Unexpectations - Real Men Wear Saffron

I'm sitting at the train station in Chiang Mai and have an hour to kill before my train to Lampang, the first stop on my trip toward Bangkok and a flight to Singapore.

To my right is a huge parking lot and at the far end of it about 50 people sit on plastic chairs dressed in varying shades of red tee shirts listening to a radio broadcast of the UDD protests from Bangkok.

At my side on the table, a Chang beer costing 40 baht (about $1.30 US, train station prices be damned).

But I'm not writing this to talk to you about my immediate surroundings, or the 150 baht Thai massage I'm considering from the booth next to the restaurant. I want to talk to you about expectations. And monks.

The Rough Guide to Thailand says this about monks:

Monks come just beneath the monarchy in social hierarchy, and they too are addressed and discussed in a special language. If there's a monk around, he'll always get a seat on the bus, usually right at the back. Theoretically, monks are forbidden to have any close contact with women which means, as a female, you musn't sit or stand next to a monk, or even brush against his robes; if it's essential to pass him something, put the object down so that he can then pick it up - never hand it over directly. Nuns, however, get treated like ordinary women.

Guidebooks are a crapshoot but also play this odd role in setting expectations with unfamiliar places. In the US, monks aren't generally easy to spot (they really do wear saffron robes in Thailand) and regardless I didn't have any direct experience to reconcile this against.

So you might imagine my initial surprise when I saw monks:

• Shopping at the gaudy tourist market on Khao San road
• Congregated at the UDD protests near Bangkok's Democracy Monument
• Riding motorbikes
• Texting on cellphones
• Goofing around with their 13-year-old lay friends at Wat Phrathat
  

Okay, not exactly the kind of behavior that causes fathers to lock up their daughters, but still completely unexpected to me.

The last location is a Buddhist temple high in the hills of Doi Suthep national park. On a motorbike, it's a 30-minute ride out of the inner walled city. As you motor along a four-lane road to the northeast, car dealerships, chain stores and shopping malls give way to the Chiang Mai University campus with an energy that only thousands of students can provide.

Soon, the zoo also passes into your mirror and you begin the climb inside the park. The road is steep and carrying two people even my 125cc motorbike has to think-it-can to make some of the tight uphill curves.

Legend has it that sacred white elephant made a similar climb up Doi Suthep with a Buddhist relic on its back. Almost to the top, it trumpeted three times before dying. And on the site of its death Wat Phrathat was erected.

After climbing the 300 dragon-flanked steps from the parking lot to the Wat I didn't feel the need to trumpet before keeling over, but I certainly had more appreciation for the burden of our coarse-skinned friend.

Inside the main temple hall a chorus of monks bellowed with throaty chants. The sound was piped through loudspeakers in the complex such that it took some looking to find the source. There, along with 20 or so orange robed monks were 4 Western students in simple white garments.

The sun was 30 minutes from setting and even with the haze of motorbike exhaust and burning crop fields, the view over the Chiang Mai valley was sublime.

I'm functionally aetheistic, but I can think of no other way to describe the site and its inhabitants other than "holy."

I put my shoes back on and made my way to the temple exit behind a group of 13-year-old boys who took great pleasure in ringing a series of large bronze bells despite a posted sign forbidding it.

These were kids screwing around. Being loud in a temple. Shadowboxing. And having a great time of it. Their playfulness was as infectious as the tranquility of the monks.

Soon they were joined by three other kids the same age. Identical in every respect save the wearing of saffron robes. Their friends were monks, and more than happy to join in the roughhousing.

Chiang Mai valley at night.

I wondered aloud if perhaps the monastery functions as a sort of Buddhist "military school." A place where frustrated parents threaten to send their children if they don't shape up. But that quickly gave way to a realization.

Monks are people.

As simple as that statement is, it had been strangely elusive.

I'm thankful for the many ways travel exposes our shared humanity.