Dan Sai

The night grown surprisingly chill, the early morning cool as I step out in search of hit water. Coffee brewing I check the temperature, a balmy 21 degrees, making my second it's already five degrees warmer and it's only 0810. Getting out before it gets too hot we head for Phra That Sri Song Rak, a stupa clad in history and not so far from the room.

Arriving we read the local rules which include don't wear red,  and females are constrained from certain places as they're unclean.

"Antiquated bullshit." I say.

"It's tradition, you just have to accept it." Comes the reply.

"Why? Sometimes tradition is just an excuse to continue with outdated bollocks. Does a dog have a Buddha soul? Does a woman?"

We climb the steps, arrive at the stupa, signs informing us where no females are allowed, holy places I suppose but accessible only to some. Sure enough prayers being offered beneath the stupa, only men inside the surrounding walls, women constrained to the adjoining cloister. And yet most of the faithful here are female, sitting beneath signs reminding them that they're banished from the holiest of places here, while I, heretic and heathen, am allowed to wander freely, more welcome in their place of worship than they are.

Another temple, up a weary hill as the heat rises further beneath the clear sky. Here I'm taken by a frieze, a martial scene but, there, in the midst of the demons I see two blue eyes figures carrying muskets, Europeans, a canon. It's kind of startling, a detail which places the empire building of the European states into a local context, the first time I've noticed such a thing. But it fits the historical context, a grain of truth within the myths.

Back at the room the thermometer reads 40 degrees, it feels it, the sun burning now as it touches the skin, shade offering no relief as a warm breeze penetrates, sweat evaporating as it forms.

At the museum there's no one around, a collection of masks and figures, back towards the time before Buddhism, the remnants of the animism within the new faith. But it's dry here, feels different to the scenes in Pak Lay, the masks more studied, more vicious in their designs. Outside novice monks sweep the fallen leaves around figures spread around the wat beneath the fearsome gaze of figures masked and threatening, strands of belief woven into a localised context, not so different from the faiths I grew up around, Samhain and Beltane, Easter and Christmas, consumed by the new gods but whispering of the old.

The bright moon hanging, Bhima visible against the tarnished silver of the sphere, waning now, another day fallen behind our steps. Tomorrow the penultimate journey, moving another step closer to departure, tonight a bowl of soup, a final wander along the quietened streets as the heat lingers beneath the starry skies and the hazy smoke still rising from the fiery rivers burning upon the darkened hills.