Cliché: a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.
When I travel, I like to scratch under the surface of a place, so I try to avoid the clichés for which it is known - the less likely it is that a place is featured on Trip Advisor, the happier I am. So what better way to go off the beaten track than to accept Artemano’s invitation to spend a week with them in the north of Thailand, learning where their furniture comes from and how it’s made?
I packed my camera and every lens I own, my computer, suntan lotions with enough SPF to turn me into an honorary albino, and off I flew. And flew. And flew some more. Jet lag seemed a small price to pay to learn how Artemano finds, chooses, designs and creates the furniture we love in one of the most beautiful countries in South East Asia.
I arrived yesterday, cross-eyed with fatigue, and was welcomed by Bai - Artemano’s Thai broker. She offered to show me the sights of Chiang Mai before the rest of the team arrives, so I spent today enjoying almost every stereotypical pleasure that Thailand has to offer. Just for today, I am that cliché: a true tourist, and my pictures feature exactly what you would expect to see in Thailand:
All photos credit @conteska
The lotus flower. Our hotel is full of them. They spread wide open in the early morning, and close tightly during the heat of the day to protect themselves from the 35c temperatures.
I learned that the lotus flower is one of the best-known symbols of the Buddhist faith - a metaphor for the progress of the soul. It is rooted in mud (materialism), the stem grows through water (our experiences), and the flower lives on or above the surface (enlightenment). Cliché or not, the lotus flower is now my favourite flower of all.
Buddhas. The temple we visited was filled with Buddhas in every possible pose: standing, sitting, reclining, praying Buddhas. It was blindingly beautiful but it bothered me that I was in a holy place, unable to understand the symbolism around me. Well it turns out that every pose of the Buddha has a meaning and represents a moment in his life - like a story told by statues. The first two statues above represent Contemplation Buddha, which signifies quiet determination and patient understanding.
This is the most common Buddha pose, and depicts Buddha in the moment of enlightenment. His right hand points down toward to earth to call up the Earth Goddess, so that he can share his enlightenment with the world, his left hand is in meditation.
The reclining Buddha depicts him in the last moments of life on earth, prior to his dying one last time before entering Nirvana (note the lotus flower offerings). It is said that he died from eating bad pork. Yes, I am serious.
Elephants. I rode an elephant for the first time in my life at the Maesa elephant camp – it was like riding a huge, slow-moving bucking bronco - minus the bucking.
Thailand was once home to over one hundred thousand elephants – today only five thousand remain, so many of these camps breed elephants and encourage tourism to pay for it all. So maybe it’s ok to show you this picture of an elephant painting a picture, much to the delight of the crowd. He even bowed at the end.
And here is one of the masterpieces:
(This confirms that even a pachyderm is a better artist than I am).
Today helped me to better understand the context in which Artemano works in Thailand. The clichés exist for a reason: they taught me that this is a culture in which nature and spirituality are present in every thing and every place, from business negotiations to relationships, from schooling to manufacturing. Bai’s son was taught meditation in school as of 3 years old – how can such things not influence Artemano’s way of working in Thailand? The respect that Thais have for the world around them and inside them adds to the magic Artemano brings home for us, and it influenced every interaction we would have in the days to come.
Sources: http://www.thebuddhagarden.com/blog/buddha-poses/
http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/symbols/lotus