I never wrote anything for my Thailand trip, so I am going to do that now. The trip was for about a month in November and December 2010. The full photo set has some more details.

Bangkok

I spent a couple nights in Bangkok after arriving in Thailand and one more night just before leaving. The first time I stayed at a hotel directly off Khao San road, which was ok but very noisy at night when the clubs were operating. Khao San road is Bangkok's tourist ghetto, and a strange little world of its own. It probably isn't actually a very good place to stay for seeing much besides the nearby Grand Palace and Wat Pho, but it is very convenient for getting buses to and from the airport and for having a lot of cheep hotels. It is potentially also convenient for other tourist services, except that the number of scammers makes it unclear how to use them safely; seemingly some agents sell tickets for very inflated prices to anyone who they think won't notice in time. The night before I left Thailand I found a place slightly off Khao San itself, which was a little nicer and definitely much quieter.

Bangkok is very spread out and transit is often confusing (although it does include some unusual forms like the boats up and down the river). I went downtown but otherwise didn't explore too far. Another issue with Khao San and perhaps Bangkok in general is the number of touts, mostly tuk tuk drivers wanting to take you places. They seem very good at identifying foreigners who don't know where they are going and starting a conversation. A lot of these are minor scammers and will tell you that whatever you were wanting to see is closed on the particular day (or apparently sometimes burned down) so that they can instead take you to some of the places they suggest. This is apparently so that they can end up by leaving you at a shop of some kind where they will get a commission. Some are probably fronts for more jewel scams or other more serious scamming.

As for the main tourist attractions near Khao San, the Grand Palace is impressive but I'm not sure it is really worth the inflated admission prices and crowds. Wat Pho nearby is a bit more relaxed and not a bad first temple to see.

The south

After Bangkok I took a sleeper train to Surat Thani in the south. Sleeper trains are good for saving on daylight time and accommodation costs, although it means not seeing much along the route. The sleeper trains I was on start out with pairs of large seats facing each other, and then at some point in the evening an attendant comes along to convert each pair into a bunk bed; the seats slide together to make the bottom bunk and the top bunk folds down from the ceiling. Surat Thani is a strange combination of touristy and non-touristy, as it is the main stop over for the islands in the area. There are extensive bus stations and many touts and tour offices, but otherwise the town seems pretty unaffected by tourism. I just wandered around for a little while and then found a bus and ferry to Ko Samui.

Koh Samui is also very touristy and I think also rather isolated from the non-tourist parts of Thailand (or at least the main towns are), but it is much more laid back and less ghettoy than Khao San. The main draw is just the beaches, although there are a few attractions set up in the forest as well. It is possible to find very cheep bungalows here if you don't mind being a little out of the towns. I stayed in one at one end of the beach in Lamai. Food prices on the island are a bit inflated relative to many other parts of Thailand (partly because there are more western options and fewer local places), but it is possible to find a few cheaper stalls. There are fewer touts here, although there are still some for motorcycle taxis and tailors (and bar girls at night).

After Ko Samui I spent one night in Nakon Si Tammarat (note that this name is a variation on "Nagara Sri Dhammaraja"). This was the first place I had been in Thailand that wasn't at all touristy, and was therefore very pleasant. I went to see some temples and also the small but interesting shadow puppet museum.

From there I went to Suan Mokkh for a ten-day meditation retreat, which I'll describe separately at the end. After the retreat and one day at the Suan Mokkh monastery I went to get a train at Chaiya, the closest town. Chaiya is tiny, and like Nakon Si Tammarat not very touristy. I only spent part of the afternoon there before getting on a train.

The North

Since the trip from Chaiya to Chiang Mai is two overnight train rides, I stopped to spend the afternoon in Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya is the old capital of a Thai kingdom in the area, which was destroyed by Burmese invaders (so that the modern capital and state was founded at Bangkok as a replacement). The island the old city was on now contains extensive ruins interleaved with modern city, and was pretty good to walk around in.

Chiang Mai

One more night train got me to Chiang Mai. This train unfortunately just had regular seating (because I got the ticket at the last minute). The seats actually were not too bad for sleeping, but the air conditioning at the front of the car was on so strongly that the cold was uncomfortable (this may have been a malfunction).

Chiang Mai was quite nice. It is more relaxed than Bangkok but not as insular as Koh Samui. There is a less ghettoy touristy area with cheep hotels and restaurants (which are less cheep but still ok) and used book stores. There aren't too many touts, apart from some tuk tuk drivers.

For some reason Chiang Mai has a lot of places doing cooking classes. I took the one at Baan Thai, which was pretty good. We got a tour of a market and were shown how to make a few dishes. I also went to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, a temple on adjacent mountain that is apparently very popular and has good views (which were unfortunately fairly cloudy when I was there). This temple is supposed to have been founded when a Buddha relic somehow split in two; one piece was placed Doi Suthep when a white elephant entrusted with finding a good site walked there and died on the spot.

