Three Days On A Bike - Temples And Temple Art

Temples and Temple Art



Luckily there are the Temples. The country is awash with them, and the lives of the people are a circular rhythm, tuned to the lunar calendar, of blessings and rituals.

In the towns and cities saffron-robed monks walk like shadows of light.

The artwork on Temple walls is strikingly similar in theme to that on the walls of Catholic churches in Europe: Hotel California – this could be heaven or this could be hell.

Tortures for sinners are graphically detailed as demons cut off hands that reached in life for the sensual and the material. Flesh that strove for pleasure is lacerated by whips or torn by wild beasts. That great old classic, boiling oil, is used on the gluttonous.

Heaven is reserved for those who sat in wondrous rapture at the feet of the Buddha. They get to use long sticks to make fruits fall from trees or walk in placid ecstasy as loving couples in long-term monogamous relationships. A strict warning to all those frequenting the coloured lights of late-night beer gardens and the dull abused spirits of the girls within.

Baskets for sticky rice hang from the ceiling. There are mattresses and sound systems – the Temple is very much a living village space.

There are statues from every epoch. Reb Dovid was kind enough to tell me about ancient monolithic stones in certain Temples along the way. In every Temple there is a main hall and then, behind locked doors, a sanctum holding the most precious statues of the cult. An old monk will often come out and open the doors for you.

For some reason, the floors are often laid with bathroom tiles, giving the places an unpleasant edge, but other than that they are havens of peace and calm; welcome resting spots on the Road.

Baby, it's cold outside: our January garden. January 23rd, 2011

January Garden

I never tire of our garden.

All the years we lived in Hanoi I dreamt of living in a house with a large tropical garden. The dream included huge banana leaves and wild orchids. I wanted a jungle.

It has to be said that this garden was planned. Badly planned, but planned. Whoever planted it thirty years ago had no idea of what was to come. The hideous row of yucca in front of the veranda has simply got to go.

Other than that, I am in heaven every time I come home. The large laneway is bordered by vegetation. Cacti, palms, trees I don’t even know the names of, flowers…

In the back of the house Marie-Do has started a vegetable patch and planted tomato seeds and parsley with the children.

When the neighbours are playing traditional Lao music, or no music at all and we can hear the bird song and the gentle clinking of pétanque balls from a game in progress down the dirt road (see the entry on Pétanque…), I go and sit in the sala and wonder at the beauty of it all.

Chickens run wild on the dirt road and every now and then they come in under the gate looking for food. A rooster crows under a perfect blue sky. Saturday morning on the 22nd of January and not a tremor of wind.

We know the summer is coming: everybody tells us so, and that in a month and a half the heat will be so stifling we won’t be able to breath. In the mean time, it is a pleasure reading the weather reports from Canada!

Vat Simouang - January 21st, 2011

Simouang

Every morning I take the kids to school. Marie-Do is now totally pregnant, but if you looked at her face and the rest of her you wouldn’t guess it. Still, I try to limit the time she spends on the scooter.

Maya-Swann’s day-care is called Simouang because it is on a street of the same name, in a Village of the same name and up the road from a temple of the same name.

I can hear Reb Dovid reading this and cringing, “All that history and all you can say is that it’s stuck between a day-care and a Shell station?”

Yep.

The facts are in every Lonely Planet and all the other stuff Reb Dovid

told me about the 12^th Century naga sculpture I have already forgotten. So here is my take on the place.

I show up early every morning before the circus begins. The photographer is just setting up and the honey lady lays out her bottles. She then sits there all day straining honey through a cloth from a honeycomb she brought in a bucket.

Driving around here as I do it is sometimes easy to forget that this is a Buddhist nation, other than the philosophical inertia of the population. Many of the houses out there and even in my neighbourhood look like they came straight out of an American image of the good suburban life in the 50’s. Which they did.

So every morning Simouang Temple is my little treat. There are statues of scary gods and of course there is Me Thourani. There are also two live storks who live on a prehistoric rock that Reb Dovid once told me all about.

The ancient beauty of the temple lies in stark contrast to the kitsch of a lot of modern religious accessories. Just inside every temple people make and sell vegetable arrangements of flowers and folded banana leaves used as an offering to the gods. Sometimes bank notes are folded in the same way. Some people burn votive money – Benjamin Franklins going up in smoke as the spirits receive advance payment for services to be rendered. Everywhere you look there is a Buddha ignoring your very existence.

