From hot to cold

One week ago I was in Ubon Ratchathani, enjoying the warm Thai weather. Yesterday I was in the French Alps, enjoying the cool mountain air. From circumambulating Ajahn Chah's chedi at Wat Nong Pah Pong, to snowboarding down the slopes of Risoul. How quickly things change!

BA2364 London to Marseille

"Seis, sept, huit, neuf, dix!"

A little girl counts the rows in the aircraft as she walks past my seat. A sea of French voices wash over me before it suddenly sinks in: the holiday is over, I am going back to France. A voice screams from within.

The eleven hour overnight flight from Bangkok to London passed as if I had been drugged. I don't remember boarding, or taking off, or anything significant during the flight, except some dirty farang sat next to me occasionally coughing in my general direction. An hour or so before we landed, I woke up to the hostess announcing to the entire cabin "special meal, sir" as though being vegetarian was an unfortunate disability I had been born with. Descending into the mist over London cheered me up and I began to feel that warm sensation of returning home. But only for a moment.

The pilot kicks back and we are powering down the north runway at Gatwick. I can see a few areas of snow in the corner of fields when we take off. As I attempt to listen to the conversations going on around me, it is evident how little French I understand. When in Thailand I am a devil for tuning into strangers' conversations at every opportunity, but when it comes to French it doesn't spark a fire in the same way. It dawns on me that I may have made a mistake in boarding the plane in Bangkok. I have lost count of the number of times I have been to Thailand, but I still find it new and exciting each time I visit.

This trip was rather less frantic than some of those previous. I visited less places but stayed longer -- perhaps this is a sign of age! It all started with a few days in Bangkok staying at Pie's palace and admiring the latest modifications to his car. I arrived on Christmas Day morning to a country open as usual and oblivious to the occasion. While Britain was putting the turkey in the oven, I was feasting at a Thai vegetarian restaurant. While families gathered around to watch the Queen's speech or to fall asleep in front of Indiana Jones, I was having a two-hour Thai massage. I can definitely recommend going away for Christmas! I think I may have eaten as much as usual over Christmas, but it was all Thai, with a bit a Japanese/Korean and plenty of cake/ice-cream. When I wasn't indulging myself, one of the projects of the trip was to find a printing company to publish Luangpor's book and as I write this article it should now be going to print. Thank you to everyone who has donated money and helped me out -- especially Joob!

After I had grown tired of Bangkok traffic, I joined some friends on an overnight bus to Chiang Mai and ended up sleeping in the luggage area as the bus was over-booked! It was not that easy to escape from the Bangkok crowds as they had migrated to the north for the New Year celebrations. Luckily we were out in a village called Ban Tham where it was very peaceful. We woke up at 6am to go 'tam boon' (offer food) at the local temple and after we borrowed a bicycle to see the rest of the village. The locals were surprised to see a farang riding along the lane, between the buffalo, smiling as he went! Next we drove up towards Mae Hong Sorn (sat in the back of a truck getting my nose a bit pink) to Hwai Nam Dung, arriving in time to see the sun set on 2009. The campsite was as busy as a music festival, tents crammed in and revellers suitably unprepared for the weather, which by Thai standards was quite cool. Many thought it to be below freezing, but it just felt like a normal summer evening to me. It was cute to watch them getting excited about seeing their breath! Imagine never having experienced a temperature below 20 degrees. We lit lanterns at midnight and set them free in the night sky to let go of the past year. Unfortunately one caught fire before it took off, and one got stuck in a tree! It was up again at 6am to watch the sun rise on 2010. Apparently it is very important to rise early on New Years Day -- more so than getting a good sleep. On New Years Day I got to see Pai. Not Pai as in P'Pie, but Pai as in the place that is a famous Thai tourist spot. Then it was a long drive back to Chiang Mai, along the mountainous road with 762 hairpin bends. People say that getting car sick is part of the Pai experience. I survived, but it was a lot of travelling, and sun exposure. Anyway, we stocked up on local delicacies (nam prik num) before jumping on another overnight bus to Bangkok.

