In the Shadows of the Temple of the Dawn

Or, First Days in Bangkok

Me, ecstatically happy on a boat in Bangkok

I write from inside a peaceful hotel right on the outskirts of the ruined city of Ayutthaya. I am here, after dreaming of traveling the world for so long, and already I feel I am changed. After only a few days this trip has already been everything I possibly could have dreamed.

Here’s what happened.

After barely sleeping a wink during my 24 hours of flying, I arrived at my Bangkok hostel late at night and immediately realized it had been six years since I last stayed at a hostel, and I’d forgotten the chaos of staying in a room with twelve other bodies. In some ways I’d intended to throw myself right back into the fray of pure budget travel on the first night, and I indeed had, but I was so tired I almost immediately crashed into sleep.

I spent the next day wandering around the city, which is just as loud and noisy and chaotic as I’d been led to believe. My first destination was a hospital for a final vaccine, followed by a sweaty adventure to find a bus; my second was a gigantic shopping mall, where I bought a few things I hadn’t purchased in the haze of packing up my apartment in New York.

The malls in Bangkok are truly carnivals unto themselves, full of everything you could want at often suspiciously cheap prices. The mall I’d randomly chosen happened to be right next to the Bangkok Cultural Center, a place I’d already had on my list of things to do, so that felt like a nice synchronicity, and ever since reading The Celestine Prophecy while at Esalen two years ago, I’ve half-believed that as the book says, synchronicities are signs that I’m on the right path.

I generally never notice synchronicities more than when I’m traveling, which is part of why I love it so much, and why I’ve wanted to clear my life out to do this for so long.

When I walked into the cultural center, the first thing I saw was a beautiful floor-to-ceiling sketch of a tree next to the phrase, The trees we adore hold hands. A perfect adage, I thought. The next painting, a variation on Goya, had the quote Man is one among the eight million species; a tiny thing but by far the most devastating. 

Here was ecological art that spoke right to my soul, cutting to the truths of this world. Only then did I really understand that the trip had begun. The train had left the station, and I was off. 

I don’t travel for thrills, romance, or anything else other than the fact that for me, solo travel tends to be genuinely a psychedelic, spiritual experience, more profound than anything any substance or even ritual has ever given me. When I travel solo, my eyes are wide open to patterns, insights, magic, and beauty. Everything feels meaningful, part of a divine story — which of course everything can be, all the time, if we are willing to see it that way. But it’s so hard to remember that in the framework of daily life. Travel literally helps me see the world through new eyes. It awakens me to the majesty of the world.

Anyway, nine floors of art later, I stumbled upon the first art exhibit to make me cry — a single tear — in the form of Soon to be Forgotten, a collection of old videos from Bangkok of the 70s, all showing parts of the city that do not exist anymore. Watching the video, I knew, or remembered, or understood with complete clarity that everyone is living and has always lived a complete and singular life, and yet the vast majority of those lives and experiences have simply been lost to time. Everything I do and see will be forgotten, washed away, reduced to crumbling relics just like the ancient city that rests just beyond the palms above my head. Yet still they burn with significance, with a delicate, fleshy beauty I could see through the grainy film, preserved miraculously through the decades and now projected before me. Cue tear. 

That night I paid a visit to Chinatown. Chinese New Year was the following day, so I should’ve been more prepared for how much of a madhouse it would be, but in many ways I never could have prepared. The streets were packed with crowds that stretched for miles, it seemed, with red candles burning, incense billowing, a million smells and sounds all swirling every which way. Still I wandered for hours, and eventually I wound up at Khao San Road, the famously wild backpacker strip.

I bought the requisite pair of tourists’ stretchy pants and impulsively got a 30-minute Thai massage for $7 at a place that was open at midnight, as things are in Bangkok. A man beckoned to me, or possibly proposed — regardless inviting me into the fray — but I had walked nearly 20,000 steps and could not have been less interested in experiencing Bangkok nightlife in that moment. I went home and again slept.

The next day I was set to go to the Grand Palace, Bangkok’s must-see temple complex. In the morning I went to a nice coffee place and read my book, the scintillating Fourth Wing, which somehow my very erudite book club of Columbia alums had selected. It is trashy romantasy and I loved it. Rain poured down as I read and drank my coffee and just kind of exuded pure gratitude. 

I made it. I’m here. One of my biggest dreams ever, to backpack the world, and now, after so long I’m here, I kept thinking.

On the way to the Grand Palace, the taxi driver used Google Translate to deliver a message after I told him I was from New York. Too much consumerism rots peoples’ souls, was his message to America, and I had to agree.

It was unbelievably hot in the Grand Palace. I thought of the heroine of Fourth Wing, who is also rather weak-bodied like me and breaks bones constantly as she falls from the back of her dragon and yet always gets back up, and told myself I could do this. I simply had to learn to stop resisting the heat. 

The grounds themselves were a maze of breathtaking opulence. The temples glittered, the Buddhas shone gold in the radiant sunlight. I sweated in my long pants and long sleeves, which are required for temple entry, and took off my shoes at the door and wandered past golden Buddhas and indescribably magnificent design schemes and intricate paintings. All this was built to honor an idea, a faith, a king, I thought. All religious sites are altars to the invisible — altars to a belief, the most powerful thing of all.

