Aaaaahhhhh the sights and sounds, tastes, smells and things of a big city, talk about a 5 sensory overload, shocking and stimulating at the same time, a 5 Star adventure, where luxury is as available and present as poverty. But whether its one extreme or the other, the thing that seems common to all, as a culture and nation is happiness - based on Buddha’s teachings of; right view, thought, speech, behavior, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and meditation.
Such is the opening para in The Teaching of Buddha, a book in our hotel room, ‘donated by Society for the Promotion of Buddhism’.
But I’ve jumped ahead, just getting here was an adventure - We left our Hotel room in Hua Hin at 11.59am having made an 11.58am internet booking for a hotel in Bangkok for our next step! Our transport as pre arranged, should have been a short tuktuk ride to a minibus ride of 2 1/2 hours to our hotel door. WELL…tuktuk turned out to be a comfy taxi, and minibus turned out to be an almost air-conditioned bus, that with waiting and traveling time took us 5 hours and an additional taxi, thus arriving in Bangkok in the dark, in the heart of old town Bangkok.
Our next day (1sst real Big city day) started innocently enough with an early wander around the block to witness the early morning energy compared to the bright lights and buzz we’d arrived square in the middle of the night before. A hotel breakfast might have seemed like the safe option from the bright glare of vendor food, clearly exposed to flies and exhaust, heat and oxidation!
Stepping out again ready for a day of exploring, took its first turn, at our first turn in accepting a ride from a tuktuk driver who for the huge sum $Bht10 (50c) would take us through alleys and backblocks and over canals, and alongside palace and poverty - to the first of what would become Mr Tuks wild ride in pursuit of Buddha’s, temples, photos for us, then gas coupons for him…you see we found out that now for the up sell to $Bht50 he would wait…all day if we were inclined, for us – to then take us to ‘special shops’, where even if we would please just spend 10 minutes he would get a free petrol voucher.
At one Buddha experience we got some amazing advice from an excellent English speaking local, who had a Maori friend and taught economics. He spoke of a last day opportunity for foreigners to buy gems tax and duty free at wholesale, that was a politically generated incentive from government to boost the economy after the recent unrest. Unrest was a blip on my radar, but one that caused many people, indeed the Australian Prime Minister at the time to call for people, to cancel their trips.
Anyway, fun and flow and Grace and ease was truly present for me in my day of being led to the opportunity and seizing it…more of which I can’t speak about herein.
One temple experience was to arrive and see a vendor making caged birds available to be freed for a donation, for bringing good luck, and I was immediately transported to the scene in a movie with Richard Gere (help me out her, the title escapes me?), in which he does the same. Lori took the opportunity and I was able to capture it on camera, perfectly in front of three monks who had just arrived to bow before Buddha.
Our most sublime moment of the day was to arrive at a temple and be present to the timeless vibration of monks chanting, a captivating, blessed, sacred and inspiring experience we had been eased into with flow and Grace – to which we are ever present and grateful.
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