I did a lot of sleeping when I arrived back in Bangkok, but as soon as I had recovered I was off to Koh Lan for one night to get my beach fix. And some fix it was, as the island was almost deserted after the new year holiday. I dashed back to Bangkok and almost missed my flight to Phitsanulok where I was met by Joob who was stressing over having to lecture for the first time. Naresuan University is in a lovely location, not too far from the city, but surrounded by countryside so the campus is very pretty. The people are wonderful, especially the lecturers in Maths and Computer Science who all seem to specialise in karaoke and dancing. We were out every night! My workshop went down rather well, almost as well the lunch that was organised with it. The whole stay was funded by the university so I did rather well out of this part of my trip. There is talk of a possible job there so I may be returning someday.

Now passing over the Alps and they look quite snowy. At least I have skiing to look forward to in the following weeks.

After Phitsanulok it was back to Bangkok again, one day in Nakhon Pathom at the market and taking a trip along the river, and then the following day Luangpor arrived. Early on Tuesday morning I met Ken, we went to pick Luangpor up, and then Ken drove us up to Ubon at an impressive speed. We got stopped by the police one and a half times (the second time we were going to fast to stop). He managed it easily in less than six hours. Luckily Luangpor had just been to the eye hospital for a check up and they had given him some eye drops that blurred his vision. Tahn Manapo on the other hand was able to fully experience Ken's overtaking skills. We had five nights up in Ubon which seemed to fly by. At the end of it I didn't want to leave. We had a day up at Wat Keuan, a forest temple on a peninsula sticking out into a huge reservoir created by Sirintorn dam. The best day of my entire trip though was when we went to Sakhon Nakorn, Mukdahan and Nakhon Phanom. We visited Luangpuu Mun's museum, Mae Chee Kaew's nunnery, Ajahn Kinaree's temple and the big chedi at Phra Ta Phanom. I will be adding some pics!

Then on my penultimate day we had the anniversary of the death of Luangpuu Chah. A fabulous event during which I spent most of my time wandering around chatting to people and eating while trying to find the ideal position to snap photographs of Luangpor during the circumambulation ('wien tien'). At the end of the day I went to Wat Pah Nanachat to have tea with Luangpor and Mae Chee. It was a perfect end to my trip to sit listening to Luangpor in the forest as the sky got darker and darker. By the time I left it was pitch black and I had a job finding my way to get out of the temple. It was a too late to catch a bus or songtaew so I walked up to the main road and tried to flag down a car. Despite my waving and smiling, it took ten minutes for someone to stop for me. I suspect my farang skin makes me easily mistakable for a ghost. I made it back to the hotel, although only after the people who gave me a lift had tried to convince me that I should join an ordination ceremony of 100,000 monks!

Touch-down. I have just landed in Marseille. I have had my fun, tomorrow it is back to work. I am far from those places in Thailand I adore so much, but that won't stop me carrying around a piece of the magic they possess. May I and all beings be well and happy.

A long held ambition fulfilled

Ever since I got back to Korea the mountains of snow have been begging me to anthropomorphise them. Finally I found some time on Tuesday to go down to the little park on campus and fulfill my ambition. Here is the result:

After an unusually warm day yesterday and rain this morning there isn't much left of the snow, so I was just in time. I feel a bit sorry for the poor snowman though.

From next week I am teaching in an intensive English programme here at the University, so I will probably disappear from the interwebs for four weeks. In the mean time, I will start uploading the monthly blog I write for a Korean webzine up on my old blog (here and there), so you can have a look at that.

As of Hema's post, this blog has more posts than my old one - keep it up everyone! :-D

이강소 (Gangso Lee) 1944-2010

Jin's father died at 11am on Monday, 11th January. He had been in hospital since the week before I left for England in December. When I visited him upon my return to Korea he was in a pretty bad state, the cancer in and around his lungs was restricting his ability to breathe to such an extent that he was struggling to take in enough oxygen. Jin stayed with him the few days before he died, as she had done most of the time I was in England. On Monday 11th he had to get up for some tests and it was just too much for him.

