Temple Terror?

So, let’s talk about temples and Buddhism. Temples: kinda like churches. Buddhism: the Christianity of the east. Over simplified? Oh, yes. You following me? Better be so far. I am not going to go into a rant about religion, (well….) just share a quandary I encountered and some back story to understand it.

In my youth I spent a great deal of time in churches, catholic churches to be more accurate. Certain things have been long and hard, drilled into me. NO, I am definitely not trying to say I was molested by a priest. Please, get your mind out of the gutter! As an adult, many of said drilled things I don’t agree with, and some I have desperately tried to dig out. In the digging out process, a person often turns to new things to fill the dugout space. For me that was Buddhism. Some of the ideologies really stuck and moved me, especially those related to suffering. 

Through my understanding of Catholicism, I am a bad person, and you are too. Actually, we all are, because no one can live up to a standard where even thinking a bad thought is sinful. Sinners who don’t repent will go to hell when they die, and there they will spend an eternity in anguish. As the living, you have the terrible idea and vision of this hell to think about and to mentally anguish you. Actually and honestly I never feared hell, as a concept of afterlife. I more feared adults knowing that they could make this life long and suffering. It’s true, all sins can be forgiven, but let’s face it, if there is a god he or she or shim will know if you are truly sorry in your heart for thinking about smacking your boss when they ask you to stay late on a Friday night. The point being I don’t think I’m a bad person. I’ve definitely thought things that I would never do, and have done things I wish I hadn’t, still not a bad person. 

Back home we call these here purdy flowers cempasúchil

Offerings along the outer wall of a temple

As an American teenager I was blessed with the joys of angst-y, maybe even angry feelings. The idea that a suburban kid should have anything to be angry about is neither here nor there because the feelings existed, period. The thing is no one ever explained to me that that’s normal. Suffering is a part of live, a life that is fluid. What a simple concept yet one that is so empowering and hardly ever espoused among westerners. In fact many people do everything in their power to avoid it suffering. Unfortunately for those people, it is inevitable, you cannot out run it, it will find you. If we know our suffering will pass it is easier to fight it. If we try to look at that suffering and dissect it and look at it from the perspective of our perceived cause of that suffering that too often lessens the blow. If we can gain knowledge from that suffering like learning about ourselves, our partners, our friends or life and humans in general than it’s not ultimately a loss, it has potential to be a huge win. That to me is empowering and uplifting. I bought a beautiful Buddha charm while in Thailand, and believe me this thing isn’t cliché. It’s tiny and gold and without literally picking it off my neck you would not be able to tell what it is. I wanted something to keep on my person to remind me of these ideas, and perhaps I also thought a big ol, Buddha tat might be in poor taste. 

The temples all over South East Asia are ornate, and they are everywhere. Where there isn’t one, there is a shrine to hold you over. Someone told me a shrine has to be built on a property before the actual construction can begin, don’t quote that, I’m not sure of its accuracy. In any case, in Laos there is a mandatory year of “being” a monk and you can see how it deeply the ideals are ingrained in the people by just their temperaments. My sister and I could not walk a block without stopping to gasp at a beautifully painted and carved temple. The insides of these temples must be impressively decorated spaces; I however wouldn’t know. I only went into one temple the whole trip. That temple was also not so much a sacred space as a tourist attraction. Pay a dollar to have a monk put a string on your wrist as a blessing even though monks aren’t supposed to touch or even sit next to a woman. 

Strip malls still cant take you far from a spot to stop and make an offering

Over and over again I gasped, as I passed these splendid buildings, halfway around the world, in a place I may never see again and still could not bring myself to go inside. What are the ritual rules, the etiquette? Jesus! err I mean, damn it! I didn’t want to be the one to do something stupid or accidentally offensive in that type of a space. What would I have done once inside? I can’t kneel down in front of Buddha and pray, it would seem so forced. Maybe, if, I had gone with someone who knew exactly what to do, but even then I would feel awkward. Oh buddy, but get me in a catholic church and I’ll be your sweet dream. Serious face, up and down reciting the prayers and singing the songs that somehow I remember after not attending for ten years now.

This is not hypocrisy folks. This is nostalgia at worst and at best me considering the suffering my not doing the kneeling and praying could potentially and unnecessarily cause. It’s also a long story about me not going into temples.

Same same but different

My sister and I travel well together. Hell, many people even think we're twins.  She’s  more the daredevil between the two of us. We balance each other out and get the other to do things we wouldn’t normally do. Things of course that the other ends up totally loving and is ultimately glad we did. 

 The main thing Mari wanted to do in Laos was ride elephants. While that seems all great and fun I don’t know if I mentioned about health care?? The older sister in me was having terrible visions of some horrifically violent, elephants-gone-wild-in-the-circus type of incident. Inevitably, I would be the one to survive, then would come the shame of returning to tell my parents… Anyways I somehow managed to push that idea out of my head long enough to buy a ticket and jump on a rickety (come on, they are never not rickety) truck out to ride some elephants. 

Our short ride outside of the town brought us to rural villages. Here the homes where fascinating. They were not just straw huts. The walls were complicated woven rugs. Aesthetically they were more pleasing and complicated than one would expect from this type of a structure. Some of the homes seemed  to be built on good and sturdy foundations. The weather is such in Laos year round that there is not a great need for complete insulation. I would have thoroughly enjoyed being invited to sit with the groups of women we saw preparing food for the nights meal I can only imagine sitting around gossiping about the neighbors or tourists atop elephants.  

