Alex Mitchell - The 13th Tablet

All in all, Mina found the museum’s collection fascinating but the descriptions, when there were any, amounted to no more than one-line legends. The city was utterly turned towards tourism. It was colourful and noisy, with gift shops, travel agencies and hotels. At every street corner, touts invited visitors and tourists to enter their establishments right off the street, whether to massage parlours or restaurants. In comparison, the national museum, at least in its presentation, felt almost like a cultural understatement. They sat at a table in the museum’s inner courtyard and ordered a cool drink. Mina was finding it difficult to adapt to the weather, and felt more at ease indoors. It wasn’t so much the temperature that bothered her but the tropical climate, humidity mingled with heat and the lack of any breeze. Her clothes stuck to her body and she wasn’t used to sweating this much. One person’s discomfort, however, is another’s pleasure as it obviously appealed to Jack from the way he was checking out her glistening cleavage.

‘It’s a strange place, Jack. I know I haven’t been here for more than a few hours, and call me callous, but I don’t feel that people here are in touch with their past.’

‘I’m not sure anyone really is, but it’s funny you should say that. Most of Thailand has embraced capitalism and Western culture to such an extent that I’ve often had the same feeling. Someone once said to me that “the gods have left Thailand.”’

‘I know they’re Buddhist, but what does it represent here?’ asked Mina.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack in turn.

‘As far as I understand it, Buddhism came from India, and was a monastic order. In India, lay people weren’t Buddhists. How does it work in Thailand?

‘You must have seen the beads and necklaces some men wear around their necks.’

‘Yes, I noticed that the pendant was often the same, sort of triangular in shape.’

‘It’s a small image of a monk or a saintly man,’ said Jack, ‘while Buddhism is still monastic in its general form, it has little to do with what went on in India centuries before. A large section of the population is made up of monks. Many young men go to a monastery for a few years and eventually leave to get jobs.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mina.

‘Well, it’s the best way for young people who can’t afford to attend proper schools to get an education, free of charge. Some enter the orders for a year or two mainly to learn English.’

‘So what’s the main religion?’

‘Well, apart from those who are Christian and Muslim, especially in the South of the country, you could say they worship their ancestors and I think that Buddhist monks sometimes officiate at weddings, but that’s a recent change. You often find them at funerals.’

‘You seem to know a lot about Thailand.’

‘I had a good friend here. He taught me a lot about the country.’

‘Had?’ Mina asked, not believing her luck as Jack unveiled another layer of his mysterious past.

‘Hon died five years ago.’

‘I’m very sorry Jack.’

‘It’s OK. It’s been a long time.’

‘How did he die?’ she asked.

‘Quite tragic really. He was a doctor in Chiang-Mai. He went to a remote village to train local nurses and was bitten by a very poisonous snake.’

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking you about this?’

‘Of course not Mina,’ he said, kissing her tenderly. ‘So, have you seen enough of the museum?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, jokingly.

‘Hungry?’

‘Famished.’

‘Good,’ he replied, ‘I know just the place to go.’

Jack and Mina were sipping their double espressos after a sophisticated meal at the Oriental Hotel. The exquisite outdoor terrace restaurant overlooked the Chao Phraya River. They both gazed for a while at the boats sailing past and tried not to laugh too much at the wealthy wives of western expats sitting at nearby tables, pouting disdainfully at everyone. They walked through the older parts of the Hotel, admiring the sepia photographs of the Hotel’s rich and famous guests since Queen Victoria’s time, and then into the foyer where they left the hotel and hailed a taxi.

‘So where are we going next, Monsieur Jack?’

‘My favourite,’ he glanced at her mischievously, ‘a massage.’

‘I thought massages were kind of seedy in these parts?’ she said, somewhat taken aback.

Jack laughed, ‘They can be… but not where I’m taking you.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Surprise,’ he said, and stopped any further questions with a kiss.

Before long, they stood in front of the Grand Palace, in Bangkok’s historic centre. Here was the beating heart of the city. Most monks lived nearby, within walking distance of this, the greatest of all the shrines and glittering temples in the City of Angels. Mina gazed with awe at the temples, or wats as the Thai called them, constructed with millions of small pieces of coloured glass and ceramic, and spectacular gilt roofs. There were many temples but the one that struck her the most was Wat Pho , or the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. It was the largest temple in the city and was famed for its gigantic gilt Buddha, which was over forty metres long. Even the statue’s feet were more than three meters in size and its soles were covered with intricate decorations in mother-of-pearl. What surprised Mina most was the sound of money tinkling as pilgrims and tourists donated coins to the priests so as to gain merit from the Buddha.

‘So where’s the spa? I thought we were going to have a massage?’ asked Mina, jokingly.

‘Ah. Women, you lose all patience from the moment you hear of a good pampering.’

‘I don’t see you complaining,’ said Mina.

‘True. Follow me.’

After a short walk through the temple complex, Jack suddenly stopped in his tracks, ‘Voila.’

Obviously a great many visitors to the Wat Pho complex came for an invigorating massage rather than for religious zeal. Jack paid out two hundred bahts for each of them and they entered the real world of Thai massage, an odd mixture of yogic postures, deep muscle massage and body pressure points which the practitioners pressed on painfully hard with flat wooden sticks. Relaxing into the massage, Mina let her thoughts roam freely and through a curious association of ideas, started thinking about time-travel. They had lost a day, travelling to Thailand, although the actual journey had not lasted much more than half that time. She had the strange sensation of being a thought away from something important that she should remember. It was just out of her grasp. Trying to chase it down would never work, so she let go of her thoughts and focussed on enjoying the massage fully.

Mina and Jack walked hand in hand on the river bank until they reached a pier, where a tiny booth offered boat tours exploring Bangkok’s backwaters. Jack bought a two-hour tour. The boat moored and Mina and Jack boarded, waiting in line behind other tourists to show their ticket. Only one traveller got on without paying his fare, a chubby monk in saffron-coloured robes. No-one seemed to mind, Mina guessed that in Thailand monks probably didn’t pay for public transport. He sat there, near the helm, his plump face looking out at the watery furrows on the boat’s flanks, as it sliced through the river. Mina was mesmerised by this overweight monk, holding his begging bowl tightly against his chest. Most monks woke up early in the morning and left their monasteries to beg for food from passers-by on the streets of Bangkok. This one had obviously been collecting money, as his begging bowl tinkled every time the boat swayed in the wash.

The riverside landscape was fascinating, with many of the houses perched on stilts. Families were going about their daily lives, far away from the bustle of the city’s tourist trade and big business skyscrapers. Stroking Mina’s hair distractedly, Jack couldn’t help thinking about the tablet and its meaning.