A couple of temples in Chiang Mai have Monk Chat, which is basically what it sounds like; you go and chat with monks, which gives tourists a chance to talk to them and gives the monks a chance to practice English. I went to the Monk Chat at Wat Chedi Luang, where I met a very friendly young monk who spent quite a while talking to me over the next couple of days. This was great (especially since otherwise contact with locals is tricky because they are largely divided into those who don't speak much English and those who do and want to sell things to foreigners), and ended up being one of the best parts of the trip. He also took me to see Wat Umong, a little out of the city. It is forest monastery in a style closer to Suan Mokkh than the city temples, and for some reason also features tunnels built into a mound. I didn't see too much of the main monastery, but we visited the tunnels and ruins in the forest.

Leaving Chiang Mai I took a bus to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre near Lampang. I missed the main show here, but still got to see some elephants and go on a brief elephant ride. As far as I could tell this was the best option for seeing elephants in Thailand, as the elephants in the cities are usually not kept in very good conditions. After that I went to Lampang and looked around for a few hours before getting on a bus to Bangkok. Lampang is pretty small, and was another good place to avoid full touristyness for a while. The night bus to Bangkok was again seats-only, which seemed ok. We got one rest stop break.

Various details

This is more details that didn't fit in above. I'm probably missing some since it has been a while. Buddhism in Thailand seems very different from what I was used to from Taiwan. It is much more institutionalized, with temples everywhere. Buddha images are very important, with temples containing hundreds of statues. Many or most people wear smaller Buddha images as amulets. These are often replicas of well-known statues, and are supposed to have various powers (I believe that there is some procedure for monks to bless or otherwise invest them). There are markets exclusively for amulet trade, and apparently magazines for collectors. Local tourism to famous temples is very popular. The monkhood is also very institutionalized, although it is quite open in that people are allowed to quit it as they choose up to some number of times (and in fact it was previously customary for all males to become monks for a while). Nuns do not have the full status of monks, and as far as I know there are many fewer nuns than monks.

On other traveling details, there are enough cheep hotels that hostels are not necessary. Public washrooms are usually for pay, but the fees are small (I have a note indicating usually 1-5 baht). Drinks from stalls often come packed with ice, which is good for cooling but means that the amount of actual beverage is limited, although it can be extended somewhat by allowing the ice to melt. However, basic drinks are about 20-25 baht vs 30-35 in Taiwan. Coffee is priced close to other drinks, whereas in Taiwan it costs a bit more than tea. Ice is usually hollow cylinders which are partially crushed, and is good for crunching on. Heavily crushed ice seems also to be used (at least sometimes) for deserts instead of shaved ice. Water is easily available at convenience stores, but sometimes can be bought much more cheaply at bottle refill machines on the street; these took me a while to notice and work out, but are very convenient when available.

Street crossing seems even worse than in Taiwan, with cars rarely stopping for pedestrians. It is especially bad in Bangkok where there are a lot of large streets. Chiang Mai is better in the area around the tourist district, although the surrounding ring road often has heavy traffic, and traffic can be confusing due to the number of one-way streets. Most motorcycles are similar to those in Malaysia, except that they don't have baskets on the inside of the handlebars. There are also a good proportion of the horizontal axis motorcycles I am more used to, and scooters including a surprising number of old-looking Vespas in some places.

Suan Mokkh Retreat

At the beginning of December I went for the monthly ten-day retreat at Suan Mokkh, the forest hermitage founded by Buddhadasa. This section is from an email I wrote shortly after the retreat, with some improvements.

The retreat went pretty well. The schedule for days 1-8 was up at 4:00, and then four sessions of about 30-60 minutes sitting, 30-45 minutes moving meditation, and another 30-60 minutes sitting (the times were fixed for each segment, I just don't remember the exact timing). The first ended at about 8:00 for breakfast and chores, the second at 12:30 for lunch, the third at something like 5:00 for tea and hotspring, and the fourth at 9:00 for bed. For the morning and afternoon sessions the first sitting was a reading or talk with any leftover time going to meditation, and the second sitting meditation apart from announcements and tutorials on the first couple days. The afternoon session also got an additional period for chanting in Pali and English, which could be skipped for additional sitting for people who didn't want to chant. The evening sittings were always meditation. The middle bit was a yoga class in the early morning session, personal walking meditation in the late morning and afternoon sessions, and group walking in the evening. For day 9 we had only one meal, at 8:30, and two teas. We also had fewer talks and were allowed to leave the group for most of the sitting meditation, so we could just go find a spot in the grounds. Day 10 we went back to two meals and could leave the group again for a while, and the evening was a chance for people to talk about their experiences.