Before the temple fills up, and it is one of the more popular ones for local believers, I take advantage of the calm and the morning light. Simouang fills me with peace before I have to face yet another day filled with polite and gracious students, perfect weather and excellent food. How could I survive without it?

More travels around Vientiane and New Year's update about our family - January 13th, 2011

More travels around Vientiane and new from the family.

Yesterday was cold. Really cold with showers, a Hanoi kind of winter day. Unprepared, I was soaked through and through.

One of the differences between Vientiane and Hanoi is that in Hanoi there are saunas just about everywhere. If you get cold you can just hop in and enjoy some steam. Of course, the Hanoians need this because their winters are ridiculously cold. I just heard that it is

now -1C there!

Another difference between Hanoi and Vientiane is the way space is used. In Vietnam, neighbourhoods and villages are filled with tiny alleyways blocked off by high walls behind which rest gardens and courtyards and family lives. You can smell the cooking from behind them, hear their dogs barking and people talking. Hanoi is very much an ancient Chinese city with a strong European influence.

Space there is constricted, and if everybody honks all the time it is to avoid collisions in those blind angles. Certain motor scooter gestures are not needed here, like that Hanoi way of pivoting a scooter on its quick-stand to turn it around. Here there is enough space to drive a scooter around.

Vientiane is much smaller than Hanoi, but paradoxically it is much bigger at the same time. Streets are wide, gardens are generally open. The weather here is much better and so the skies are generous.

Yesterday was cold and wet, but the day before was another day in paradise. I had a cancelled class and so drove out from behind the Mythical College Where I Work and entered into village life. Right there, before my very eyes the city turned into the country. These pictures were taken within the city. It would be the Toronto equivalent of driving up to Yonge and Sheppard or the Paris equivalent of Vanves or Clichy.

Time stands still. Bridges span foul-smelling canals. You can stop at a roadside restaurant and have some soup. Around a blushing corner will sit a temple all of majesty, part of it falling apart and part of it being rebuilt.

I have stopped using my i-pod when motoring. It is dangerous and also cuts me off from the classic throb of the motor. The thing is ancient and deserves to be listened to, like somebody else’s grandmother. The scooter in the photo is not mine, by the way. Mine is in the shop and this one is on loan from my mechanic. If ever you are in need of a damned good English speaking mechanic and are in the area of the Singapore Embassy, give Lay a call at 369 9991

And so two days ago I just rode and rode until hunger made me stop and then I rode some more. I don’t use a compass and I had no idea where I was. The secret of a perfect day of discovery is to follow your nose, let the hum of the motor and the wink of a rice paddy tell you where to turn. Every now and then a sign that means absolutely nothing will be in English. Other than that, you are on your own, white boy.

The amazing thing about the people in this neck of the woods is that they will look at you totally stone-faced until you say ‘sabaidee’, and then their faces will open up with recognition and welcome.

To give a rough idea of where these pictures were taken, if you go up Lane Xang past Patouxay and then find some way onto Route 13 South, well, this is left of there. Streets have no names, houses have no numbers. Every now and then a dog will rush out at you. A postman’s delight.

Also, the map is an old French map of the city when it really was only two streets, care of Reb Dovid. It’s the sort of document that makes me dream of a time when Vientiane was even more of a backwater than it is now. And yet something tells me that it was more exciting then than it is now, more authentic in its loneliness and less prone to the manic-depressive loudspeaker mania the Vientianians force on themselves and their neighbours now. Yes, I look at that map and I dream of streets even dustier than they are now, of unbearable heat and the sounds of a single temple drum. I can imagine the horrible ennui of the poor French administrators who found themselves stuck here like an afterthought on the tail-end of an Empire. I feel for them and envy them at the same time – at least they were able to see a Vientiane unadulterated by machines and illusions of ‘development’.

The last two weeks in January the College (nameless to shelter me from the guilty) will be closed and if Marie-Do doesn’t give birth then I will load up my bicycle and head out exploring the countryside north of the city; up the Mekong and in-land, further east. Like the Simon and Garfunkel song I will be off to ‘look for Laos’, hoping to find her with no electricity and no running water – a Laos of huts and kitchen fires, little temples and simple people. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.

