According to legend, a Lua hill tribe man, Lua Ai Kon, had a pole he used to carry a cylinder of honey, coconuts, and bale fruits to give as an offering to Lord Buddha when he visited the area. That pole was called Lampang, and when the top of the pole was planted in the ground, it became a khachao tree.
(Or a Holopteleaintegriforia Planch, if you are into that kind of thing.)
That tree is still alive (I think. I did not see it that I am aware of) and is next to Wihan Luang (the great image hall) at wat Phrathat Lampang Luang. It is iconic because its branches turn downward instead of upward and this tree in particular is believed to be over 2,500 years old.
One might think the tree would be the symbol of the city, but nope. It is a white rooster. No idea why other than it might have something to do with the rooster-branded noodle ceramics bowls. Roosters are everywhere. Street signs, bridges, buildings. General idea: everywhere.
Note I called them roosters. New day, slightly more mature thinking.
Anyway, it is a really old town. They have found archeological evidence of pottery and human skeletons dating back over 3 millennia.
That is old. I’m over 50, so I know old.
The city sits in a valley that is surrounded by a ring of mountains with the Wang River flowing through the city. It was a major city in the Lanna kingdom, although not well recorded in history, probably because it was involved in so many wars and the land changed hands so many times.
In 1894, the Ratsadaphisek Bridge over the Wang river opened and was the longest bridge in Thailand. That bridge is a big deal in the area, by the way.
In 1916 the first train arrived in Lampang, and became the northernmost train station in Thailand. They have all kinds of ‘firsts’ in their history like this. Mostly involving ‘northern most.’
During World War II, Lampang became the main Japanese headquarters in Thailand, and also the target of several Allied bombings.
All of that is very interesting, but what do people do here? Well rice paddy farming is big. Growing pineapple and sugarcane are the major food crops. Oh, and they have a huge deposit of lignite which fuels sever coal electrical plants and is polluting their environment. They also mine kaolin, which is used in the ceramics industry, although I am not sure how. At least they are not burning it for fuel.
Logging is very important, since teak was so prominent in the area. They used elephants to transport the logs (and they still do even though both logging teak and elephant use is not cool.)
But on a good note, the “elephant school” they founded to train elephants for logging developed into the “Thai Elephant Conservation Center,” which is the largest, and only vet center in northern Thailand for Elephants.
But why are we here? This was suggested as an alternative to Pai. Closer, similar stuff, and could do at least the highlights in one day. So, this morning MJ arranged for a friend to take us and Gabby to Lampang. First stop, Wat Phutthabat Sutthawat.
Formerly known as Wat Chaloem Phrakiat Phra Chomklao Rachanuson (Wat Phrabat Pu Phadaeng) or locally called Doi Pu Yak (Doi Phrabat Pu Phadaeng),
Yeah, just read over all that formality. We Americans call it the sky temple. Just call it the Sky Temple.
The GPS took us a different direction than MJ had traveled in the past, and despite the hills and switchbacks, we got to our destination, and saw some very interesting scenery along the way.
That detour aside, the big thing at this temple, aside from the altitude, apparently at the pagoda’s peak, is a sacred Buddha’s footprint. I have no idea how they verified this footprint, nor how they preserved it, but if I’m gonna climb that many stairs to see it, I’m gonna see it.
We arrived at the ‘base camp’ where you must pay if you want to get to the top. So far, this has been the most expensive sight I have seen the entire trip. Including many of the tours. 490 THB is roughly $15.
There was discussion of walking, but very little. There was discussion of driving up ourselves. Not allowed.
And there are very good reasons for that.
The money is for the ride up and then back down, but it is not just a little hill. Switchbacks, one lane wide with no shoulder, at a slope I cannot define, but closer to 45 degrees than zero, and it felt closer to 80.
Their vehicle of choice? A small pickup truck. No tailgate, but they do have a cage like contraption to hold you in if you are sitting down properly on the bench. Again, use the word bench lightly, but it is also the most descriptive.
So, well worth the money, but it does not get you to the top, it gets you to the 2nd base camp where the stairs to the top start. After the 10 minute ride, I was willing to leave the truck behind and try stairs. If it were not for the guard rail on the bed of the truck, we all would have been dumped out the back before the first turn.
