Chiang Mai: The head of the river
In the hills surrounding Chiang Mai there is a river which glides through a cluster of humbly arranged temples. It’s a popular tourist spot, but continues to host a small collection of monks, who practice daily meditations following the path of the Buddha. Sitting on the rocks of this river, you can see all the way down to the city below. It invites you to gaze upon it, framed by foliage and sky. You are both a part of it, and totally removed, reminding you of where you’ve been, as well as the very fact that you are not there now. The retreat around me was quiet, but there were still some tourists around. I sat and wondered, ‘how do these monks go on meditating with all these bloody tourists everywhere?’ I’m not sure how long I could last, sitting in silence, with Julia from Spain taking her thirteenth selfie with a Buddha statue next to me. But perhaps that is only testament to the fact they are monks and I am not. I am a girl with a hyperactive mind, sitting in the hills of Northern Thailand, catching her breath, trying to ignore the family of fourteen that all want individual shots of them on the stone steps.
Chiang Mai welcomed me into its walls with calm, compassionate warmth. The city itself has a distinctly artsy vibe, which always draws me in. I stumbled upon a multipurpose arts centre on my first full day and fell head over heels in love with the space. Three stories tall, the building housed various exhibitions on indigenous craftsmanship, zen gardens, shops, a restaurant and a library. On the rooftop, I watched as a class of yogis stretched their arms above their heads, whilst the sun set behind them. I couldn’t help but think to myself, am I in heaven? It was as if everything I loved most had decided to rent a coliving complex, and I had walked in as the last missing flatmate. Miles across the other side of the world, and yet still I felt at home.
Meandering through the back streets of the city, you are delighted with craft shops, interspersed with unique cafes, temples, spas advertising Thai massage, and ruins of the old city walls. The old town sat within a square, encased by a canal on each side - like a perfectly packaged metropole. On the north canal, a popular jazz bar spilled music, people and Chang beers out onto the street every night and I stood in a cluster of girls I had met over the course of the past two days, whilst the saxophone rejoiced in improvised melody beside us. There was a buzz of excitement whirring around our heads as we exchanged notes of where we’d been, where we were going, and what we were all most looking forward to next.
“What does your trip look like?”
“So we’re doing six months. Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and then flying to Bali before going over to Australia”
“I’m doing a similar trip but stopping off in Laos and wanna try and do the Philippines too!”
“Aww guys I’m so jealous, I’ve been in Malaysia for three weeks and now here before flying home. I can’t believe how long you’re all away for’”
“I was in Aus for two months before coming here and still have seven months to go!”
It was a lot of this. The usual backpacking chatter as it were. But on day four of my grand trip across Asia, I can’t say I was tired of this conversation yet. In fact, I never really grow tired of this conversation, I always love hearing what people have planned for themselves. This is one of the most exciting things anyone can do for themselves after all, we should talk about it.
Talking to these girls was also a sharp reminder. I might be solo travelling, but I am not alone in this. How could I be? After three days, I’m chatting amongst a group of girls who are all doing the exact same thing as me. My dreams were not unique, clearly. But there was some refuge in that realisation too. Do we have to be different to be important? As I stood blabbering away with these girls, I felt comfort in the fact that we’d all taken this big leap, together but apart. We had all stood teetering at the edge of the cliff of our previous life, wondering whether to jump, and here we all were, safely picking ourselves up after the fall. I respected every single one of their bravery, because I knew now how brave I’d had to be to get here.
For the first time since arriving in Asia, the absolute insanity of what I was doing was setting in. I left the jazz bar, my brain still humming, and lay in my hostel bed, completely unable to sleep. I was stockpiled full of adrenaline. My mind darted in every direction. It was as if every infinite opportunity in the universe had suddenly entered the peripheral reaches of my vision, and, upon noticing this, my brain sprang into action to explore each and every inch of it, like a puppy taking their first walk outside of the house.
Here I was, in a bunk bed in Chiang Mai, watching as the entire universe seemed to be expanding before me. I could travel relatively comfortably for the next eight months without worrying about getting a job, and maybe I could find some work abroad after that to keep me going? I didn’t know! But I knew I wanted to find out. You would have thought I’d mistaken such a realisation for the elixir of eternal youth. I gulped unceremoniously at the very thought of travelling for so long.
I FEEL AS THOUGH I COULD LIVE FOREVER!
As I lay in my single bed, I could not move for ideas. And all I wanted to do was share them, with anyone who would give me even a second of their attention. I called my dad the next day to tell him all about my newfound joie de vivre and he laughed in a way which told me he was both indescribably happy for me, and unimaginably sad for himself. For I think he knew, a little more certainly in this moment, that it may be a long time before we would see each other again.
I decided to hike up to the temple in the hills on my last day in Chiang Mai. I sat on the rocks emerging from the headwaters of the river, looking out on the sprawling city below. I only noticed here how big Chiang Mai was, extending far beyond those four walls of the old town, and into the valleys beyond. I couldn’t help but wonder what all of this might have looked like 100 years ago, when the architectural concept of the skyscraper had not yet reached the urban planners of Asia.
A pink haze filled the sky and for a brief moment, I had actually forgotten about Julia from Spain and the family of fourteen who were in fact still taking photos on the stone steps. I was instead caught up in thinking just how fitting it was to have a meditation retreat right here, in this very spot. Not just because it was an area of outstanding natural beauty tucked away from the city below, but because it was a beginning. The beginning of a flow into the unknown, a trickle of a stream trusting its journey towards an ocean, something small which one day would become something very big indeed. That felt awfully meditative to me. And funnily enough, it felt oddly emblematic of what I had to come myself.