After wandering the temples and the palace grounds, I went into a museum which was mercifully air conditioned. Once I was inside, it started pouring outside again. A synchronicity, perhaps — but if it had rained while I was outside that would have been a lesson as well, all part of the story. Belief is everything, I believe more and more.

(Above me squirrels or birds scuffle from the roof and the sun is sinking and I’m hungry again. My body is always hungry, tired, or hot, or near-fainting, or something else, it seems, but just like Violet from Fourth Wing, I will persist).

Inside I took some time to think about my future. I had come on this trip, in addition to experience all the wonder, seeking some clarity on my future, and in that moment the answer simply fell into my lap. I had always known it, of course. I will forget it over and over again. 

It’s a bit difficult to explain in a few paragraphs, but I know it has to do with songwriting, storytelling, the earth, and internal and collective healing — more on that later, I am sure.

Anyways, around me rain poured down as I walked past sacred buddhas, jewels, magnificent crystals, dragons with their jaws agape. Every time I walked around I saw something different, something new, something I would have missed had the rain not kept me there.

We are perpetually immersed in so much richness; we miss the majority of it. It’s good to look up and see it sometime.

The rain stopped, as it always does. A few sights later, I headed to my next destination — Wat Pho, another temple complex.

Once again I was not prepared for how stunning this place was. Rich foliage studded with strange statues punctuated glittering temple after glittering temple; buddhas stared from every bejeweled stone face. 

I was in awe, but was also hot — so very hot — so I sat down in a smaller temple further from the action to take a breather.

The moment I touched the floor, my mind began to feel incredibly clear. Then the insights started coming.

I am not going to say I gleaned anything directly from the Buddha or the temple. I’m still figuring out my relationship to Buddhism currently and I am also wondering if that’s a faith meant for me. I am considering how to be a white person who has no actual blood tie to this spiritual tradition or place. I am traveling in the lineage of many westerners who have come seeking spiritual enlightenment in the east, a harmful and dangerous pattern that I am well aware of and do not seek to replicate, though I inevitably will in some form. 

But in the temple all I know is my mind was clear and I was suddenly in touch with some rich inner voice I hadn’t heard in a very long time or maybe ever — a deep, surprisingly masculine voice that was offering realization after realization. 

After leaving the temple I wrote them down in my notes app, reminding myself to get a notebook so it didn’t look like I was wrapped up on my phone at a sacred site.

Anyways, I’ll just write some of them here.

Many are cliches or well-worn wisdoms, but in the hot shadows of the temple it felt like I knew them for the first time. There is an intellectual dimension to understanding reality, but then there is also a physical dimension, a way of knowing that stretches deeper than thought.

Your desire to be great is stopping you from being good.

So obvious! So true! My fear of not being great has been stopping me from trying at all. Classic perfectionism. 

Dissolving binaries does not mean getting rid of the binaries; it means seeing and accepting both sides.

(More on this later, I am sure).

You have been so busy searching for the mother you have forgotten the father. (I see this as an indication that I’ve been seeking and channeling the divine feminine/goddess energies/moon energies for so many years, but I’ve neglected the other side, the more masculine kind of strength, the root, the drive, the energy I also need to move forward).

You have forgotten the strength that lives inside you. (I think I’ve been acting like a bit of a pushover for too long, going with the flow, doing what’s easiest instead of taking control of my own life and choices, a pattern I hope ends here, on this trip).

Then, I thought of the Third Noble Truth but felt like I knew it for the first time: Abandon all desire not to suffer and you will find peace. (First is life is suffering, as you know; the second is that suffering has a cause, and the cause is desire).

The messages flowed through my mind effortlessly. That’s what meeting with Source Energy, or whatever you want to call it, tends to feel like. Source Energy is also where I get my best songs and art, and where we all get our life forces, I think. It’s a pool of eternal love, endlessly creative and giving; I think some people call it God, though I’ve never liked to put a face or, God forbid, a pronoun to it.

After finally leaving the temple I walked around the grounds for a bit, thinking about the paths that had led me here, realizing very clearly that there was actually a very good reason I stayed in New York due to my knee injury for a year. I had so much to process in the past year, both relationship-wise and also in general; I had awful trust issues from my time in California and right after; my heart was locked so tight.

I’m not saying I healed everything this year, but I did heal a lot, I did so much therapy and so many rituals and circles and spoke so much about my feelings and saw how others were going through the same thing, and I felt my heart open so very slowly but surely across these past months, and now I am blessed on this trip to be able to travel with a more open heart, to not be running in search of healing but rather to be more present and open with what is. 

In another temple, this one with a buddha whose head was framed with dragons, I heard a different voice. This voice, this temple, felt more full of laughter. If the first had felt compassionate and wise, this was a trickster, joking and telling me not to take things so seriously.

I tried asking the universe something I’d really like to know, and here’s how it went:

Me: Where should I go next in my life?

Higher Self:

You ask where you should move?

