Just Hanging Out

Hi all, I found myself in a mood to write something tonight and so thought I’d put down a word or two before the urge left me…

There has not been a great deal of excitement since the last episode of this saga, although I have been out and about quite a bit. There was an overnight camping trip with a group of monks to a local waterfall that was quite nice. Camping with monks, I have found, generally involves lots of junk food, rice, and “just add hot water” noodles. There’s not a great deal of time spent on menu planning.

It was quite a beautiful spot though, with one large drop fall below us and many small ledges and pools above us. We walked up the river in the afternoon and found a nice pool to swim in – a first for me in Thailand. I’ve generally been a bit nervous about getting in the water here due to (mostly unfounded I think) fears of snakes, tropical diseases, and small very thin fish that swim into private body orifices and get stuck there. Actually, I think the small fish are in the Amazon and not Thailand, and thankfully none appeared in our particular pool anyway. It was quite fun splashing about for a while.

The big falls. Mostly dry right now

Swimming holes and little water falls

Campsite

I also had a couple of day trips to the Koonming area, which is a big limestone mountain/jungle area that looks like a perfect setting for Jurassic Park III (or whatever the next one is, if they happened to make a next one, which I hope they don’t…)  Anyway, one of the trails starts out winding its way through a long cave, then climbs up ladders and walkways to a high lookout place where you can look down and imagine dinosaurs roaming about and trying to eat each other. I really expected to see a pterodactyl fly by, but none deigned to appear.

Out of the cave and into Dinosaur world

Incredibly long roots - great for climbing!

Part of the trail

Part of the cave trail - open ceiling

Other trips included a jaunt through some back roads and fields and up a steep and windy (as opposed to long and windy like in the song) road, to the top of a largish hill with a nice trail through bamboo groves to a scenic lookout on top. One of the things people from the temple like to do is to announce “A-hosee” a lot, kind of proclaiming release and letting go and forgiveness of things and people and the world in general. So, we shouted “A-hosee” from the hilltop into the setting sun, ate oranges, and generally had a pleasant time for a couple of hours. (As a side note, I think it’s kind of interesting that Angels also proclaim something like “A-hosee”, except I think they call it “hosannas” and they do it “on the highest” – which is sort of what we were doing too, since we were on the highest part of the hill. I think the similarities end there though – so really kind of a minimal connection)   J  (No pictures as I didn't have my camera).

Let’s see, what else… oh yes. I went on another overnight trip with some other monks to Phuluang, which is a nature reserve on a mountain top and had a guided tour through some of the trails to see a variety of rare orchids and other plants and flowers. The tour was in Thai, of course, so I kind of followed along and looked at what people seemed to be pointing at and completed the tour unburdened by much more knowledge than I started with. (Which is actually quite in keeping with the teaching here, since they are into letting go of things – including knowledge, rather than gathering more of them, or it). It was a nice walk though and there were some pretty flowers, some of which were edible with a kind of tangy sour flavour. They were quite tasty actually, and plentiful as well, so I ended up eating quite a few of them.

Another mountain top - Phuluang this time

Our tour group with backdrop of edible flowers

Monk on the mountain

One of the monks on this particular trip spent quite a bit of time expounding upon the health virtues of the coffee enema, including adamantly proclaiming that this peculiar practice cured his father of liver cancer. He made rather a good case for his argument, including lots of talk about how we brush our teeth twice a day and they’re nowhere near (hopefully) as much in need of cleaning as the colon – which gets encrusted by all the stuff we’ve been eating for the last however many years we’ve been alive. He went on at length, and supplied a tube and instructions for making the appropriate equipment from a water bottle, so I’ve begun an experiment to see what happens. I’m sure that my mother is cringing in dismay at this point, as the word “enema” is rather anathema to her, despite the somewhat similar look and sound to these two words. To mention it in public no less – oh, the horror of it! However, I think it is somewhat of a philosophical, as well as physical, experiment as the teaching here is all about “letting go”, and after sloshing a liter and a half of coffee around in your colon for a few minutes, you get to find out quite a lot about “letting go”. So, if anyone out there wants to try it, all you need is a 1.5 liter water bottle with the bottom cut off, a small plastic tube, some instant coffee and some warm water…  easy peasy.  J  (No pictures of this either!!)

I've been meaning to put up some pictures of the temple and keep forgetting to do it. It's hard to give an idea of what's here actually, as it's pretty big and there are many styles of buildings. Here is part of my morning walk though:

My room

Trail behind my room

Road that meets the trail. It looks a bit like fall here now - dry leaves falling down

Past the pond

Down the road to the meeting area 

Lining up for breakfast

Finally, I've also been spending some time with the horses that are here at the temple over the past week or so. There are three horses - two ponies neither of which I am terribly fond, and one young horse who has hip problems and doesn't walk very well. The young horse liked to kick and nip and things, but he's quite a nice horse and has stopped doing that now, so I figure I'm on the right track. Round pen work is a bit slow, as we don't get out of walking gear for the most part, but we're both learning a bit so that's good I guess.

On another topic entirely, I’m heading off to Bangkok in a few days (maybe less than a few days, depending on how long it takes me to actually get this posted), and will meet Mom there on the 30^th of Jan. She’ll be here for about two weeks, and we plan to spend a few days at the temple, then travel around Thailand and possibly Laos a bit as well.

So, that’s the news for the moment. Happy almost end of January!  (I generally am quite relieved when January is over as it seems to be a difficult month. I’m sure there must be some people out there who like January – and it is admittedly a much nicer month here than in Vanderhoof. However, I still think that its end is worth celebrating).

On to February we go…   J