Bangkok to Ubon / Wat Pah Nanachat
Booked train ticket for Ubon yesterday. Will leave for a evening train and get to Ubon tomorrow morning. Ubon is known as the more traditional part of Thailand, where “religious life” and everyday life coincide, less modern and hurried than Bangkok. That will be a nice change of pace.
I was glad to choose the guesthouse where I’ve been currently staying the last four days. It is aways from Khao San and other main tourist areas. It is bussssy still nonetheless, but the house is located more in a neighborhood area than main busssssy tourist zone.
Today, I will be looking for white cotton cloth to offer to the monastics at Wat Nanachat. I don’t really know what I am looking for to tell you the truth, but I hope today, I will find it. Going in a little bit to train station, dropping bags off there, and then heading on the metro to a large open air weekend market. The “behemoths” of street markets as its known here in Bangkok.
Rained a bunch last night, heavy tropical thunderstorm rains. And then this morning, bright, sunny and humid like other days.
May it not rain while I’m out and about :-)
Safe travels and safe returns…
From Ubon, a town in Lao Pak Tse is close by…along with Siem Reap / Angkor Wat to the South a bit.
So many options!
And in the meantime, need to figure out the Nepal trip situation, getting visa, ticket, etc. May those details complete themselves with ease…
Hoping to upload pics onto
http://isanghamahal.multiply.com
Let’s see if it works!
Arrived!
Hot afternoons might be just the time when I sit and update this thing. We’ll see about the consistency…
YOU HAVE ARRIVED!
Arrived to Bangkok last Wednesday afternoon and adjusting a bit with my jet lag and the summer heat, but all is well and I’m beginning to settle in. There is so much that is going on, particularly in Bangkok. Wow! Yesterday, did the main tourist spot (Khao San Road and Grand Palace). Took a river ferry, which was cool and that has been, at the moment, my main mode of transport. Just down the street some is the pick up point for the river ferry system that weaves around the outskirts of Bangkok. There are also “jeepneys”, tuktuk tricycles, buses and a skytrain system. I’ve taken the bus and jeepney once to get my hostel from the airport. Haven’t yet tried the others.
Question: Was there a grand Buddhist holiday in Thailand yesterday, June 25th? Why? Because as I looked all touristed-out with my maps, folks would spot me out, asking me where I’ve been, and have I seen the giant Buddha down the street. On several occassions, folks conversed with me and shared with me the same thing about how I can hire a tuktuk drive for 20 bhat and they could take me around to these spots. Hmmmm, I wasn’t feel cool about that, though I did want to see them, but things were just not feelin’ right. I have to kindly decline several times at different moments of the day.
Googled Thai holidays and July 7th is a holiday period called Buddhist Lent. I think it is also considered the beginning of the rains retreat period.
Skip.
Luckily, today, I went to Chinatown and though there were tourists there too, and I got hella lost :) I did not feel like I was being focused on as a tourist.
I am still trying to find a way to upload pics. I think I’ll use Flickr, but it maxes out. There’s this other site called Multiply.com which I’ve seen house many pics.
Oh, and squeeze in there somehow, Chiang Mai, up to the North. I imagine it to be something akin to Baguio in the Philippines, in contrast to Manila. Bangkok, maybe got that Manila feel? At least, that’s how I’m seeing it. Little by little, I feel like big cities ain’t really my thing, especially not as a tourist. But, with that said, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. The way that Thai culture is enmeshed deeply in Buddhist ways, the intermingling of the two is fascinating. There was this amulet market I went to and everyone here’s got an amulet of various images, sizes, and materials. Like the Holy Cross, or crucifix or rosary that is prevalent in Filipino Catholicism. Again, noticing the little bits here and there of how Thai culture has adopted and “created” Buddhism around itself…or something like that. Best to show pics I think. I keep saying that but ain’t got nothing uploaded yet.
And how about Cambodia’s Buddhist culture? Or the Buddhist cultural manifestations in Nepal? Touching Happiness!
ITINERARY UPDATE
And I think my itinerary is beginning to take some shape. 5 weeks and counting.
Bangkok »> Wat Pah Nanachat »> Bangkok »> Siem Reap / Angkor Wat »>
Bangkok »> Kuala Lumpur »> Bangkok »> Kathmandu, Nepal »> Bangkok
It looks like, hopefully, I’ll be able to use Bangkok as my base as I venture around and check out other places.
Night Before...
Excited and awake…
Tired…
Mind thinking this and that…
“Do I have everything?”
Like everything? What everything?
“Am I gonna be safe?”
Of course! Such uncertainty in the voice?!
“Will I be able to download my pictures?”
????????????
