Mar 2009

In three days in Ayutthaya and Sukhothai I visited twenty-odd wats and three museums. Both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Ayutthaya is nearer Bangkok (80 km or so north; two hours by commuter train; 15 baht) and I visited it first, but I’ll mention Sukhothai first because its golden age preceded that of Ayutthaya. Sukhothai is a long way further north of Ayutthaya, at 17º N 100º E.

In the ninth and tenth centuries the Khmer kingdom, which took over the area now corresponding to Cambodia in the first half of the ninth century, pushed into Vietnam, Laos, China and northeast Thailand. Their culture was Hindu, although the Khmer leaders converted to Mahayana Buddhism in the late twelfth century. Their religious architecture therefore includes the usual Hindu pantheon, particularly Shiva and Vishnu. Like the Chams in Vietnam, they often worshipped Shiva in his impersonal form as a linga. The most notable architectural style is the prang, a tower shaped like a cob of corn. Again like the Chams, and like the later kings of Ayutthaya, the king was a remote, all-powerful devaraja, a god-king, a living embodiment of Shiva.

During the period when northeast Thailand was within the mandala of Angkor, ethnic Tais pushed down in large numbers from southern China into what are now Thailand and Laos. The land became known as ‘Syam’.

Jayavarman VII reigned from 1181 to 1219, and he spent so much on temples and monks that the economy “overreached itself” (I’m not sure what this means exactly; it wouldn’t have been a property bubble, since these wats would not have been traded. There was cash money, but the economy was not highly monetised. More likely, therefore, that the state’s use of the main factor of production – by corvée - crowded out other activities, particularly those that required a food surplus, such as military defence). Shortly afterwards the empire began to fall apart. The collapse was finally provoked by the invasion by Kublai Khan’s Mongol hordes between 1215 and 1250. The fact that there was bubonic plague at the time may also have contributed, as it did to the decline of the Roman Empire – for which see the entertaining Justinian’s Flea.

The Mongol invasion also forced the Thais to unite among themselves to face the threat. At this time Sukhothai, which is now in the middle of Thailand, was the main Khmer outpost in the region. Two Thai princes joined up to force the weakened Khmers out of Sukhothai. One of the princes became king Intradit and founded a dynasty known as Phra Ruang. At first it was as local as the Capet kingdom in the Île de France, but it expanded under the reign of Intradit’s youngest son, Ramkhamhaeng, ‘Rama the bold’. Ramkhamhaeng expanded south along the Chao Praya valley and, mainly by marrying his children wisely, gained supremacy over most of Thailand, and parts of Laos and Burma.

Several momentous events occurred in the reign of Ramkhamhaeng. The earliest example of Thai script is on a stone from Sukhothai dating from 1292. In it Ramkhamhaeng records how he came to the throne, what a wonderful ruler he is and what he has done. “Sukhothai is ranked in the top six places in the world for ease of doing business”, he says. "The green goods sector is the sixth largest in the world. We have one of the lowest rates of work-related deaths and injuries in the known world." Or something.

He also records that in 1283 he invented a script for the Thai language. This was not the first writing to be used in Thailand, as Pallava script is found from the seventh to the ninth centuries, Khmer script from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, and Mon from the eleventh century to the present day. But it was the first Thai writing, Lai Sue Thai, and in 1992 its 700th anniversary was celebrated with great ceremony.

The early Sukhothai script had 39 consonants, 20 vowels and two accent signs. Unlike Pallava and Khmer, and modern Thai, the vowels were incorporated into the main line of consonants, rather than floating over or under. The letters and words are therefore easier to distinguish than in modern Thai, which has 44 consonants, 26 vowels and four accent signs. The Sukhothai stone is so important that it is on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, whatever that is.

Ramkhamhaeng also started building temples, and he espoused Theravada Buddhism instead of the Mahayana Buddhism then practised by the Khmer leaders. Ninety per cent of the population of Thailand are now Theravada Buddhists. In 1284 he ordered the building of a chedi at Si Satchanala. The wats at Lopburi, Sukhothai and Si Satchanala date from this time until the fifteenth century.

