Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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WALKING UP TO THE WAT PHRATHAT

by J.M.Cadet

Relic bearer, Wat Phrathat

A word of warning, mind. According to the Chiang Mai chronicle history, the first sentient being (to use the Buddhist term for humans and animals) to make the climb, died at the end of it.

In fact, the reason why the Northern capital’s most famous, revered and splendidly-located temple - Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep - is where it is, so the tradition tells us, is that the auspicious white elephant which carried the Buddha relic up the mountain had to signal in an unmistakable way where the best site for the future temple should be. And having climbed the mountain and reached the promontory the temple now stands on, the elephant trumpeted, did a reverse circumambulation three times, knelt down and died - of exhaustion, so the chronicles say, though I’d have to withhold suspending my disbelief on that one.

And there the temple stands, more than half a millennium later: an architecturally outstanding foundation, encompassing hundreds of fascinating and mythologically-significant images, and with the best viewing platform over the Chiang Mai valley that the North can offer. And all this only a stone’s throw from the city you’re visiting, and a mere 700 metres above it.

Now what I’m suggesting is that you give yourself a treat. Dispense with the tour companies, tour guides and twenty-first century transports for just one afternoon. Don an old shirt and a suitable pair of trousers, put some kind of a shady titfer on your head (the sun can play havoc with your complexion on a trip like this), lace up your trainers and walk up the mountain. If you’re in exceptional nick, and you really want to go for it, you can get from the foot of the mountain to the rail of the viewing platform in just under an hour. On the other hand, a nice leisurely pace that gives you a chance to see all the plants, birds and insects the forest offers, as well as the waterfalls, walk-ways, intermediate reliquaries and so on, on the upward journey, will get you there in two or three hours, and earns the same level of merit.

Stone bridge, Wat Pa Lat

Here’s how you do it.

First get yourself to the foot of the mountain. Hire a taxi (30 baht approximately) and tell the driver you want to go to the satanee toratat chong jet. He should take you to the end of the Suthep Road, turn right, drive another kilometre up a steep stretch past the back entrance of Chiang Mai Zoo, dropping you where the road ends at the aforementioned Channel 7 TV Station. From there you walk back a couple of hundred meters to a right-angle bend in the road where the path - well-sign-posted - begins.

And start walking…

Theoretically, as a farang visitor to the Doi Suthep National Park, you’re supposed to pay a two hundred baht entrance fee at this point, but since there’s no-one to charge you either here or elsewhere on this route, you start with a bonus. Within forty minutes of easy and very pleasant walking under the trees, close to the small stream first on the left of the path and then - after you’ve crossed it - on your right (and having followed the route-markers), you arrive at the thoroughly delightful temple of Wat Pha Lat.

This little idyll of a place, well worth a visit on its own account, has a rock-shelter with Burmese style Buddha images, one of the few covered wells you’ll find in the North of Thailand (though they’re a feature of the Thai areas of southern Yunnan), a recently renovated bot (ordination hall), and a stupa that looks to be many centuries old. Additionally, there’s a charming little stone bridge above a waterfall, and the whole site is enveloped in and co-exists within the forest, with hardly a visitor to disturb its tranquillity. And already, through the trees, you catch spectacular views of Chiang Mai city well below you.

Rock shelter, Wat Pa Lat

At this point, if you want to, you can walk up the stony track from Pha Lat temple to the main road, there to flag one of the many taxis going either up or down the mountain. On the other hand, if still committed to the walk to the Wat Phrathat, you continue up the narrow path with the stream on your left, and after ten minutes and a final steep scramble come out to the main road. Here turn left and walk about two hundred meters higher to the point where the road bears sharply left and there strike up the really steep path under the trees. There are footsteps cut out of the laterite soil to help you here. By this time, you’re about an hour into your expedition, with roughly the same time and effort ahead of you in getting up to the Wat Phra That.

On this second half of the journey, you’ve left the helpful sign-posting, rustic bridges and walk-ways behind you, but not to worry since there are no turn-offs and you just keep slogging away, at first very steeply, but then at an easier angle, initially exposed to the sun but soon under the trees again. The path is never in doubt. The only mystery is how it comes to be so well maintained, since you never meet another soul on it, apart from those couple of days a year when just about the whole of the city - guitars, lunch baskets, floppy hats, and assorted pets - goes up on its grand merit-making, and you can’t see the forest for the Thais. As it is normally though, from one end to the other you have the path and the forest to yourself, and very pleasant it is to be away from the crowd for a while.

Another forty-five or so minutes from Wat Pha Lat, and you begin to hear temple bells bonging above you and you know you’re getting nearer. Another really steep scramble and you’re again on the Srivichai main road, up which ten minutes of trudging brings you to the foot of the temple steps. You’ve earned your drink of coconut juice fresh out of the shell at one of the stairway stalls. And if the sight of all those steps is just too much for you - well, you’ve already earned enough merit that you can take the rack-and-pinion rail shuttle right up to the temple above.

I’m going to let you into a secret, though. There’s a way of avoiding that final rather aesthetically distasteful ten minutes of walking up the road and into the bazaar at the foot of the main stairway. I’m not recommending it, mind, since it requires striking off into initially trackless forest to the right of the path in its final stages. You then have to move up and bear left until you come on rather faint tracks on the top of the ridge. Following these, you reach a small Chinese burial site, above it the kuti area of the Wat Phrathat - the small huts housing the monks perched on the slope just under the temple itself. If you can find and follow this path, the final stairways winding up through the kuti eventually bring you right onto the Wat Phrathat’s viewing platform, with the whole Chiang Mai plain beneath you - a splendid way to finish the climb. The problem is though it’s almost impossible to explain where to strike off into the forest to find this final alternative section of the path. If you try you might spend a lot of time scrambling around among the bushes getting nowhere, the closeness by now of those temple bells a mocking suggestion that you don’t have the merit required to get to your destination - that Purgatory rather than Paradise is what you’ve been allotted. So take my advice and stick to the Pilgrim Path until it brings you out to the road. From there it’s simply a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.

Oh, and by the way, my Thai informants tell me that when you’ve earned your merit by walking up, you don’t lose even a jot of it by taking a taxi (and there’s no shortage available) for the journey down.

So why don’t you choose a suitably rain-free afternoon and give it a try. A couple of hours’ steep walking under the forest canopy, some wonderful views on the way, and when you mingle with the other visitors who’ve come up the easy way, that slightly superior feeling of having done something out of the ordinary.