Was Phra That Doi Suthep is perched up on a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai and the valley it sits in and would be a fantastic vantage point even if it wasn’t also a sacred site in the history of Thai buddhism. Taken together, those factors pretty much make it a must-see stop for visitors to Chiang Mai.
Of course “perched on a mountain” and “visitor” leads to the question of transportation, since it’s not a quick walk even if the heat index were manageable, which it’s not. Getting a lift up the hill is the only sane way to the temples, and there is a predictably Thai solution to the problem.
Public transportation in Chiang Mai consists largely of a fleet of multi-colored little Toyota pickups, referred to generically as songthaew (“two benches” which accurately describes how the beds are outfitted) which cruise around semi-randomly. If you want to go somewhere, you flag down a songthaew (for destinations within or close to the city, a red one–called “rot dang” or “red truck”), tell the driver where you are heading, and if he feels like going that way and you can agree on a price, you hop in the back.
They pack in ten folks (all heading more or less the same direction) which is not problem if the folks are Thai, but a tight squeeze for people built on a Western frame, such as myself.
Demand is such to go up the mountain to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (I’m just going to start typing “Doi Suthep” because it’s a lot easier; that’s the name of the mountain itself) that there are a number of designated stops around town where you can go to be matched with like-minded people for the ride up. The rates are fixed from those points, so they wait until they can fill a truck before they send you on your way.
I wandered to the nearest of these stops early in the day and managed to get a seat right at the back door of the truck (they have canopies over the bed, a concession to both the rainy season and the difficulty of keeping drunk tourists contained in the back of the truck in Thai traffic).
The ride quickly turned into a nausea-inducing machine as the driver stormed up the hairpin curves ascending out of the city. One poor Chinese girl near the front of the truck got dry heaves. None of us in the back looked too healthy by the time we arrived, I don’t think.
Fortunately, the distance up the hill is relatively short and as we spilled out of the back of the songthaew, the cooler temperature and fresher air breathed new life into us. Which was important, because the next challenge is getting up the stairs.
A bit of background as to why the long truck ride and stairs are involved:
The monastery was founded by King Keu Naone in 1383 to enshrine a bit of bone said to be the from the shoulder of the Buddha. The foundation story is one of the most remarkable in a region where nearly every temple has an extraordinarily meaningful and involved tale to its establishment. The bone shard was brought to Chiang Mai by a wandering monk, whereupon (and there is probably a long story detailing this incident, I simply haven’t heard it) it broke into two pieces.
At the place where it broke, the King established the temple of Wat Suan Dok, which is just outside the old city, a bit north of the current airport, and enshrined one of the pieces.
The other piece, apparently in line with the custom at the time, was fastened reverently onto the back of a sacred white elephant, which was then allowed to wander the jungles until the end of its days. Where it died, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep was established.
That elephant had apparently only recently been reincarnated from a cat or a monkey or something (I’m making this part up), because it scaled a pretty impressive mountain on its dying legs and collapsed for all eternity at a suspiciously scenic place overlooking the valley below.
This abbreviated version of the story leaves out the supernatural powers of the relic, the symbolic trumpeting of the dying elephant, and the vision that possessed the monk to search out the shoulder bone of the Buddha in the first place.
Anyway, the climbing prowess of the elephant means that the approaches to its final resting place require some energy and lung capacity. Today, 306 (or 309, depending on the source or where you start counting, I guess–I didn’t bother) stairs lead from the roadway up to the wat, a climb that would be oppressive further down the hill, but isn’t particularly taxing in the higher, cooler climate.
The temple has a meditation center and healthy population of nuns and monks, and presumably they get about the business of worshipping in the less public places or in the evenings, because by day the place is overrun with tourists.
Nonetheless, it manages to be quiet, beautiful, and contemplative. Decorated with ornate carvings, gorgeous statuary, and an impressive golden spire, Doi Suthep is worth the trip. You imagine that elephant, the monk with the relic, and old King Keu Naone must be well-pleased with themselves in their current incarnations.
I spent a restful couple of hours on the mountain top, partly contemplating the story of the temple, the grand (if smokey) vistas, and other fine philosophical subjects suitable to holy places, but mostly dreading the prospect of the ride back down to town.
The little Toyota rot-dang hadn’t been able to get up a good head of steam charging up those curves; going down, I feared, was going to really test the limits of the driver’s skill and the g-loads on the balding tires.
I dithered amongst the stalls of the vendors set up at the base of the stairs and tried to pick a sensible-looking driver out from the pack, but in the end just got in the queue and left my fate to Buddha.
He smiled that day (as on most days); after jamming the ten of us into the back of the rot-dang, we pulled out onto the road and immediately got stuck behind a big, lumbering tour bus that was inching down through the curves at almost a walking pace.
Although this occasioned our driver to swing out into blind corners from time to time in vain attempts to pass, it made for a leisurely and entirely un-nauseating ride back down to Chiang Mai. The donation I’d left at the temple, apparently, had earned a little serenity.