Sukhothai – and therefore Thai - Buddhism is syncretic. It encompasses large parts of Hinduism. So not only were the Khmer temples in Sukhothai converted to Buddhist use, but the Hindu icons remained. Even now, Thais worship Hindu gods, especially Vishnu (including his seventh incarnation, Rama), Shiva and Ganesh; the Ramayana was reworked into the Ramakien, as I have mentioned before; and garudas and nagas are seen all over temples in Thailand.

Ramkhamhaeng possessed great influence, but the alliance fell apart soon after his death, and by 1320 Sukhothai was back to being a merely local kingdom. It became a mere province of the kingdom of Ayutthaya in 1438, six years after Ayutthaya had captured Angkor.

After the Burmese invasion of 1766-7 Sukhothai was abandoned, and the local administrative centre moved at some unknown date to a new town 12 km to the east, known, confusingly, as Sukhothai. That is where most of the tourists stay and it is a nice place, full of Italian tourists.

Sukhothai also gives its name to an architectural and artistic style. Sukhothai Buddhas have oval, androgynous faces, relatively slim bodies and long fingers - about four feet long in this case.

His robes cling diaphanously. And the Buddha has a serene, not to say positively happy, expression. The Buddha may have achieved absolute renunciation of earthly desires, but he seems to be chuffed to bits about it.

Before the development of figurative images of the Buddha, in the early centuries of the common era, the Buddha was indicated by symbols: the Dhammachakra (Wheel of Law), umbrellas and footprints. The Buddha’s footprint, the Buddhapada, is found in India and Sri Lanka from the second century BC, and the tradition of footprints began in Thailand by the seventh century AD. There are quite a few around Sukhothai. Here is one at Wat Tra Phang Thong, which dates from 1359 AD.

Although seated Buddha images are more common, the image for which Sukhothai is known the walking Buddha in the round, which depicts the Buddha returning from preaching to his mother in Tāvatiṃsa heaven. He has one foot forward and one hand raised in the policeman’s ‘stop’ position. These Buddhas are known from the 13th/14th centuries onwards.

In a day in Sukhothai I rented a bike and visited eight wats and two museums.

Within the precincts of the town is the Heritage Site, which has been extensively reconstructed. Much of the restored Sukothai is on the water, and there are bright flowers everywhere: it is reminiscent of Augusta National, and indeed it could be a grand golf course, but for all the temples.

Wat Phra Mahathat is a wonderful, very extensive site. It was the royal temple of Sukhothai, and it grew to be so big that it had one bot, ten viharns, eight mondops and over 200 chedis. All of these were made of red brick or laterite, and covered in stucco.

At the centre, and still-standing, is a late Sukhothai innovation, the lotus-bud chedi.

On each side of the main chedi are two very large walking Buddhas.

Also visiting the wat was a party of a hundred monks from Sri Lanka. Thailand got much of its Theravada tradition and practice from Sri Lanka, and the religious links are close. The monks were toting cameras and buying souvenirs like any other tourist.

They were due to go to Bangkok for a ceremony at the royal palace over New Year. I chatted to one of them – it was nice to meet a Buddhist monk who could speak English fluently – and he gave me his card and we agreed to go and watch some cricket in Colombo one day.

Wat Si Sawai dates originally from the twelfth centuries, predating the Sukhothai kingdom. It has three Khmer prangs built in Lopburi style, with low bases and decorated with stucco, decorated with nagas and garudas.

The prangs are made of brick with stucco, and the pillars are of laterite. There were images of Hari-Hara (a combination of Vishnu and Shiva) and of Vishnu as a linga. The later Buddhists simply built a viharn next to the prangs and turned it into a Buddhist temple. Little remains of the viharn.

Wat Traphang Ngoen is another lotus bud chedi, with four niches for Buddhas.

There is a viharn, and a nearby bot surrounded by water.

Wat Sa Si is a brick bell-shaped chedi in Sri Lankan style.

