So, where is it? A restaurant? No. A hotel? No. A municipal building? No. Its in a temple. Yes, you guessed it, it is at Wat Tha Mai I. As the French say vive la difference.
We all know that the people of Chiang Mai are the happiest in the world. They never stop smiling and they only stop dancing in order to prepare gourmet meals for foreign tourists. But did you know that the toilets in Chiang Mai are also happy, and that there is an award for the happiest one? This toilet is so clean that it seems sacrilegious to do your business there.
So, where is it? A restaurant? No. A hotel? No. A municipal building? No. Its in a temple. Yes, you guessed it, it is at Wat Tha Mai I. As the French say vive la difference.
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Gated communities are popular with the middle class in Chiang Mai. They offer a haven where children can play free from thieves and monsters. Unfortunately, for the residents of this quiet community near canal road, a five meter tall Godzilla has taken up permanent residence. Apparently a mad Japanese householder thinks this makes an attractive ornament in his garden. Still, what can you expect from the people who invented karaoke? On the outskirts of Chiang Mai you will see something which, at first glance, looks like an alien spacecraft. Closer inspection reveals that it is a building shaped like a grand piano. So, what is it for? A concert hall? No. A music academy? No. A restaurant with a piano bar? Again, no.
It is, in fact, the Rajanagarinda Institute, Department of Mental Health. The institute specialises in the mental health problems of children. Its services include Electroencephalograms and Chromosome analysis. That's fine, but why is the building shaped like a giant grand piano? My best guess is that the architect was one of the patients.
A Thai Wat is normally set in a spacious compound, usually with a conservative bit of lawn and a few trees. At Wat Tha Mai I there is a garden that appears to have been laid out by somebody on Mescaline. Grinning, rotund, homunculi sit among artificial tulips; soft toys and wooden birds hang from trees; and Ganesh presides over this arcadian extravaganza.
The first thing you notice about Wat Tha Mai I (pronounced “ta mai ei”) is the gate. Instead of being guarded by the normal pair of lions, the gate to this temple is guarded by two giant fighting cocks. The reason is that the temple compound contains a statue of king Naresuan who, legend has it, was very fond of cock-fighting. The local villagers appear to treat this statue as a shrine that will give them good luck with their cock fights. This is important because cock fighting is a big gambling business in Thailand (but illegal, of course). Donations to the temple are put on money trees. As can be seen from the photos there is a lot of money on these trees so, obviously, an offering at the shrine will help you win! Visitors to Thailand naturally have a problem with the language which has its own unique script based on Sanskrit. Fortunately a lot of signs are now written in Roman symbols. The signs in the photo shows the way to Chiang Mai's biggest hospital. So, if you are tourist in need of urgent medical attention because you fell on a Russels Viper when you were knocked off your bicycle by an elephant, you should have no problem getting to Maharach (first sign). Or is it Maharaj (second sign)? Actually, its pronounced Mah-hah-rrat, but this doesn't matter because the locals do not call it that. (If you ask a taxi driver to take you to Maharach or Maharaj he will not have a clue what you are talking about) They call it Rahmpreeabahn Suandoc, which is much easier, isn't it. Rahmpreeabahn Suandoc means “flower garden hospital” which is nice, but the hospital does not actually have a flower garden and never had one. It is called flower garden hospital because it is opposite Wat Suandoc, which means Flower Garden Temple. Of course, the temple does not actually have much of a flower garden…
Along one of the side roads on the way to Ban Kat you pass a house which seems belongs to a member of the rural "nouveau riche". Nobody, including the local police, seem to know who owns it. What is going on? Is it the start of a new terracotta army to rival that of Qin Shi Huang? Or English garden gnomes gone mad?
The road to Ban Kat goes through deserted national forest. Then suddenly, round a bend, you find a family of concrete elephants bathing in a concrete pond. Then you are back in the forest again. This bit of Disneyland forms the entrance to a resort hotel, but there no elephants (or animals of any kind) at the resort. The area is famous for elephant rides but not here, the real elephants are 10 kilometres away.
