Weekend at Chiangmai’s Burmese temple

^{7 November 2008}
 
Welcome to Wat Sai Moon Burmese temple, located at the southeast corner of busy Old Chiangmai, known as Chaeng Katam, well inside the moat.
 
Frankly, it wasn’t my idea to go there in the first place. After all, there are many Shan temples in Chiangmai: Papao, Kutao, Tha Kradard, Tiya Satharn and others. Moreover, I’m not a regular temple-goer, except on social occasions.
 
It was curiosity (and the thought that there should be a first time for things) that had led me there on Saturday, 1 November morning. A few days earlier, our office supervisor had handed me on invitation to the wat (temple) for the annual Kathin robe-offering ceremony. It came from a Shan lady who owns the Mee Mee Shan-Burmese restaurant at Ruamchoke market, on the way east to Maejo.
 
“Why Sai Moon, of all places?” I asked. “That was exactly the question I put out to her,” he said. “Her reply was that all the Shan temples in Chiangmai were already enjoying massive support from the Shans.”
 
The population of Chiangmai is 1.5 million, according to a report at a recent media meeting, which includes some 300,000 migrants from Burma, the overwhelming majority of them being Shans.
 
I was intrigued by her words enough to decide to come to the place and find out what I could about it. (I left it after an hour, somewhat disappointed, not because I hadn’t learned anything but only because I hadn’t learned enough. Unfortunately, I had another appointment.)
 
I was lucky to run into an old Burmese friend, U Tin Win, a soft-spoken man who used to be monk himself and making a living as a maw du (fortune teller) in Chiangmai. His reputation as a seer is such even one of the royal family members had consulted him, according to a mutual Shan friend.
 
The temple, he said, as we sat down to lunch together, was built by a Burmese monk, one of the former ministers serving under Thibaw, the last king of Burma who was deposed and deported to India in 1885.
 
“Aren’t there any prominent Burmese opposition leaders paying visits to the temple?” I asked him. To which he replied, much to my surprise, “Not to my knowledge.”
 
His reply was seconded by a monk who said he had graduated from the Rangoon university in 1983. “Maybe they think the temple is being supported by the regime?” I asked again. “That is absolutely not true,” said U Tin Win who maintained that the wat’s regular patrons were descendents of migrants from Burma. “Some of them had even joined the BIA (Burma Independence Army formed by Aung San on 26 December 1941 in Bangkok)”.
 
“Perhaps our illustrious leaders are not too keen about mingling with the grassroots,” suggested another Burmese friend also working in Chiangmai.
 
As I left the temple, I made a point to dig out further on the topic and write about it.
 
However, nearly a week after, my ambitious plan remains unrealized.
 
But I hope some of us (there are a lot of exiled reporters in Chiangmai) are going to visit the place and report on it. That would truly be a great service.