As if I’d tell you where to go next!

No matter where you go, there you are, and there I am!

Laugh!

This is a dance

It is important to move

It is not that serious.

The dragons danced above me.

But there’s so much suffering, I countered, thinking of my grandma, who is going through unbearable pain right now due to various illnesses.

The voice in my head, or the Buddha, or my higher self or whoever it was had one response.

Let love in and it will bloom through sorrow like flowers out of concrete.

A cryptic response, but if it were an obvious cliche, I’d probably disregard it instead of thinking about it and blogging about it. (The same could be said of a lot of esoteric spiritual wisdom, I think).

Outside my toe was bleeding for some reason. Mis y body always keeping me grounded, keeping me from floating away into the ether as I probably honestly would if I didn’t have this fleshy body keeping me itchy, bloody, and covered in sweat all of the time. (I love you, body; I am truly so grateful for you).

After staunching the blood I walked around in the gardens for a bit and wrote some more notes down.

You are strong. You can take care of the little child in you, which is also allowed to exist and which is also God. That’s parroted right from a Thich Nacht Hahn book I was reading on the plane, as well as every inner child meditation I’ve ever listened to.

God is behind everyone’s eyes. Everyone is God. The pigeon the flowers, the woman washing dishes in the runoff from the pipes, you, me.

It felt so nice to have so much clarity. Such a relief after so much of the pointless self-loathing bullshit that’s been going through my head for so long.

It’s nice to remember. But what will you do when you forget?

I was about to leave, but a little voice inside me told me to keep going. (When traveling I always try to listen to this little voice; it tends to know the best spots). 

(This is my Ink Roads Travel Tip Number One: Always, within reason, listen to your intuition’s little voice, especially when it tells you to go somewhere).

I found another temple, this one white on the outside, scarlet inside and unbelievably gorgeous.

I sat down, trying to detect the energy of the space, but it was silent.

So just let it be silent, I thought.

The moment I settled into the silence I felt a spurt of pain rip through my body, like a red dragon from Fourth Wing. 

(What I read really saturates my mind when I’m traveling! So here is Ink Roads Travel Tip Number Two: Always be reading, and be sure to bring a book wherever you go — I recommend an ereader for practicality’s sake — but remember that whatever you read will become a fundamental part of your trip. I’d recommend having a few engaging fiction reads as well as a couple more spiritual or meditative texts to keep you company on your travels. When in doubt about what to read, see Travel Tip Number One).

I tried to just sit with the pain.

You thought it would be easy? I thought to myself. Did you think all of the suffering would suddenly go away? Poof, like the wind?

Look at the pain with compassion.

Watch it whirl around like a firecracker.

Understand this pain is also mirrored by those around you.

And it is also in the universe’s nature.

Who would seek enlightenment, God, source or love if there wasn’t suffering?

Then I thought about something weird that crosses my mind now and then, and which I’m now going to make cross yours if you’ve read this far (hi, Mom!): 

Is God ok? If we are all suffering so much, and if we are all reflections of God, then maybe God/Source is also really not okay?

But is asking that akin to doubt or lack of faith? Is asking that insulting to Source? responded one of the grey-haired philosophers who sits at a round table in my brain. (There’s a whole circle of them and they often debate; I first identified them as a child and they scared me; I realized later that what I was doing was just Internal Family Systems therapy, where you see different parts of your psyche as different people and try to have compassion for all of them without letting the chaotic ones run the ship).

I dropped that thread.

I tried to find silence.

There was the pain again.

This will be painful. Welcome the pain with love, said the voice/I thought. 

Leaving the temple, I thought about how attached I tend to be to my thoughts, and how I often use intellectualization to numb actual feelings. It’s a defense mechanism. Realizing All These Profound Things matters little if I don’t internalize them — if I don’t know them in my body, in the place beyond words.

In the stillness, beyond thoughts, you will find pain, and dragons that have long been ignored. 

This is the path, the real one. Not just through mind, but through spirit and body.

This is the path. The silence, and in the dragons in the silence, which of course are not there, and neither is anything, but everything, but you will never understand this until you can know it without words.

That’s the last of my notes app scribblings from Wat Pho. Keep in mind I had barely eaten and was near heat-stroke at this point. But I hear that is sometimes how the mystics prefer it, which honestly makes sense.

Anyways, I followed my intuition down some weird, random paths, doubling back a few times and getting lost in the glittering labyrinth of temples and shrines until I found an exit.

At that very moment, a girl came up to me and asked if I was going to the temple across the river, which I indeed was. I was happy to see her and also relieved she was the first person I’d spoken to in more than forty-eight hours.

And so ended my temporarily lucid state, and then I was a 26-year-old woman again, snapping photos on boats as we crossed the river, talking about relationships, and drinking in the truly awe-inspiring, brain-shattering beauty of the third temple of the day. This one was called Wat Arun, or Temple of the Dawn, and it was indeed a perfect spot to watch the sunset.

We later had dinner and I was in bed early though, as always, stayed up too late.

The next morning I went to the wrong destination (I don’t want to talk about it) — but eventually made it to the train to Ayutthaya.