CHIANG MAI (PARTE 3)
- alessandrobordin5
- Sep 21, 2023
- 3 min read
THE PLEASURE OF DISCOVERY: THE MAGICAL ATMOSPHERE OF WAT PHA LAT (1/2)
One evening after dinner, beginning to feel the air of the weekend knocking on the walls of my room as well as on those of my mind, I picked up the PC and decided to do some research on things I might see in the following days. In the previous weeks I had already explored much of the city centre with its temples, squares, monuments and museums; I had already strolled through my beloved markets being fascinated as always by the life that distinguishes them; I had already savoured the sweetness of the evening being caressed by the music of the city's Jazz club as well as by the bouncy rhythm produced by a very good Raggae band in one of the many bars in the centre. More than anything else, I was not totally satisfied with the green part of the place that had so much green to show. Yes, I had gone to visit the Doi Sutep, one of the most famous temples located at the foot of the mountain, and I had been to several parks and gardens dotting the city, but I had not yet found myself surrounded by the jungle, so close that I could glimpse it from my window.
Scouring through various websites and forums, I always seemed to find the same sponsored activities with too much unnecessary redundancy and very little originality, precisely because they were considered and portrayed as tourist must-haves that every visitor would have to include in their few-day package. Exactly the opposite of what I was looking for. When I was about to give up, thinking that I would be guided by instinct starting with one of those places I had liked the most, here was a site proposing a list of places and activities, some well-known, others less so, reserving two or three lines for each. My attention fell on something I had never read about and which immediately tickled my curiosity: the monk's trail. It was described as a walk that started at the foot of the hill and that, entering the green jungle, would lead to a temple whose name I did not know. It was the path that in the past and still today monks walk to reach this and other places on the high ground that embraces the city.
The next day I woke up early and, shortly after breakfast, was already crossing the threshold to the start of the path. Finding it was not easy because there was no signpost, but with a few questions to passers-by and a bit of luck, I managed to find it at the end of a long asphalt climb. The sun was covered by thick expanses of grey clouds but it was impressively hot because of the asphyxiating humidity that pervades everything in the monsoon season: I was already drenched in sweat and I still didn't know that the effect would multiply shortly afterwards. The time it took me to walk ten metres and the asphalt road already seemed a distant memory, a figment of my imagination: the vegetation reigned untidy in the jungle, so much so that even following the path, at certain junctures, seemed more an act of faith than a real certainty. In short, I had found what I had hoped for, and when, after about ten minutes, the path became for all intents and purposes visible, I relaxed and continued at a steady pace. Within an hour or so, the first signs of buildings appeared around a bend in the midst of the greenery: first a few white statues tattooed with moss green, then a flight of steps bordered along their entire length by snake statues acting as hummocks, and finally the various buildings making up the different areas of the temple and monastery on the banks of a small river, surrounded by the dense vegetation of the forest. I had arrived at one of the places in the city I would visit most often: Wat Pha Lat.
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