8. Chiang Mai Flower Festival

Dear friends and family -

http://www.artterracotta.com

This past week was filled with a lot of activity, so this will be more of a picture blog. 

I’ll start with some terra cotta art. I stumbled into this wonderful studio that went on and on with original and replica carved art - thousand of pieces and statues lying everywhere. It made me want a home and a bunch of money to buy many of the wonderful statues. The woman who ran the studio took me in the back where two men carve the statues by hand. Once they are kiln fired they are antiqued to look ancient - or left out in the yard for years for the moss cover. Most of the inner walls of the two huge city lots were covered with carvings - as seen in the picture on the left. It's human size.   Click to enlarge image.

Saturday morning I was sitting at my hotel room desk when I heard all this racket. I opened the front window and looked down on a full-on Rose Parade. I went and joined the crowd. The twenty or so floats were covered with amazing works of flower art--there was marching bands with baton twirling babes--the whole nine yards. Great fun.

On the street right below my hotel window

The floats kept coming

One colorful flower float

      I wrote before that I live in a hotel that overlooks the old city of Chiang Mai, which is one and one-half miles square with around 60,000 people and tons of tourists - and is surround by a moat. The inner road is one-way and the outer road is also one-way in the opposite direction. The inner road across from my hotel is usually pretty quite--there aren’t any hotels there and a pretty big city park. Last Thursday through Sunday they closed the inner road and transformed the area into the yearly Chiang Mai Flower festival. Suddenly my quiet neighborhood turned into a venders city - all sorts of food and nik-naks and tuk-tuks and thousands of people. And of course lots of wonderful plants, exotic orchids, ancient bonsai and a myriad of colorful flowers.

Tao Gardens - from dining area

Tao Gardens - Waterfall

On Sunday I went with some friends out to the country to look at houses and land. We spent some time at the Tao Gardens. It’s a wonderful paradise retreat center. Unfortunately the prices are US resort - very expensive for me. One week there of room and activities would cost the same as four months of rent at my hotel. But it was a nice place to visit and I look forward to spending more time in that area.  You can learn more about Tao Gardens and Mantak Chia by going to www. tao-garden.com  The web page gives a panorama of the area - about ten miles NE of old Chiang Mai.

terra cotta art

Before I end this blog I want to include a video. I've been talking about food and diet the past few blogs - and heaven knows I've had a hell of a life-time trying to figure it all out. I remember my mother saying, "Eat your food for the starving children in China." That never made any sense to me—like if I filled my belly some kid on the other side of the world would somehow also be full. Now it makes sense. We are all inter-connected.

Now its more about what I don't eat. Choosing to eat that one McDonalds cheeseburger has rippling effects throughout the world - defoliating the rain forest, displacing indigenous tribes, factory farms and methane, so on and so on. After my last stomach infection I'm again reflecting on the temple which is my body - what exactly am I serving to the god of this temple? And is this food honoring the farmers and animals and plants?  This video is worth watching:

www.NonviolenceUnited.org/veganvideo.html 

With continued love — David Dakan Allison

Grandfather bonsai