Thai Life in Phana

Champassak, Lao PDR

Now that I have renewed my car passport, I am already looking forward to my next trip over the border to Laos. But for me, looking forward often involves some looking back too. So I am thinking of my last few trips to Laos.

Several times I have headed for the small town of Champassak. There was a time when this was the local capital. Capital of a small kingdom, in fact, with very close ties to Phana. The Lao people of Phana came from here, although originally they had lived in Vientiane. When the French took over Laos they created a new southern capital at Pakse and Muang Champassak slowly took on its present character as a sleepy, riverside town that is not much more than a village.

 

Tranquility is guarranteed here as this scene shows. The shot was taken from my favourite guest house in Champassak.

The Mekong is wide and mostly quite shallow here, especially so as this was a couple of months into the dry season. But I have known the Mekong since 1974 and even at its highest it is definitely a lot lower now than it used to be. The Chinese have built several dams on tributary rivers and this has had a dramatic effect. Fishermen are worried that fish stocks will fall but that doesn't seem to have happened so far.

I have travelled to Muang Champassak by boat from Pakse as well as driving down the new road. The road is on the far bank so you have to take a ferry. The ferries are small, flat wooden rafts floating on oil drums but they get you there. The crossing takes about 10 minutes on the vehicle ferrry, but foot and cycle passengers can go across in little long-tail boats.

This picture shows the ferry loading up to leave Champassak.

 

The little town of Muang Champassak has a long history but there is little to show for it. There are a couple of French colonial-style villas that were once used by the Princes of Champassak, but that is about all.

On the other hand, about 7 kms south of the town is a wonderful site. Wat Phu Champassak.

 

Wat Phu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and this is what UNESCO has to say about it:

The Champasak cultural landscape, including the Vat Phou Temple complex, is a remarkably well-preserved planned landscape more than 1,000 years old. It was shaped to express the Hindu vision of the relationship between nature and humanity, using an axis from mountain top to river bank to lay out a geometric pattern of temples, shrines and waterworks extending over some 10 km. Two planned cities on the banks of the Mekong River are also part of the site, as well as Phou Kao mountain. The whole represents a development ranging from the 5th to 15th centuries, mainly associated with the Khmer Empire.

 

 

 

 

 

There is an entry fee payable by foreigners (don't tell the people on ThaiVisa!) but entry is free for Lao. I think it is 50 Baht. Pensri always tries to pay (chiefly because about three women sit there all day and most days there about six visitors at most) but she has never succeeded. "But I am Thai," she says. "No you are not. You speak Lao, so you are Lao," they insist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Near the entrance to the complex there are also women selling flowers and other offerings. This image is about half way up the mountain so making an offering here is a good excuse for having a rest before continuing the climb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like all these Khmer temples, this was originally a Hindu temple, then it became a  Buddhist temple.

These images are from early in the Buddhist period and you can see how unlike the various Thai styles of image they are.

 

The images do not always wear robes as they are doing here and there aren't always so many offerings. But I took this picture just before the Wat Phu festival, a big three-day event that includes a huge temple fair and sporting and cultural events. Last year, and probably every year, there were dancers and musicians from Vietnam and Cambodia as well as from different parts of Laos.

 

 

These relief images carved from the rock at the top of the mountain show the Hindu trinity of gods.

UNESCO again:

The Temple Complex of Vat Phou bears exceptional testimony to the cultures of south-east Asia, and in particular to the Khmer Empire which dominated the region in the 10th–14th centuries. The Vat Phou complex is an outstanding example of the integration of symbolic landscape of great spiritual significance to its natural surroundings. Contrived to express the Hindu version of the relationship between nature and humanity, Vat Phou exhibits a remarkable complex of monuments and other structures over an extensive area between river and mountain, some of outstanding architecture, many containing great works of art, and all expressing intense religious conviction and commitment.

 

It is a cliche, I know, but time really does seem to flow by at the speed of the river. In the dry season anyway, when the river seems almost apologetic about passing you by.

Along the river there are little communities like these. The river joins them and a laterite road  runs south off the metalled road from the Thai border to Pakse. If life here has changed, it is only very recently.

The Lao-Nippon Bridge with a span of 1380 metres across the Mekong at Pakse was completed in 2000 and Highway 13 south to the Cambodian border was finally upgraded in 2007. Before these projects were completed, most travel was on the river, by ferry across to Pakse, and by riveboat 'buses' up and down the river.

 

 

 

For fishermen the river remains (at least for the time-being) their main source of food. Fish for protein and vegetables grown on the fertile river-banks to eat with it.

And much older than Wat Phu, and even more impressive, is always the Mekong, Mae Nam Khong.

 

 

And nowhere is the river more impressive than the Khong Phapeng falls. I first saw them in the rainy season. I thought they would be an amazing sight with so much water in the river.

There was almost nothing to see because there was just so much water that there was very little drop in levels. In the dry season, as here, it is a different matter.