About 10 kilometres from Country House on the outskirts of Ban Kat is a monument to Japanese soldiers that died during the Second World War. On the road there is a sign in English, but to get to the monument you have pass through the compound of a Thai school, there is no other way in. The school compound has a security guard on a traffic barrier. He demands that anybody entering the compound hand over their Thai I.D. which is returned when they leave. This is very strange because it appears to be just an ordinary Thai primary school for the children of farmers. In my experience this makes it unique, I have never seen a public provincial primary school which a professional security guard anywhere else in Thailand.The inscriptions on the monuments themselves are in Japanese and ambiguous Thai. The Thai inscriptions do little to explain:
a) Why there is a monument at all (the official story is that Thailand was occupied by the Japanese by force). b) Why is located in Ban Kat (a small town that nobody except locals have ever heard of). c) Why is it hidden behind a school with professional security. About five kilometres along the road from Country House to Ban Kat, you will find a large golden rabbit about 3 metres high. The rabbit dominates a spacious well manicured garden. Nobody seems to know where it came from or what it is doing there. Rumour is, that it is a Chinese Buddhist place; but there are no inscriptions in Chinese. Also, as far as I know, rabbit worship is not part of Buddhism, Chinese or otherwise.
Time was, when Thais moved house, they did that literally. Their teak wooden houses would be torn down, loaded onto ten wheel trucks, moved to a new location and rebuilt. Fifteen years ago it was not unusual to see Thai houses on the road in Chiang Mai. Thailand's teak forests disappeared in the early 1980s. The timber was logged and shipped to Singapore where the industrious Singaporeans made a fortune turning it into furniture for the Western market. So with the teak gone, Thai villagers had to turn to concrete for their houses. Concrete houses have many advantages, especially for building contractors. For example, a Thai concrete house will only last for thirty years whereas a teak house will last for over a 100 years. So the contractors soon convinced the villagers that their teak houses were worthless and that the fashionable thing to do was to replace them with concrete. At the same time hoteliers building resort hotels, and Bangkok people building second homes were buying all the teak houses they could find. These would be either rebuilt in a new location or cannibalized for new structures. The house seen here (which is part of the Country House estate) was demolished and moved to its present location, 50 kilometres away, in less than a day. It did, however take a lot longer to rebuild. The Lectures below were prepared to assist people wanting to buy hardwood houses in Chiang Mai. Lecture No. 1. The Matchwood House
You will find the Matchwood house in a Chiang Mai Farmers' village. A typical house on stilts, its about five meters long and three meters wide. It usually has a stylish corrugated iron roof. The Matchwood house is made of teak but very thin. In fact the walls are only the thickness of veneer, you could punch your finger through them. The floor boards are so thin that they bend, and are likely to break, under a farang's weight. The supporting poles are made out of trees that did not grow straight, so the Matchwood house frequently sits at a jaunty angle. The Matchwood House is occupied by a very old villager who stares in horrific incomprehension as a great big hairy white man charges into his house, jumps up and down on the floor and bangs his first on the beams while his Thai entourage talk about how easy it would be to demolish the house and take it away. But really the old villager has nothing to fear - nobody in their right mind would ever buy a Matchwood House. Lecture No. 2. The Chabahn House The Chabahn House has pigs living underneath, therefore, the floors are thicker than in the matchwood house (nobody wants to fall into the pig shit). Walls are a bit thicker also. The roof of the Chabahn House is almost flat and hideous. The building is designed for a corrugated iron roof, though this has now been replaced by cement stuff. These are rarely sold except to other Chabahn, who buy three old ones and make one new one out of the bits (any bits left over can be used to build a Matchwood House). Alternative they are fed into a machine in Hang Dong that turns them into furniture that is then sold to sybarites who live in Bangkok. Lecture No. 3. The Tarzan House The Tarzan House is a small rainforest stripped of its bark. Roughly worked slabs of wood are loosely nailed onto a dozen massive teak pillars. Nobody has ever lived in a Tarzan House, its just illegal timber in disguise. The teak in a Tarzan house is cut to look big and it is not in the right proportions, nor is it properly