Phang Nga

So my first day of Phuket has been a good one. I'll be spending the night in a small little town that is surrounded by karst topography, just like in Guilin. for those of you who don't remember, karst topography is a series of mountains made of hard rock that have withstood the harsh effects of weathering better than the soft rock which once surrounded them. The mountains here are far larger than they are in Guilin, although the peaks are much fewer in number, which leads me to believe that these mountains are younger than their Chinese counterparts. There is not much to do here, other than looking at the peaks of course, to be honest my trip here primarily serves as a way to shorten my travelling tomorrow.

However I did find two very interesting sights here. Both are temples of the Theravada persuasion. Theravada Buddhism shares a different hereditary line than the Chinese and Japanese Mahayana schools. As such the two forms of Buddhism have distinct differences with only a few shared charactoristics. When Buddhism came to Thailand it incorporated much of the native religion into its practices, much the same way Christianity did as it reached into the pagan north. Abstract visions of heaven and hell, demons and angels, good and evil, as well as Hindu Vedic symbology are present in the Thai Buddhist architecture.

These symbols were not subtle in the first temple I visited. Attacted to a monastary, most of the shrines and whatnot were outside at the Tham Tapan temple. I ewnt to enter what I took to be the center of the monastary but a monk insisted that I instead walk down a forest path to the right. Here there were ghastly and graphic images of hell. Here, and throughout this monastary, there were life sized, plaster manicans (sp?) depicting the specific scenes. In 'Hell' there were demons torturing humans in the most fiendish manners, bodies being stuck to a thorny tree, and a demon king sentencing some new arrivals who were begging forgiveness. I was directed by another monk into a frightingly deep cave where there were several small dieties. after leaving the cave I walked through the belly of a menacing looking dragon whose mouth emptied out into a pleasent clearing adorned with Hindu gods. This realm was 'Earth'. Here I recognized Shiva, Lakshmi, Ganesha, and Hanuman, among others. To the right was a rickety staircase that led up to a stupa on the cliffside. Within the stupa there was nothing. This was 'Heaven'. No donation box here. In Buddhism you can almsgive your way out of hell but not into heaven.

I went to a local store to get a soda after that where a local man insisted on buying me a beer. I said no, but he bought it anyways. With my mind full of the visions of hell I drank it down heartily while the man, who was clearly drunk, complaned to me about the policies of J. F. Kennedy. Don't know why, but ya, this guy hated Kennedy.

The next temple I visited was significantly less frightening but still marvelous to behold. It featured more classical Theravada architecture as well as a thai graveyard. Small stupas rose silently from a grassy field. The temple also sat at the base of a large karst which was shaped like an elephant lying down. Of course there was a legend for why this was.

Unfortunately I will only spend one night here. Tomorrow it is on to Krabi or Surat Thani... I have not actually decided yet. I'm having a good time in Thailand although today the travel weariness did start to set in. My plan is to move my flight a few days foreward in order to give me some time to reacclimate to home before classes start again. However there is still quite a bit of time between now and then and I'll try to keep updating you as I go along.
C. Johnson