Out And About in Chiang Mai

For the last few days we have been wandering around the city, getting lost. Intentionally getting lost. That, according to the sages of travel literature, is the best way to find your way. Get lost to unpin and unshackle the old, rusty and wornout ties to everything. Now that Preselect Obama will take the leap this Tuesday, I figure we can do some jumping too.

Some of the first pictures feature our friend Supattra, my graduate student of many years ago and Assistant for Diplomacy at the US Consulate just around the corner from us at the Prince Hotel. She has graciously taken us around the great city of Chiang Mai twice now. The first picture is of the three of us at a fine vegetarian restaurant called Khun Churn. The second is from Prof. Patricia Cheeseman's beautiful though still modest estate where she and her assistants make their own dyes and weave some splendid dyed fabrics into blouses, shirts and wall hangings and art. Prof. Cheesman has written one of the definitive texts on weaving in Laos and Thailand, Lao-Tai Textiles: The Textiles of Xam Nuea and Muang Phuan. Originally she was a potter--and while she still is--she said she was consumed now with Ikats and she is busy designing the beautiful weavings, working with master weaver, Viroy Nanthapoom, and also collaborating with the famous Australian artist, Jenny Kee to produce the exhibition, Woven Wisdom. She teaches at Chiang Mai University and also teaches workshops. We were lucky enough to get to meet her and to get a full tour of her studio, new gallery and workshops--and to hear about indigo and the dying process as well as see the plants growing in the fields.

We also saw the results of lots of other natural ingredient and the colors they produced: ebony seeds (that look a bit like our buckeyes) make a gray to black dye; sappan wood (roots) make a red dye; cassia tree leaves(?) make a light brown or tan dye; and a teak shoot makes a light burgundy color on cotton or silk. Yarn dyed in indigo evidently looks green right out of the dye pot but then turns blue as it airs and dries in the sun. This spring when we *have* some natural ingredients again, maybe I will get the urge to try some dying!

(We will get lost later in this blog entry.)
The picture below features Supattra's watercolors, splendidly displayed at a wonderful watering hole in CMai, where we went our second day in the city. She's very modest about them but they are really lovely--and now we've seen then hanging in two different shows--the last at a student and teacher show at the Chiang Mai Arts and Cultural Center.

We also toured the post-colonial building of Thai architecture and learned about this ancient city's history. Out front of this museum stands the Three Kings Monument--not the three kings of Western and Christian culture. These three bronze sculptures portray the three northern Lao-Thai kings important to Lanna culture. This monument has become a shrine to the locals who often leave offerings of flowers incense and candles as people here do at their spirit houses (small outdoor private altars) or at the temples.

And now for getting lost! We were not always "intentionally" lost. One morning Tom grabbed a red taxi to get to school. (Remember these are the red pick-up trucks with benches in the back.) He climbed in and there were already about six others but the driver insisted he knew where Payap University was and that he would take him there. An hour later, the taxi had dropped off some people and stopped way out in the country on some gravel driveway and told Tom he was *there.* When Tom complained he spoke to another red taxi for quite awhile and made Tom get out and go with him. The guy wanted triple the fair so Tom wouldn't go--walked away, and crossed a busy highway and finally found a taxi and driver who said he would take him--okay--but right back into town where he started. Finally Tom got a tuk tuk and reached school two hours after he started--by the way this is usually a quick 15 minute jaunt. I haven't yet told Tom that I just read a newspaper article about "farang" (foreigners) in Bangkok who got left out in the country by a red cab and robbed--and there was a whole group of them! Shhhh...don't tell.