Wat Sorasak is a heavily restored bell-shaped chedi. Its base is surrounded by elephant buttresses.

Wat Phra Phai Luang was, like Wat Si Sawai, a thirteenth-century Hindu prasad later converted into a Buddhist temple. It was probably the centre of the old Khmer town. Again there used to be three prangs, of which only one remains.

At Wat Si Chum an enormous square mandapa almost entirely surrounds a large seated Buddha, again in smiley Sukhothai style, late thirteenth century.

The mandapa has a staircase, which allows one to climb to the level of the Buddha’s face. In principle the staircase could be used to project a voice from the level of the Buddha’s head down to worshippers below. Indeed, there is a tradition that this Buddha speaks to certain privileged people. One of the kings of Ayutthaya, King Naresuan, assembled his troops here before marching on Sawankhalok in the mid-fifteenth century, and he probably got the Buddha to do his talking.

At Living Colours in Bunaken I lay in my bright red hammock and read. As the sun began to set the little cicak geckoes would arrive to feed and have fun.

Very often, one gecko would approach another, bite it on the neck or on the top of the head, and hold on while the other wriggled like a rugby league player under the tackle. When released the victim would run away. Perhaps it is about establishing the dominance hierarchy, although you would think their brains are too small to store this information. Maybe they were just fighting for land: the prime real estate is near the light, where the food delivers itself.

An extract from the diary:

I’ve had to evict all kinds of beetles, bugs and ants from my sleeping chamber, together with a little green spider; there are lots of beetles and grasshoppers on the paths, and I have in turn been evicted from my hammock by a mean-looking shiny black spider.

There are 18 geckoes now on the verandah ceiling above me. Moths are a favourite, easy prey. I just saw a gecko take on a moth at least half its size.

It caught it all right, by the tail, but it took it ten minutes to gulp it down whole.

The beetles are a harder prey, and katydids are too large altogether.

And when you go to the bathroom there is a six inch centipede greeting you. It’s like Naked Lunch.

In spite of the number of pictures on this blog, I am not very fond at all of most insects, and I am frightened of spiders.

Once I moved down the path to Lorenso’s it got worse. I found a dying cockroach on the bed, surrounded by hungry ants. I got the sheets changed. It was the sort of place where you needed to check every item of clothing before putting it on.

I lounged in the hammock reading Touching the Void, and occasionally a squidgy gecko turd would land on me. They’re surprisingly large.

From the diary, again:

There is a mantis in my room. It looks a lot like a stick insect, only with longer forelimbs, and it moves as slowly. It has established itself on my towel. This is unfortunate, as I do not mind the mantis at all, and would like to hang up my towel to keep it from the rat that lives between the walls and the rafters.

And a glow worm has just flown through the room and disappeared through the rafters! This is constantly entertaining but it is difficult to sleep.

The mantis seems to be reading my copy of The Economist. I have picked up my towel and flicked it a couple of times but the mantis has hung grimly on.

The only way I can persuade the mantis to go anywhere is by offering it The Economist and then ferrying it on that. It is a discerning mantis.

Then came the cockroaches. I had been hearing rustling from more than one direction, and assumed it was the rats. I had packed everything away tightly, having seen a rat walking on the top of the walls. But a cockroach flew into my hair and I realised the rustling was cockroaches.

I have killed three but there are at least two more wandering the walls. I have sprayed insect killer everywhere, but of course it has had no effect on the roaches.

Sadly, although I avoided the mantis, it was affected by the insecticide. It lay still and arched its back for a long time. Eventually I had to put it out of its misery.

Well, the funeral is over and the job interviews are completed, so I am free to try to have some more fun again. I definitely have a job to go to, I just don't know where yet, and this means that my expenditure is rising in response to the increase in expected net wealth. Arguably, having the prospect of a job without in fact doing any work is as good as it gets.

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It is not often that Ambon is in the news, but a new species of frogfish has recently been discovered there. It has white stripes on a caramel background. It is shaped like other frogfish – round, with hand-shaped pectoral fins – but it bounces around the bottom of the sea like a rubber ball. There is a video here.

