Temples Everywhere

To give us an introduction to Chiang Mai, we decided to take a half day food/temple tour. Our guide, Dong, was born and raised in Chiang Mai, and was an enthusiastic ambassador to the food, and a so-so guide for the temples. But, given that both the food and the temples were equally unfamiliar to us, it all worked out just fine.

So, the temples. . . .seriously, they are everywhere. The first night in the city, Arie and I passed at least 6 temples on our way to dinner. As our guide, Dong, took us to the market in a “taxi” (a pickup truck with a top, in which the back has been turned into seats for 6 people), we passed at least 6 more temples. When I asked Dong about the number of temples, he told me that there were many, many temples in Chiang Mai. When I looked it up on the internet, I learned that there are more than 300 temples within the city of Chiang Mai, and it is estimated that there are 40,000 Buddhist temples in Thailand, of which 30,000 are in active use. Some of the temples are extremely simple, and others are extraordinarily elaborate. Each temple has a different story about when it was built, who built it, whether it has been destroyed/rebuilt, etc. And, while I could barely keep the stories straight as they were told to me, they were all beautiful.

Monks live in many of the temples, and provide religious instruction to boys (although not girls) in the community. Given the number of temples, there are obviously a lot of monks. So, seeing monks walking down the street, buying ice cream, riding in taxis, etc., is not unusual. And, since many Thai boys spend one to three months living in a temple (usually during the summer before they enter high school), it is also not unusual to see the monks rough-housing and acting like teenage boys. I was a bit taken aback when we were approached by a monk in one the temples, who asked our guide to remove his hat, and I noticed that the monk was carrying an i-phone in his hand.

We also went to one of the temples around 6 pm, to watch evening prayers. Since it is summer vacation, there are a huge number of boys who are spending a “summer” in religious instruction, and we got to watch the monks teaching the boys to say their evening prayers. It was just like watching the kids in t’fillah during religious school at the temple, although the boys seemed to be better behaved than some of the kids that I’ve seen in temple!Read more