Pick Up Sticks

In Thai Buddhist temples, you will find many small opportunities to make merit, to improve your luck, and to learn about your future. Astrologers practice Thai astrology on the temple steps and palmistry. I've even known monks to take a look at your palm. And, there's this little game. Pick up the bamboo vase and give it a shake (a bunch of shakes, really) until one little spear of bamboo asserts itself.


Read the number on your stick and choose your fortune from the numbered drawers.


Usually addressing issues of money, love, and money. Pretty much in that order.

Almost Like Home

If you know us at all, you know that the Little Man is fascinated by mixers. We have spent many mornings hanging at the edge of the mixing bowl in our local bakery. Chiang Mai, happily, has a reasonable substitute, and last Sunday we confused this dear Thai baker by staring into his big mixer.


Chiang Mai's U.N. Irish Pub bakes the best bread in the city. Full stop. And that means that the spirits of the shop (and, as you know, all places have their resident spirits) get daily offerings of freshly baked bread. Most Thai spirits must satisfy themselves with rice, whiskey, and cigarettes. I'm thinking that the spirits of the Irish Pub may be a little thick around the middle, if you know what I mean.


What's missing, of course, is the real reason we bundle up in coats, hats, and mittens to get to our local bakery every morning. It's who we find when we get there. Oh, the feeling of walking in and seeing someone (actually quite a few someones) genuinely glad you came in out of the cold.

Pi Mai (That's New Year to You and Me)

In Thailand, New Year comes but three times a year. You get January 1st. You get Chinese New Year. And, you get Songkhran in mid-April. Each one is a little different, but with Thai people involved there is always lots of temple visiting and lots of whiskey (contradictory, I know, but there you have it).

Last night all over Chiang Mai there were not-so-minor explosives of the fireworks variety, whiskey and Thai barbecue on the sidewalks in front of shop houses, and thousands of paper lantern balloons streaming into the full moon sky carrying away our bad luck from 2552 (Buddha year).

I spent the evening at Wat Phra Singh were there was a temple fair with great street food and live traditional music. Cars with Bangkok plates streamed through the main gate depositing the wealthy children of local Chiang Mai families. They had come to make merit, donations small and large to the temple to assure good luck in 2553.

The little boy lit his first khom, a paper hot air balloon twice his size, and followed it until it disappeared in a small stream of glowing dots.

In the morning before 6 am, my Thai neighbors began rattling around in their little apartments preparing to feed the monks on their first alms round of the New Year. Monks (and helpers to carry bags of food and small necessities) walked the street barefoot and blessed the good men and women of Chiang Mai for their perpetual care of the sangha.

Those who rose a little later made their way to the city's scores of temples to make merit with incense, candles, and more gifts for the monks. The temples are beautifully decorated with flags, festoons, flower garlands, and these lucky zodiac flags. A long line of people waited at the main chedi of Wat Phra Singh to respect the Buddha and hang their lucky flags. (The novice monks made their way around the chedi every once in awhile to collect and redistribute the flags to the parade of new arrivals.)

The little boy had quite a day. He met and prayed with many kindly monks. He lit his first tambon candle, and he continued his fascination with Buddha images, large and small. Something that he has expressed since before he could express much of anything.

It was a lovely beginning to what is sure to be an exceptional year. Vast love to our loyal readers and Sawadee Pi Mai to you too!

Thanks All Around

Okay, I know what I said about this good-luck-and-protection game. But, I do believe in the power of thank-you.


With great humility for our very good fortune these past few years in Chiang Mai, the Wee Family today offered its thanks in the traditional Thai way. We carefully arranged our nine types of fruits (a lucky number) and offered them up to Dr. Shivaka, the Father of Thai massage, with sincere thanks for a very successful run at teaching massage and spreading the good work (through nearly 300 students) to 38 countries in the world.


And, we gave nine more beautiful fruits to the spirits who dwell in the little spirit house just inside the front gate. Without their kind protection, our luck in family and business might have been quite different (and given that the lights here sometimes switch on and off without our intervention, thanks are a very good idea).


Of course, we could not leave this ancient city which is the heart of the original Lanna Kingdom without offering our sincere thanks to the Three Kings, who in their lifetimes unified a group of city-states into the Kingdom that we know today. As you may recall, the Three Kings have listened closely to Amnat's prayers for good luck on a couple of important days (like the day before Little was born and the day before the big visa interview). He wanted to be sure to show his gratitude. How, you ask? We made them lunch!