When the truck drops you off at the real base camp, there is another series of shops, of course, but it leads to a drive which is a very nice walk. At this point in the journey, it might be believed their was a very nice paved gentle slope road to the top.
Of course, I believe I am 5’11”, thin, and 22. Belief is a funny thing.
Everything is fine until you see the stairs, guarded by giant red and green cocks. Roosters with swords. I should have taken that as a warning.
I did not.
This was my first mountain in Thailand, or at least really big mountain in Thailand, and on almost my last day. I was out of any shape I might have been in.
But the story is not the competition, nor the schedule, it is the fact I start, and I try.
So I went at my pace. I sweated buckets. I stopped a few times to rest. I have no idea how I kept going, but I climbed every step available to me.
I sat at the highest point and breathed in the silence. God it was wonderful to sit in silence. Pure silence. Birds, wind, the occasional ring of a gong in the distance. No voices, no distraction… no nothing,
I climbed beyond my limits and was rewarded with the best gift I could have received. Silence. No judgement. No guilt or worrying about other people or their opinions or concerns. Soul depth silence.
Every step was worth it, except…
I turned and had no one to share the moment with. I just did this amazing thing; arrived at this amazing place; and I was alone. Yes, that was the point of the silence. No one was there and I was relishing in it.
But it also exposed the beauty and the hardship of this trip. Incredible self reflection and moments of clarity about things I never knew were fuzzy; sistered with deep loneliness and needing connect with someone outside myself.
Probably to avoid connecting with myself, it is true, but the feeling lingers none the less.
So, from the top of this mountain, this victory, I broke the silence and I called my daughter.
I knew she would be up, and to date, she is the only one in the family who has bothered to communicate with me on a semi regular basis. There are a couple of friends who check in, but I knew they would be asleep. Wanted to recognize them, because the contact is important, but I feel very strongly about bothering my daughter whenever possible.
Anyway, I told her I had just climbed a mountain, and I wanted to show her the view. If I died today, at least I had this, and If I do die, it would probably be from tripping down the stairs, but I wanted her to see this. This moment of silent achievement I had no one to share with.
And then it was time to move on. I walked to the other various things on the tops of the peaks since I was already here. Up and down stairs, slow and steady but taking in every breathtaking view.
I did not care if the others were waiting for me, or if they had left and moved on, or if… I believe the point is I did not care. Very selfish and disrespectful of me, because I am really quite slow, but I was here, probably for the only time in my life, and I was going to see it.
Apparently, according to the pictures on some signs on the way up, I was to see monkeys. I did not see the monkeys.
I have no idea what plants other signs were trying to prompt me to notice because I cannot read Thai. But I did not care.
The silence was consuming, healing and perfectly wonderful. Even the damn stairs were a moving meditation of attention to every step that returned attention inward and outward in the same movement.
I returned to the bottom of the steps, thanked the guard cocks, and started down the path back to the base camp.
Where the voices crept back in. The world crept back in. The everything we don’t want to deal with every single day but it is there things that I am trying to separate from and figure out. All the crap creeped back in.
It is always there. One cannot eliminate the noise of humanity, but I have decided more mountains are needed in Iowa. More places to go and just turn it off. Stop the chatter and irrelevance of humanity and listen to nature. Because she has something important to say.
I did not want to go back to the reality, and there was one thing I did not see at the top which was said to be very impressive and a must see part of the trip. The sacred Buudah footprint.
Believe me, I checked everywhere I was allowed to go while at the top, because that is what I was supposed to see, and I was not going to climb back up there to see it.
So, since I am probably not coming back here again, and I wanted to extend the silence, I went searching. Everyone else be damned. This is my vacation too.
I found more stairs, but not a lot. A nice path, and most importantly, the silence. For a moment longer there was silence I would not experience for the rest of the day.
And I found that Buddha apparently had very big feet. Think Shaq. Both feet, swollen and glued together or something equally large. I could probably take a bath in the foot print. At least a foot bath.
But now… I needed to get back to the task. Back to the day. Back to the noise.
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