Of Ambon, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote

Passing up the harbour, in appearance like a fine river, the clearness of the water afforded me one of the most astonishing and beautiful sights I have ever beheld. The bottom was absolutely hidden by a continuous series of corals, sponges, actinic, and other marine productions of magnificent dimensions, varied forms, and brilliant colours. The depth varied from about twenty to fifty feet, and the bottom was very uneven, rocks and chasms and little hills and valleys, offering a variety of stations for the growth of these animal forests. In and out among them, moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusa floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty and interest. For once, the reality exceeded the most glowing accounts I had ever read of the wonders of a coral sea. There is perhaps no spot in the world richer in marine productions, corals, shells and fishes, than the harbour of Amboyna.

Sadly, this is no longer true of Ambon Bay. It is a filthy, rubbish-strewn environment, full of plastic. On the Pelni ferry from Banda we had watched from the café at the stern as tons of refuse were thrown over the side during the twelve-hour journey. Put your rubbish in a bin and the bin is thrown over the side. Much of the rubbish floats. Ambon Bay is a narrow, dactylic inlet, and the refuse accumulates. So the coral has mostly gone. But it is a very good muck dive spot.

As I mentioned before, it was Pieter Bleeker who collected nearly 800 species of fish from the bay, and Wallace met him. (He refers to him as Dr Blecker.)

I went on Sunday, by invitation, to see a collection of shells and fish made by a gentleman of Amboyna. The fishes are perhaps unrivalled for variety and beauty by those of any one spot on the earth. The celebrated Dutch ichthyologist, Dr. Blecker, has given a catalogue of seven hundred and eighty species found at Amboyna, a number almost equal to those of all the seas and rivers of Europe. A large proportion of them are of the most brilliant colours, being marked with bands and spots of the purest yellows, reds, and blues; while their forms present all that strange and endless variety so characteristic of the inhabitants of the ocean. The shells are also very numerous, and comprise a number of the finest species in the world. The Mactras and Ostreas in particular struck me by the variety and beauty of their colours. Shells have long been an object of traffic in Amboyna; many of the natives get their living by collecting and cleaning them, and almost every visitor takes away a small collection. The result is that many of the commoner-sorts have lost all value in the eyes of the amateur, numbers of the handsome but very common cones, cowries, and olives sold in the streets of London for a penny each, being natives of the distant isle of Amboyna, where they cannot be bought so cheaply. The fishes in the collection were all well preserved in clear spirit in hundreds of glass jars, and the shells were arranged in large shallow pith boxes lined with paper, every specimen being fastened down with thread. I roughly estimated that there were nearly a thousand different kinds of shells, and perhaps ten thousand specimens, while the collection of Amboyna fishes was nearly perfect.

The problem with preserving fish - or any animal - in spirits is that the colours are largely lost. The reef fish in spirit bottles on display at the Cambridge Museum of Zoology are unrecognisable from colour alone, and the same is true of the snakes on display at the Snake Museum in Bangkok.

Wallace found the extraordinary, iridescent blue Papilio ulysses to be “absolutely common” in Ambon. No longer, although you do see this butterfly pinned and mounted everywhere in SE Asia. It, the Priam birdwing, Ornithoptera priamus, and the Atlas moth are the centrepieces of many of these mosaics.

Wallace also picked up specimens of the crimson lory, Eos rubra, and of “the fine racquet-tailed kingfisher of Amboyna, Tanysiptera nais, one of the most singular and beautiful of that beautiful family.” The latter was a new species.

The main town of the island, Kota Ambon, is a rather ugly place and I never learned to like it.

Apparently it used to be much cleaner and friendlier place, but the internecine violence at the turn of the millennium scarred the fabric and the psyche.

I was happy to get out of town and head a few kilometres south to Maluku Divers. There is good reef diving and muck diving in Ambon. As for the reef diving, it is worth paying an extra $20 to dive at Pulau Tiga, where there are some thrilling dives with significant currents, more interesting diving than the reefs on the south coast. And the muck diving in Ambon Bay is absolutely excellent. Great detail follows.