Last minute details and discoveries with uploading pictures or storing them, etc. There was a device I coulda/shoulda perhaps gotten earlier so that I might not be in this moment, but all good. I thought Flickr would help me out to download all the pics I took, but it, as with all things, has limits.
We’ll figure something out!
Good night…
See you at the other side!
Leavin' Behind
Tomorrow, this time, will be heading out to the airport…
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!
We have arriving, we are goin’ home!
Gateway: South+East Asia
Dear Friend, Teacher and Guide Michael Dove came by with some friends and we enjoyed some yummmyummmm Vietnamese food from Saigon Friday night. Then, we all sat down and chatted about how our gateway year’s been progressing.
Dove shared with me these inspired words specifically about my upcoming trip and how it relates to my Gentle Birth of 2009:
Your trip, I see a lot of joy, laughter, fun, heart expansion. A destiny thing. There is a sense of expansion, of transcending duality is what you came in to do so you’ve constructed a context to give yourself an experience for that to happen. A lot of what you encounter will feel very familiar to you. You will know how to transcend because you are so ready, because you’ve done it before in previous lifetimes, which is why you are able to construct the means and vessel for this transcendence again. It is like transcendence, ascension, transcendence, enlightenment over and over again for the sheer joy of doing it over again. There will be a sense of appointments kept. It will be fun!
I see you meeting individuals that you have definitely known in past lives. There will be an understanding on their part, too. There will be an understanding on a soul level about what you’ve come for. You’ll have an experience of an appointment kept. You’ll know that you are stepping concretely. It will be very uncanny. Connect. Clear. It will give you an experience of strength and identity that you can do and move a lot further if you choose. it will be a confirmation that you can do this, operate, deal fluidly and confidently in this realm, and it works well. That is what you will gain. You will know how this flows now. Your sense of self, identity will solidify in particular ways. Your sense of spiritual sovereignty. It confirms that you have done this before, which is why you are connecting with these folks again. It is almost a formality.
You are inwardly, you have a readiness to transform. With your travels, the anticipation, you are ready to let it do its thing in terms of the new experience, the expansion, the process, the growth that is always a part of that. There is a destiny aspect to it. It’s like you are right on schedule. You are supposed to expand into a broader work, a wider, encompassing identity. This is like an experience that initiates that mode, that expanded identity that actually is you and how authority has worked for you is that it’s been comfortable for you to put authority out there.
This is like a special experience that will let you expand so that authority does not need to be out there, but will sit naturally in the center of you. Experiences will help you see that it is okay, that it is how it functions. It becomes less necessary for it to be out there. It blends, meets, melds into something that looks more inside of you. And you learn to let it be okay for it to be there. You discover more and more how okay that is. The experience of that joy of expansion in that way, that joy of consolidating the identity so that the protocol dissolves around authority being placed outside. The need for you to experience safety by putting it out there dissolves as an issue and becomes a non-issue.
When I look at that on a deep inner level, I get sublime celebration. It is a way of transcending and dissolving the duality. That is the theme of the day, this time. When that happens, the experience of authority loses the cumbersome nature of dealing with it in a dualistic way. When the duality is dissolved, the authority just is. Authority happens. It just happens and there is no issue. It is like who cares if you can point to it or not - it just is. There is a celebration of unity, of dissolving duality.
Teaching the experience, teaching the work begins to feel like it comes from a difference place. It happens all around. Teaching is. Teaching happens. The fixed point of reference of where teaching comes from gets decentralized and dissolved. It is going to be fun playing with that. Playing with the truth of it. It becomes more like the cloud. Authority is like a silver cloud. It does not need a fixed point aspect.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dove provides intuitive readings and insights to the greater San Diego community Thursdays and Sundays at the Controversial Bookstore in North Park. He is available for distance readings, too. For more info, you can search for him on Youtube as well as visit his websites:
http://www.thedesertawakening.com
http://presenting-michaeldove.com
P.S. Thanks to Kalyanamitra Auspicious Path for transcribing and sending me these notes!
Another Auspicious Sign!
From the Friendly Universe…
(Thank U, Julia!)
TRAVEL BY DESIGN (online course taught by Candice Lopez, San Diego City College)
I believe that many people use travel to promote personal transformation. They have a desire to make a change and by visiting and exploring new places are able to discover parts of themselves they are unable to find in any other way. As a result of travel they become fearless risk takers, more flexible and can solve problems that lead to a more fulfilling, inspired and productive life.
When you go on a trip you are always given lots of advice on where to go and what to pack. What I believe is more important is WHY and HOW we should travel.
- - - - - - - - - - -
This travel to South+East Asia
by design…
by some kind of wondrous design
of causes and conditions and great fortune
to have this time to emerge(n)see differently
going, going, going to the other shore…