 

 

The falls are not far south of the four thousand islands, the si phan don of the famously plaintive and nostalgic lao song. Nearby you can still see a few Irawaddy dolphins, though only at a distance out of respect for them in what is after all their habitat.

 

 

 

 

Far more tourists make it down to the falls than ever get to Wat Phu. Perhaps that is just as well. The fast new Highway 13 seems to  be there just for the huge Thai tour buses and their passengers as are the food stalls and the souvenir stalls. The Thai tourists pour out, take a look at the falls, eat, dismiss the souvenirs as not as good as the ones in Thailand and then pile back into their buses. That was Champassak. That was Laos. That is the tourist industry.

 

 

On one visit to Muang Champassak, Pensri was delighted to find this portrait of the monk Chao Phone Samed. He had led her ancestors from Vientiane In about 1688 AD, stopped to repair the that near Nakon Phanom and became de facto ruler of Champassak for many years. Pensri heard a lot about him from her great-grandmother. She said that he was loved and respected so much that he was known as Yakru Kee Hom.  Readers in Thailand can work out most of that but might not be familiar with the Lao title Yakru. The Thai equivalent is Phrakru, a learned monk. They were less delicate in those days. Even less delicate, perhaps I should say.

 

Roll on my next trip to Laos.

 

 

 

Wild Orchid Conservation at a Thai Forest Monastery

Earlier this year I visited a wat in Khon Khaen Province and a recent post on My Thai Friend reminded me of it. I was on a bit of a tour around Isan and this was just about the last on the list of places I had planned to visit. To a certain extent I was a little disappointed because I had read that I would see hundreds of orchids there. It's true that I did, but what I had not expected was that there would be just the one species. But still, this was not an orchid farm but a forest monastery which had conserved the species that was already growing there.

This helpful notice was just outside the monastery:

 

This notice was less helpful to me because I am illiterate but I love this version of the Thai script:

 

And here are two of the orchids:

 

 

Beautiful, aren't they? But we don't need photos of all 4,000 of them to get the idea.

Over at My Thai Friend (here) (then search: Dan Singkhon) you can read about wild orchids for sale at a border market in Phrachuap Kiri Khan Province.
 
 

 

Ubon Ratchathani National Museum

The Ubon Ratchathani National Museum is located on the corner of Khuanthani Road and Upparat Road in a very attractive building. It was built in 1918 and was originally used as the offices of the Provincial Governor. A new City Hall was built in 1968 and in 1983 the then Governor presented the building to the Fine Arts Department for restoration and use as a museum. HRH Princess Sirindhorn presided over the inauguration ceremony on 30th June 1989.

 

A series of rooms surrounds a large central hall containing Buddha images, which is used on occasion as a lecture hall. Either side of this hall are two rectangular garden areas. In one of the gardens is this wooden bell (you can see an even bigger one near the entrance to Wat Si Pradoo at the eastern end of Sapphasit Road):

An internal verandah separates the rooms from the central hall and gardens. This layout results in a shady, cool, quiet ambience that suits very well the new purpose of the building, and the polished teak and fretwork designs that decorate the top of door-frames and pillars are themselves significant cultural artefacts.

 

Everyone will have their own idea as to the highlights of the main exhibition, but there are some particularly important exhibits, all of which were found in Ubon Ratchathani Province (although some were found in what are now Amnat Charoen and Yasothon, provinces that were created at a later date).

Amongst the most important items on view here are a bronze kettle drum that is more than 2,000 years old, pottery found in Amphur Phana that is more than 1,500 years old and sema stones (boundary markers of consecrated areas) from the 8th and 9th centuries,such as this one:

There is plenty of evidence here of the Hindu roots of pre-Buddhist religion in this part of Isan. This image of the Hindu God Shiva mixed with his consort Uma (you have to look closely to see that one half of the image is male and the other female) dates from the 9th century AD:

 

 And this sandstone Ganesa (Ganesh) image is from the 10th century:

 

This delicate Buddha image  in the Lao style is from the 18th or 19th century:

And this unusual gilt lacquer image of the Buddha is on a sandstone tablet and is much older:

There are also some interesting photographs and regalia from the end of the 19th century.

Outside the main building is an open-sided sala housing three large sema stones dating from the 8th - 9th centuries AD, a long dugout boat, and a huge 'road-scraper' from the late 19th century.

The museum is open on Wednesdays through Sundays, but  closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and national holidays. Opening hours are from 9am to 4pm. The admission fee was 30 Baht last time I went.

Photography is not allowed inside the museum, but if you particularly wish to take photographs you can appy to the Director as I did by asking at the ticket counter. Permission will be allowed or refused more or less immediately and involves a certain amount of form-filling, but this will only be required once permission has been granted.

Wat Nong Bua, Ubon

One of Ubon's most distinctive landmarks is Wat Nong Bua, although it is only really visible from the north and north-west. The main chedi is a replica of the one at Bodhgaya, India, where the Buddha achieved enlightenment. It was built to mark the 2,500 year Buddhist celebrations and was completed in 1969, 2512 in the Buddhist Era.

