From the North to the South

Aside from taking in all the musical offerings of Chiang Mai we also took the opportunity to learn a bit of Thai cooking and take part in a vipasana meditation…well…that’s what it was supposed to be; what it actually was we’re still not quite sure. We went to a small introduction to learn about vipassana so that later that evening we could join in this weekly ritual. What we saw when we got there was nothing at all what we thought it would be. Normally you might think of meditation as a subdued process of turning inward to find a place of quiet emptiness within yourself. What we witnessed was a room full of what seemed to be hysterical people yelling, crying, speaking in tongues, shaking and spitting into bowls while gurus walked from person to person waiving their hands, yelling some gibberish and placing their hands upon the hysterical people’s heads. We believed the intention of this process was to bring the individual to a state of utter exhaustion by chanting Tamma Tamma Tamma (which means ‘Karma’ in Thai) over and over again, louder and louder until the person reaches their limit and breaks down on a physical and emotional level. Thus arriving at a place of peacefulness similar to tensing your whole body by squeezing all of your muscles and then letting go to enter a state of deep relaxation. It wasn’t quite the experience we were expecting but an experience it certainly was.
CLICK HERE to view some footage from that evening

When it came time to leave Chaing Mai it felt like we just barely managed to finish up all our loose ends and make it onto the bus which would take us 12 hours back to Bangkok. From there it would be off to the islands of southern Thailand, where we could find a beach bungalow and settle into a groove of working on all of the musical ideas we had been coming up with over the course of our trip thus far.