thai temples is the rotund Chinese happy Buddha, yet there was even one of those here.
Some of the new generation hippies were impressed that us old timers were able to not only keep up, but to out perform many of them. Despite our successful climb, after we had finished visiting the monastery, we decided against climbing down and opted for a songtao instead.
After all, we got nuttin' to prove!