The funeral started the day he died. As is usual in Korea the ceremony was held continuously over three days, people visiting the funeral house to pay respects, say good-bye to their friend and show support for the family, with the cremation and burial held on the third day. During that time some Buddhist monks came by to perform various ceremonies. On the fifth and seventh days there were two more short ceremonies - one at the family mountain tomb (traditionally Koreans bury their dead in raised tombs in the mountains, at least, those that can afford to), and one at a Buddhist temple. Now there is one ceremony a week for the next seven weeks (forty-nine days of mourning is a Korean Buddhist tradition). It's quite a demand on the family, but I was quite impressed with the Korean funeral traditions, which allow enough time for positive rememberance of the life of the deceased, as well as for grief. Certainly they seem to have helped Jin and her mother to get through the death of their father and husband, and to start to move on.

To be honest I don't feel like I knew Jin's father all that well. He was a man of few words (even fewer given my broken Korean), and I didn't see much of him 'in action' either. Still, he was clearly kind and thoughtful, if a little stuck in the traditional patriachal image of the Korean man. May he attain peace.

Doing Nothing...

Hi,

I have just about recovered from the snow week. Everyday last week there was a weather crisis in many parts of England, which resulted in me and many others not knowing where to work from one day to the next. I loved the adventure of this for the first couple of days but then it got quite tiring. Being snowed in and not able to do much is not something people tend to deal with very well. But a good chance to go inside yourself and discover the wonders of another world.

Its raining now as I sit in my flat, silence permeates...I thought I would take this Saturday for myself and do nothing.I like to thing of it as medicine for the heavy doing that seems to consume my working week...so far i have spent a good chunk of my time laying in bed and drifting between contemplative and meditative states...making up for y'day's choas where some disturbance affected my being.

Things arise from within our consciouness and try to in various ways to disturb our Peace, Silence and Composure we may have established in our being. It's tough to navigate the fields of emotion and keep our centre. It's like somebody once said, if we knew what we really were, the infinite silence, joy and bliss, our identifiction with anything other than that would be impossible. As soon as anger, jealousy or the like come into our being we recognise them, acknowledge them and then feel and know them to be Not Self...somehow when we are tired, hungry and not a 100% this process gets somewhat inhibited, which is what happened y'day.

Anyway i will no longer bore you with my inner processes, although i have been quite boring in the outer world of late not been up too much, hibernating amd keeping warm.

May you all keep warm and well.

Love and Light to you all

Hems xxx

Flight LH718: The Return

I arrived back to Korea on Wednesday morning, and was greeted at the airport by my lovely wife :-).

I didn't write an essay during the flight this time, much to your disappointment I'm sure, however I did have a bit of a drama during the check-in at Heathrow. I'd just put my hand luggage into the x-ray scanner and to my surprise it caused quite a cufuffle amongst the security team there. "It might just be a USB memory stick" I heard one of them say, although I was pretty sure there wasn't one in there. Anyway, the bag came out and they asked me to empty it in front of them. I opened the two pockets and emptied a few books, a scarf and the cable for my laptop... nothing incriminating. They told me they would scan the bag again 'to be sure', but again they seemed to be unhappy about something. This time the security guy wouldn't let me touch the bag but went through the pockets himself. I was wondering what all the fuss was about when from a small flat pocket I'd all but forgotten about he pulled a sharp folding kitchen knife! It must have been there all the time since I'd left Seoul (which points to a worrying lapse of security on my flight to the UK). I apologised profusely and told them I didn't know it was there... at one point I thought I was going to be taken away and roughed up, but in the end they just confiscated the knife and took my details. I wonder if I made it onto the terrorist watchlist...

Anyway, the flight summed up a fruitful, though dukkha-tinged trip to England. Thanks to everyone who showed me hospitality during my stay. It was great to see so many `old' friends again! I'm especially grateful Ant and Hema managed to co-operate making a delicious lasagne without resorting to physical violence. Now back in Korea, writing this and thinking about the trip I am missing you all terribly. It will fade - to be honest, on flight back to England I wasn't in such a rush to see anyone - but the stay rekindled memories of my former life and it was heart-wrenching to have to leave again so quickly. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere.

Finally, a little moan: where are all the other bloggers? I do love the sound of my own voice but it's still a nice bit of variety for me to be able to read about other people's lives on this blog. Don't tell me you're all enjoying life too much to be able to write about it! That's not very Buddhist!