Elephants are amazing animals. Any American school kid has seen an elephant, but to stand right in front of one and stroke its trunk is another thing. These animals are so large yet so calm. Being in this animals presence is like being next to a dinosaur. Or, maybe like holding a newborn baby, the world is full of potential. These majestic animals are so lovely that the thought of someone harming them seems so pure evil or at least insanely desperate. 

 Sauntering down the road, bareback elephant riding is a pretty cool place to be. I kinda felt like the Sultan from Aladdin making my grand entrance minus all the jewels and what have you. As predicted the creature would want a dip in the river.  Swimming with elephants, of course, why not? Please don’t question the safety or sanitation. 

Wow, just starting to realize why my sister was not 100% giddy when I told her my fun activity.  Laotion cooking class. Come on, totally fun and totally as cool as riding elephants, for real. She was a good sport though and I think she did end up having a pretty good time “cooking” as well. Our guide took us first out to a market. The market is almost a mandatory stop in any country. Having a guide was surprisingly useful. Without him there where many market wonders we would never have learned about. Here’s a few to give you an idea. Flies, sometimes you want them and sometimes you don’t. While fish sauce can ferment up to a year, a good one won’t have flies hovering around. Little critters which are sundried, on the other hand, more flies, more flavor. There were also bags of white powdery stuff that looked like some type of processed grain. This we discovered was lime, as in ground limestone. People use is as we would use chewing tobacco and with a similar high. More commonly it is used among women because women smoking in public are highly frowned upon if not completely unheard of. It will eventually make your teeth black and  fall out.  Lastly there where round frisbee like discs of black stuff, if I had to guess I would say it was some type of molasses, maybe on the idea of piloncillo. I couldn’t have been more off, it was something compiled from ants nests and was used as glue. Good thing I didn’t grab it to give it a taste.  

sticky rice baskets.

dried critters.

From the market we were whisked to an open air cooking resort. Our guide was not short on jokes or flirtations and under his lead we whipped up some pretty impressive stuff. Part of the time I felt like we were in a Mexican cooking class. We used a molcajete,  a common instrument in Latino kitchens, for spice grinding and sauce making. As well as finding ourselves using banana leaves to wrap food for steaming, another technique widely used in Southern Mexico.  These moments are what I like to call, no, no, no, not seeing the Mexican in everyone! I call them “world bonding moments.” No matter how far you go you find more things that make us the same than things that make us different. 

Laotian Molcajete

Walking in a Laotian Wonderland

Saying farewell to our gracious host and friend Dan, Mari and I hopped a cab to the airport where we would be heading to our next stop Luang Prabang, Laos. Our head-space at the time was unanimously odd . Mari was anxious about a “break” with her man. Me and mine…well we left on a bad note you could say after fighting the day before his departure.  So while we were excited about the new land and exploration, there was this kind of uncertainty and discomfort in the back of our heads about our world back home. We tried to keep it in the back of our heads however as we leaned in and poured over the guide books. We had a few activities roughly noted as possibilities but what did we really know about this town or even this country? I’m gonna say, not-a-thing. Is it terrible to admit the paragraph I read on some crap website at home had sold me and made me feel like I must see this land for myself? Descending for landing I knew deep within I had made the right decision. Mari and I both gasped at the vision below. There was bright green foliage everywhere, so super bright, and wet and glistening. Among the vibrant foliage were roofs of red tiles. The contrasting colors and textures made the decent different from all others to date. It wasn’t all nature and it wasn’t all architecture, but both were present competing for your glances attention. The combo at once had my imagination racing. 

When I travel I do tend to be a bit of a romantic. Oh, how ideal life is here! Oh, how lovely the people! How tasty the food! But on occasion I do snap back to see the reality. The beautiful architecture I was fawning over on our descent was not in the traditional Laotian style. It was French mixed with Laotian. This French influence doesn’t come in because the Lao people love French decoration, sadly this was a colonial city. On the other hand this little town is so happy (uh-oh the romantic is taking over again…) the people are soo warm.  It’s a subtle warmth, no touching or eye contact but you can still see the smiles as people chat among themselves. The vibe is really genuine. Most people here are Buddhist and practice living their life in the middle way. Meaning extremes in emotion or otherwise are not well looked on. Plus, Mari and I concluded (the results of hard fast scientific research of course) the boys here are by far the cutest! Oh..yea, reality, my apologies. My sister and I learned that health services in Laos are practically non existant, meaning if something where to happen to us we would need to be flown to Thailand. That being a luxury likely only a foreigner could afford.  As someone pointed out to us, “Look around you. Do you see many elderly? When people get sick they die.” Also a reminder, that bartering on a small item might be buying some bad karma.  

Before we could blink, our tuk tuk had dropped us off in front of our hostel. We could only be excited for our adventures to come. The place looked way more comfortable than either of us had envisioned. In the end when we where leaving for our next country, we only had a few hundred bed bugs bites. Or some freakishly giant cousin of the bed bug that we saw crawling on our beds. Nothing like some scars on the back of your legs, to make for a cheap and memorable souvenir (sorry no photo-it was too gruesome for the younger readers).