 

If you were born in the year of the little snake, this is an auspicious wat to visit, especially so if you can do so on your birthday.

 

Wat Nong Bua is reached by turning left at traffic lights 4 kms north from Tung Si  Muang on Chayakul Road and going 600 m along Thammawithi Road. Samlors and tuk-tuks both seem to charge between 60 and 80 baht for the trip. There are samlors at Talad Nong Bua back near the intersection with Chayangkul Road for the return trip. Buses (songthaews) numbers 2,3, and 11 go as far as the Thammawithi turn off, and bus #10 turns down Thammawithi Road and goes past the Wat.

 

This new chedi is 17m in width and 56m high and encloses the original chedi which was only 5m wide and about 17m high.  The inner chedi is gilded and surrounded on all four sides by Buddha image shrines. The new structure is plain and unadorned inside (scruffy, in fact) but impressive outside. There are four smaller versions of the chedi at the corners of the compound.

 

 

 

 

 

These tudong monks form part of the exterior decoration of the chedi.

 

A beautiful viharn elsewhere in the grounds has glass walls, dark green, which mirror the trees, sky and clouds most effectively.

 

 

 

 

 

This illustration of an incident from one of the stories of the Buddha's previous lives decorates the main entrance gate to the wat:

 

The compound is spacious, with plenty of shade and seating. It is quiet and peaceful except when children are being dropped off or collected from the school opposite. The insects here are very noisy, too.

Wat Tung Si Muang, Ubon Ratchathani

    Ubon Ratchathani is just the right distance from Phana to make a good day out. It takes about 45 minutes to drive there, about an hour on the songthaew bus which stops frequently on the way. Mostly these days I go to Ubon for shopping at Big C or Tesco Lotus: there are a few things I can’t do without, such as cereal for breakfast. But I often spend time ‘browsing’ in wats and Wat Tung Si Muang in Ubon is one of my favourites, partly because it isn’t usually very busy but it does have two outstanding features.

 

 

 

    The feature that is made the most of in Tourist Authority literature is the Hor Trai or scripture library. It is more than 150 years old but very well preserved, standing on about twenty stout wooden pillars in a small pond. For several years the scriptures, narrow palm-leaf accordion-shaped books, could be handled because they lay in drawers and cupboards inside the building. But recently they have been removed, hopefully for safer keeping. The hor trai building itself is a mixture of Thai, Burmese and Lao styles. The multiple overlapping roofs reflect the Burmese influence while the carvings over the two gables are Lao, illustrating different animal signs according to traditional astrology as well as various designs based on plant life.

 

 

 

    Less often promoted but in some ways more interesting are the murals in the ubosot. These date from the mid-nineteenth century and as with most wat murals they offer an insight into life at that time as well as illustrating some of the Jataka stories. The murals have not been restored (luckily, I think) so some of them are very faded and some even partially degraded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    There is also a replica of the Buddha’s footprint which was brought from Bangkok during the reign of Rama III.

 

    The ubosot, which is very small, has recently been renovated and repainted on the outside. This picture was taken shortly before the work was completed.

    Wat Tung Si Muang is also home to a school for novices. There are more than 200 students at the school which comprises three years of secondary school and three years of high school. Students come from provinces throughout the northeast and follow a curriculum which mirrors that in ordinary schools but with the added emphasis on Buddhist studies. At the end of the six years, students can either return to lay life, perhaps entering a secular university, or continue their studies at a branch of one or other of the two Buddhist Universities. Ubon and Warin Chamrap have branches of these universities.

 

 

 

 

    Walking around Ubon in the late afternoon and early evening you are likely to come across groups of young novices. Many of them seem to enjoy spending time playing games in the internet and games cafes and making calls on their mobile phones. It is easy to feel critical of this behaviour, seeing it as being unworthy of monks, but it must be remembered that these are NOT monks, they are schoolboys. And while they have obviously not given up all the pursuits that schoolboys enjoy, they have taken on a considerable number of duties and responsibilities that most schoolboys do not, as well as living away from their families, often far away. They should be seen positively, I think, as schoolboys with added value rather than as deficient in some way. They are just learning about the monastic life, after all, and may quite legitimately find it does not suit them.

 

 

Thai Country Roads

    Much as I love Phana, I have been much more comfortable there since I got a car and was able to get away as often as I liked. I used to find it particularly claustrophobic during the rainy season when I would sit out on the verandah watching and loving the rain, but feeling very trapped. I don't need to go far, just to Trakan will do.

    Driving in Thailand you have to be aware of all the things going on along the side of the road as well as any potential hazards in the road itself. A lot of life goes on at the side of the roads and there is a lot of colour too, so I find myself frequently stopping and jumping out of the car to take photos. Here are some of them (click on images to enlarge them):