Sure, nine fruits, but also a chicken and some Mirinda (freakishly bright fizzy stuff the likes of which the Kings surely never experienced in corporeal form). We placed our thank-you picnic at the feet of the Kings in the local square then waited a decent interval (while they ate) before leaving our flower garlands behind and taking the little lunch back down the street. We gave the (lucky) chicken to our friend Jomsi, who chopped it up nicely, and we've been snacking on fruit all afternoon (oh, and the prison guards got some too).


So, having made the rounds with gratitude and thanks, tomorrow we head to the airport for a week in Khlong Lodt village and a monk's ordination ceremony (more on that later, for sure) before we take the big flight off to L.A.

Good-bye, Thailand. Hello, USA!

Buddhist Bling

Thai people like amulets. They like them a lot. They wear them for (I know you know already) good-luck-and-protection. Men wear them. Women wear them. School children wear them. Even babies wear them (as well as bells on their ankles, but that's another story). My husband wears one. I even have one. I don't wear mine much. It means a lot to me, because it was given to me by Pichest, my massage teacher; but (shhhh... don't tell anyone) I don't believe that it actually protects me. This is where my Thai friends and I part company.


Lately I've noticed a new trend in the wearing of amulets, which I would characterize as Buddhist bling. Usually, a serviceable amulet is about the size of a good ole American quarter. Ladies often have more delicate dime-sized ones. And, Pichest advised me to keep my amulet inside my shirt. It's not fashion, after all, it's protection, damn it. But, Buddhist bling is big. Really big. And, it's always outside the shirt. And this is why....

The King has one. We didn't know this until recently, but apparently (and how we know this I cannot imagine) his amulet is very powerful. You see, he was in a hospital and a nurse tried to administer an injection. The needle would not enter his skin. (Serious protection.) She asked him to remove his amulet (affording her a view of it), and was then able to finish her work.

Word got out. It's a good one. It comes from a particular temple, made by the monks there and prayed over to imbue it with special power. Everyone wants one just like it. Thai people are running, not walking, to the amulet vendors in such numbers that several elderly people have died in the crush and the price of these amulets has jumped from 10 baht to 2,000.

So, today my friend Jo comes to visit, and he's all aflutter because HE'S GOT ONE. And, he bought it from a monk, no less. A monk who (bought low) and verifies that additional prayer has fortified it's power.


Imagine this encased in glass in a stainless steel locket and hanging around your neck on an amulet chain. It's about the size of your stomach (the organ, that is) before lunch. And, when one of these comes walking at you up the street, you just can't miss it. AND, you know the guy (usually) who's wearing it survived the stampede to lay down his 2,000 baht (significantly more than half of my mother-in-law's monthly wage). Bling.

How do I know all this, you ask? Why, Jo told me. Jo who speaks about as much English as I speak Thai, but we muddle through. I missed some of the finer points, but I get the message. Buy one of these and you get RICH. Jo's friend has one, and he found 5,000 baht laying on the street at the local market. Since Jo has had his, his little massage shop has generated revenue every day.

Curious. A Buddhist amulet made by monks at a very important temple in the Kingdom, and it brings you... money? Not enlightenment. Not freedom from suffering. Not good health. Not even love. It brings cold, hard cash. And, who are those people stampeding to get one? The hopeful poor.

The Queen Had a Dream

Don't ask me how we know it, but we do. The Queen had a dream. (Amnat surmises that the court astrologer got word out to his friends.)

In the dream her son (her only son) the Prince, first in line for the throne, came to some harm. The court astrologer advised her to boil nine eggs (or, in her case, have someone boil them for her) and give them to her neighbors. Why, you ask? (Silly you.) FOR GOOD LUCK AND PROTECTION. (You might wonder, "Does the Queen HAVE neighbors?" Don't get bogged down in details.)

The Queen's dreams represent the fate of the Thai people as well as her own kin. Having averted disaster with her egg boiling, all of us who have only one son are doing the same. Amnat's mother boiled hers and called Amnat to have him boil his. Thinking Amnat might not do it quickly enough (smart mother), she also called Nok and told her to do it for us.

So, one morning last week (before the camera was out of bed), Nok boiled nine eggs and gave one to our landlady and eight to the man who salvages salvagables on our street. (Feet visible here).


I can feel the Good Luck and Protection already.