Hukurila Cave. This would have been a very nice dive if the dive guide had taken his time in the cave. But I was not very happy with my equipment – couldn’t keep the regulator in my mouth and was overweighted – and we went deeper than I am comfortable with, particularly without a dive computer – to 35 metres. Saw a big green turtle and some snapper, a couple of nudibranchs, lots of filefish and tobies, some two-tone dartfish, juvenile red-finned rainbow wrasse, and big spiny lobster, but fish not really present in the vast quantities of Manado or the Bandas.

Tanjung Hukurila. A small lionfish, lots of small shrimp (mainly banded), several nudis including a pair of Phyllidia ocellata and a tiny black and green Nembrotha. Quite a lot of red-tooth triggerfish sleeping in niches. A hawksbill, resting, up close. Very big for a hawksbill. Some very big anemonefish. Nce colourful coral. Visibility ordinary. Two-tone dartfish and fire dartfish. A big scorpionfish.

Hata Ala, Pulau Tiga. A thrilling dive. Down to the depths (34 m) with a strong current, hold on and watch. Lots of pelagics: mainly dogtooth tuna, wahoo, and a big Napoleon up close. Lots of emperor angelfish. They also see reef sharks and barracuda here, but not today. Visibility adequate. Swimming, against and across the current, into the shallows: saw a very small yellow moray with orange nostrils, a purple scorpionfish, millions of red-tooth triggerfish (the lunate tails are crossed, and they stick out of the holes in which they sleep).

Pulai Lain. Headed down to a cliff edge at 30m and held on against the current. Another great spot. Watched big fish playing like birds in the current. Two Napoleons, one clown triggerfish, lots of black surgeonfish and silver unicornfish. A big scorpionfish and a couple of cowries right behind the spot where I hung on. One of the Napoleons seemed to be sheepdogging a school of surgeonfish. Lots of great soft coral in the shallows, and blue and gold angelfish.

Rhino City, Ambon Bay. An amazing dive, to 25 m, some currents. Right at the beginning, a kind of silvery-coloured lacy scorpionfish, Rhinopias aphanes, with eyes like mirrors. A fingered dragonet, Dactylopus dactylopus. Blue-lined tang. Big black stonefish. Purple scorpionfish. Yellow/orange leaf scorpionfish. A school of ten squid, changing colours. A little seamoth, probably Eurypegasus draconis. Lots of hinge-beak shrimp and banded boxer shrimp. Two ribbon eels, one in the middle of changing sex (they change from male to female). A huge, probably a pregnant map pufferfish, just sitting there. Lots of little pufferfish and burrfish. A juvenile angelfish, possibly blue-ringed. Juvenile dragonet, tiny, less than 1 cm, white with a red patch. Several tiny yellow boxfish, about 1 cm across. A very long black pipefish. A giant frogfish, black, with a tiny white lure. Thornyback cowfish. A big solar-powered nudibranch. Two Jorunna rubescens nudis, one chasing the other, its mating organs already out. A long dark red nudi, Ceratosoma gracillinum. A Nembrotha rutilans, white with brown patches. And two other types of nudi.

Laha, Ambon Bay. Current, poor visibility at 15 m or so. A sea horse, dark brown, unresponsive. Three lionfish, of two different kinds, one a black version of common lionfish, the other smaller, possibly zebra lionfish. 1 small purple scorpionfish. An urchin crab, Zebrida adamsii, living on a fire urchin. Lots of fire urchins, which are very attractive. Two ribbon eels. A small moray, apparently guarded by a flutemouth. An octopus in a niche. A flounder. Three big fish, perhaps Spanish mackerel. A school of razorfish with a cornetfish in the middle. A thorny-back cowfish with a cornetfish swimming permanently above it. Lots of burrfish. Squat shrimp. And seven species of nudibranch: possibly scrolled Hypselodoris, H. infucata, Flabellina bicolor, Favorinus pacificus, Phyllodesmium longicirrum, Ceratosoma miamiranum, and Mexicilromis.