treated. Although the Tarzan house is only a few months old, the planks are beginning to warp and split. The Tarzan house is bought by newly rich Thais who wear heavy gold chains round their necks and think building a house out of big bits of wood will impress the neighbours. The Tarzan house sells for ten times more than the Chabahn house. Lecture No. 4. The Collapsing Rice Barn Rice barns can be seen in most villages, as the name suggests they are used for storing rice. Rice needs to be kept dry; the Thai solution is a structure with eight central heavy columns supporting a cantilevered elevated floor and a heavy tile roof, the rice is stored in a wooden silo at the centre of the elevated floor (well away from rodents and ground damp). Rice barns are usually about five metres by four and look quite nice in a rustic sort of way. Farang's buy them, take out the silo and walls, and put a prissy little fretwork balustrade round the outside. They use them as garden pavilions, sitting in their rattan chairs and taking sundowners from their drinks trolleys. Unfortunately the eves of the roof are so low that the farang's cannot actually see the sunset. Another problem is that the drinks trolley keeps rolling away towards the prissy balustrade - there is a reason for this. At first glance the rice barn looks like an example of classical Chinese architecture, but its not. Faced with the problem of supporting a heavy roof the Chinese developed a system of pillars and complicated cross beams. In a traditional Chinese temple the roof is supported entirely by the pillars and the walls are not load-bearing. The Chinese system works very well and their structures have stood for hundreds of years. Looking at a rice barn you will see struts from the roof to the edge of the floor, at first glance these appear to be just part of the external walls but they do in fact bear most of the weight of the roof. The load is passed from roof to strut to a floor which is cantilevered out and supported by lateral beams passing through the pillars. Force of gravity would cause these beams to bend like an inverted U, if it were not for the counterweight provided by the rice stored in the silo at the centre. Of course the farang pavilions have no central counterweight, so their beams begin to bend, their drinks trolleys roll away and ultimately their beams will break and their rice barn will collapse. Not that it matter much - the rice barn sells for only four times more than the Chabahn house. Lecture No. 5. The Lanna House The old Kingdom of Lanna, which centred on Chiang Mai, had its own language, culture and architecture. Since its annexation to Ayuttaya, little of this remains. There are a few things: the incomprehensible dialect of the local Chabahn, vile sausages, baggy trousers, and, of course, the Lanna House. The notable features of the Lanna House are the twin gables, the shingle roof and the open deck. The roof has the shape of an inverted W. So, while every other roof in the world is designed to make rainwater flow away from the house, in the Lanna house (which is located in a monsoon region) half the rainwater flows into the centre of the house. The main feature of the interior living space is something that looks like a long bathtub hanging from the ceiling. This aluminium trough is there to catch the rainwater and funnel it to the outside of the house. The problem is that water is very heavy and a trough full of water will weigh a couple of tonnes and tend to pull the roof down. But the Lanna house has its own way of compensating. The roof is made of shingle (little blocks of teak). Wood contains oil which gives it its pliability and strength. Under Chiang Mai's blazing sun the teak shingle quickly dries out, becomes brittle and cracks. Most of the rainwater, therefore, never makes it to the trough, it simply drips into the living space through the cracked shingle. The Lanna house sits on stilts and communication between the various rooms in a Lanna house is by means of an open deck also supported on stilts. Like the roof the deck quickly dries out and becomes brittle and crumbly. Lanna houses are very collectable. They are bought by Europeans who do not live in Thailand. They only come here for two weeks holiday during the dry season. For the other 50 weeks the Lanna house is inhabited only by a small army of Thai maids. They know they are onto a good thing and, during the rainy season, they cover up the furniture with plastic sheeting. The European owners, therefore, remain blissfully unaware that their beautiful house is in fact a glorified shower stall. It might seem that everybody is happy with the Lanna house, but there is a major danger. Thai maids do not weigh very much and can dance across the open deck without incident. When the fat, six foot two, European owner comes to stay he is likely to fall through the crumbling deck timbers. But then, of course, he is dead of a broken neck and does not get to tell the other Europeans