Blue temple

Chiang Rai, twenty years late for a meeting with friends here, me in India, later still from the first thought.

The journey was beautiful, the highway clogged with single lane winding through roadworks traffic, shining temples and bright gold in distances beneath the matt hills rising dull and scrubby around us.

The city is smaller than I'd expected, the centre at least as we walk out if the bus station into the swirling traffic. A coffee and a small walk later, room found, out to meet the city, walk to the river and see, not so far away the roof of the blue temple.

Along small, winding road, the countryside within the urban sprawl, mini buses collected at the gate, the temple itself lsd infused images, A sequence of pillars spiralling mad dreams and calm beauty as the sun begins to fall...