And so the day wore on, the sun inching its way down towards the uncertain horizon, that flat line I find more beautiful and undulating than any flat line in the world. As the roads became busier with people heading home, the air was filled with the fine red dust of Asia, the light cutting through it like sunlight through the slats of a Venetian blind. In three dazzling dimensions you could see the shadow image of a tree projected through the dust, every leaf hanging there, suspended in particles of earth.

I finally found an American, ex-Vietnam, who lives up in those sticks for some reason and he showed me the way back home and so slowly and reluctantly I rode toward the city, leaving the time out of time. My scooter slowly blended with all the other scooters and cars and trucks and tuk-tuks. Once again I was part of a flow like the Mighty Mekong and no longer a free particle.

And once again I was able to realize the blessings bestowed upon me, being able to live in this fabulous and wonderful land; this magical Republic. Work is easy and plentiful, my students are hard-working and kind. In my comfortable home live my beautiful adventurous wife and two affectionate and intelligent children.

Zéphyr is in CE2 at the Ecole Hoffet and Maya-Swann is in the Moyenne Section of the kindergarten. I love picking her up at school for the way she drops everything and calls out “Papa!” and comes running into my arms. Zéphyr’s report card was very good, the fruit of hard work and attentive studies. Cléa, the first Hyman in recorded history to have done well at school, is a highly respected speech therapist in Paris. She works with deaf children, and I am very proud and grateful to know that when she leaves work each day the world is a better place thanks to her efforts.

Back at home, the cook cooks, the maid cleans and the gardener gardens. Soon we will start our vegetable patch and are looking forward to welcoming the new baby into our home. We have a guest room.


We even have running water and indoor plumbing!

Because It's There - Patouxay - January 6th, 2011

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I decided to visit Patouxay.

To give the place justice, I pass in front of this huge cement Arc de Triomphe almost every day just like every other Vientianian. It is sort of cool to spin around it on the scooter: it may be cement and Frenchly pretentious and grey but it also has a ring of the Orient to it.

Patouxay is the sort of monument you feel good about – it’s there, you spin around it, it’s big. You are happy you can take it for granted.

So it was only a matter of time before I had some time between classes at the mythical College for which I work and actually swung all the way onto the left lane and parked the scooter and went in.

The day was hot and the sky was blue. I never get tired of writing about the weather – I know how many Canadians are reading this! The park is nicely manicured. Park benches are sponsored by banks and insurance companies and hotels. The water in the fountain is clean and clear.

But once you get close to the Arc you notice that something is terribly wrong: the monument itself is terribly ugly. Pieces of cement are cracking all over the place and once you pay the price of admission (3,000 kip for falang, 2,000 kip for Lao) and ascend the old wooden cement-encased stairs you are in an architectural nightmare that runs across party lines.

The huge landings on the various levels are leased to vendors selling all kinds of tchatchkes with an astounding preponderance of portraits of the King. I suppose this is to remind us just who is responsible for this bit of kitsch.

The interior walls of the great monument have been turned over to local visitors who use them to mark their passage, their love affairs, their telephone numbers or their gang membership.

Down below were some guys actually paying money to have their pictures taken.

On the very top is a belvedere offering a view of the great horizontal city. I stood there and looked out toward the Mekong and Thailand beyond that and the hills to the north of the city. In every other direction before me spread the vast flat expanse of the Vientiane Plain.

There are few things more magical than watching a Far-Eastern city at work, the bustle of lives lived under palm trees, the street vendors crisscrossing under the shadows, the heat rising from this, my Vientiane, this capital city built of large avenues and tiny red dust roads, of large revolutionary palaces and modest garden-engulfed stilt houses.

Staring out at the city time seemed to stop. Asia, my love, I sighed. There you are in all your steaming convolutions, all your contradictions, all your passion. I longed to get down from that cement nightmare and back into the thick of things, longed to get lost in her. I longed to discover a new thicket of laneways, a new watering hole. The city is full of neighbourhoods I have yet to see. I looked down at the parking lot and saw my tiny scooter there, calling to me. Come, it seemed to say, let’s go for a ride!