Food was actually really good. Breakfast was a rice porridge type thing (not sure what the name is) with a few vegetables, and a couple of separate vegetable dishes that were usually leftovers from lunch. We usually also got bananas, and for the early days also those round crackers that are really good. Lunch was dry rice with a few vegetables, with a couple of separate dishes that were different pretty much every day. Often we got a curry with sweet potato or other large vegetables, and a dish with more green vegetables. Once we got macaroni and white cabbage (and onion and carrots and maybe other things), which was good. For lunch we also got a desert type thing consisting of beans, corn, tapioca balls, or some other things or mixtures, in milk or other liquids. Lunch and breakfast both came with some raw cabbage, cucumbers, and smaller leafy vegetables, and herbal tea. Tea was usually hot chocolate or soy milk, once something similar but kindof yellow. Apparently some chef from Bangkok was doing the food, possibly just for the one time because I heard the food hasn't always been as good in recent retreats there.

Beds were a thin woven mat on a thin layer of particle board on concrete, with wooden pillows and small blankets. We did get fairly large individual cells, though, and mosquito nets. There was a hotspring we could use at breaks, I guess just because there happened to be one on the site.

The training was breath meditation in the form of anapanasati, which apparently is what the Buddha actually taught as roughly what he used himself. The full anapanasati process is 16 steps, but as most of these are beyond what most people will ever reach, we mostly focused on the shorted version of steps 1-4 to develop mindfulness and concentration, and step 13 to develop insight (especially into impermanence). Steps 1-4 and the commentary we got are basically a more formulaic version of the Chan breath meditation I'm used to. It differs mostly in teaching how to control the breath for initial relaxation, how to observe in detail how the breath affects the body, and how to start watching the breath by following its path or alternately focusing on two or more points (before switching to watch at only one point). Trying it this way seemed very useful. We got less instruction on the insight part, but a few talks about the three characteristics of impermanence, dukkha, and no-self, and on how self is created from contact via dependent origination. We also got a brief tutorial on walking meditation. This focused on seeing how the feet move through the various parts of a step, whereas I am more used to focusing on the sensations.

For the first four days or so I felt that I was making a lot of progress in concentration, which meant that for the middle part of the retreat I was trying too hard and not actually maintaining very good mindfulness. I ended up in a state where my mind could concentrate on the breath or let my thoughts go off into various unimportant topics, but I couldn't control them very well. After that I relaxed and tried not to expect as much and that seemed better.

The weather was mixed, with some days clear and others raining heavily enough that walking outside even briefly meant getting pretty soaked. I believe the time was right at the beginning or end of the monsoon period for the area. Since we walked outside between buildings for each activity, sometimes it was pretty wet. However, it was warm enough that this wasn't much of a problem.

After the retreat I went with many of the others for a tour of the monastery itself, and a few of us stayed overnight. It is a proper forest monastery, where the monks get small huts scattered around in the forest. There are also a few larger buildings for various purposes. The monastery has a workshop which makes copies of early Buddhist art, and this is on display at various places, along with more modern art at the Spiritual Theater.

We also had a variety of animals at the retreat, which were relatively easy to notice since we were spending most of the time more or less outside. The ants were mostly a near-black variety that has about three distinct sizes (my father later established from this description that these are marauder ants). They build huge roads across the sandy paths at the retreat centre, which then wash away when it rains properly. The trail I followed seemed to be leading to a coconut mine at some range. Apparently they are low on food at this time of year. They like to bite (me at least) if I stand to close, but don't actually have any venom -- it is quite painful but only until they fall off. There were also red ants with long legs, which I assume were venomous (or whatever the right word for ants is). They would rear up if I got too close, but never actually bit me. In one place they seemed to be killing some of the black ants which got too close and carying the bodies off up a building.

We also got scorpions of two varieties. The larger apparently had quite a painful sting which would hurt for a couple of days but could be got down to ten minutes with a herb the centre grew. I never got stung, but found two in my room and one outside while we were moving sand for a new path. I don't know which sort they were since I never had two at once to compare.

There were also various frogs or toads ranging from some large ones that would make little nests in the sand down to what looked like tree frogs, and some lizards. Apparently there were also snakes. The only really dangerous kind was the cobras, and apparently the centre has never had any problems with them, which they explain as being a result of practicing loving-kindness (this technique also works on mosquitoes). I never saw any snakes, but one of the participants said afterwards that he had been meditating on his own outside and opened his eyes to find a snake looking at him. We were also told not to keep any food in our cells because it would attract ants and therefore toads and therefore snakes.

We also had a couple of cats, one which didn't want to associate with people and one which was more friendly after it got used to us, and which liked to hang out nearby and meow at mealtimes. The monastery itself had more cats including at least three very friendly kittens. It also had some dogs and wild chickens. The chickens are perhaps the best known since they were known to be friendly with Buddhadasa while he was still alive.