about it. The Lanna house sells for fifty times more than the Chabahn house. The Chabahn house, by the way, always has a rain-proof roof - Thai farmers don't like to get wet unless they have to. Lecture No. 6. The old shop house being demolished because of a road widening The old shop house has been vacated by its owners and is now inhabited by itinerant construction workers who have never had proper potty training. It smells of urine and is decorated with empty Mekong bottles and Krong Thip cigarette butts. The rusting Coca-Cola signs and other collectibles have been stripped out and are now being sold by Thai hippies at Chatuchak market. The old shop house was originally quite small but as business expanded it got bigger and extra bits have been added to the original structure. Because shopkeepers are richer than Chabahn, the teak planks and floorboards are thicker and wider than in the Chabahn house. The old shop house is very ugly and nobody would think of renovating it. The timber however, could be used to build a new house. Unfortunately, because the place has grown incrementally, the planks tend to be very short. The old shop house sells for ten times as much as the Chabahn house. As the bulldozers approach the owners hold on like grim death in the hope that a mad farang or a Thai (starry-eyed over thick bits of wood no matter short and stubby) will buy it for this fabulous price. They fail, of course, and the old shop house is eventually shipped off to the machine in Hang Dong. Lecture No. 7. The Tourist Dancers' House Chiang Mai has a number of houses built specifically to give coach-loads of tourists a cultural evening. After a hard day of walking round Doi Suthep, visiting orchid farms and doing the obligatory 15 minute elephant ride, tourists can take in the rest of the Northern culture over a two hour show and dinner. Germans and Japanese, dressed in baggy trousers and Lanna shirts that they bought in the Night Bazaar the night before, sit around munching vile sausages and watch the dancers. Most of the dances are based on the daily lives of Northern villages and Hilltribe folk. There is the rice farming dance in which the dance mimics the sowing, reaping and winnowing of rice. There is the silk weaving dance, and the selling trinkets to Americans dance. Such a cultural extravaganza demands an authentic setting. Well, not quite authentic. The Tourist Dancers' house is decorated with the usual Chiang Mai kitsch: talad nam style boats used as flower pot holders, fake Hang Dong wagon wheels used as fencing, pig troughs carved on the outside and placed upright to resemble elaborate pillars. But the real problem with authenticity is that the Dancers' house needs to be big enough to handle two coach loads of tourists, and Lanna houses were never that big. The dancers' house is, therefore, a composite. It is made of one Tarzan house, four Chabahn houses and an old shop house intercepted on the way to the machine in Hang Dong. But there is problem here because Chabahn houses, Tarzan houses and shop houses all have an ugly flat concrete roof. If the dancers' house is to look authentic it needs a steeply pitched roof of shingle or ceramic tile. Shingle has so many problems that even a Dancers' house builder would be scared to use it, so, ceramic tile is the inevitable result. The problem here is (yes, you guessed it) a tile roof is four times heavier than a cement board roof. The load on the skeleton of the original houses is four times greater than it was designed to bear. What needs to be done is a thorough reinforcing of the structure with beams and joists of new wood. This new wood needs to be very strong, stronger than teak. Mai Daeng is a good wood for this purpose but it is twice as expensive as teak. If fact, building a tile roof properly will more than double the raw materials cost of a Dancers' house and labour costs will increase at an even higher ratio. Naturally the builder cuts costs, instead of using new wood he takes short beams and bolts them together to make longer beams. After only a year or so the roof of the Dancers' house starts to sag and the tiles fall off. Continuous maintenance work is required to prevent a complete collapse. The Dancers' house is not for sale but it gives you a good idea about what not to do if you are thinking about building a composite house. In fact the Dancers' house cannot be sold because it has been built with a huge mortgage. Eventually the owner will be forced into bankruptcy by prohibitive roof maintenance costs. The bank will spend years trying to repossess it. The site will be abandoned and the roof will finally collapse. Local people will plunder the timber and take it away to make Chabahn houses. And then the wonderful life-cycle of the teak house will be complete. |
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Dr Frank Gregory has been writing weird things for decades. Archives
December 2015
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