After a leisurely hour\u2019s walk from the train station, the temple came into view.<\/p>\n
Not as big as I\u2019d have expected the world\u2019s largest to be; but it\u2019s pretty together. More than its heft, however, I quite like the restraint shewn in the design of the exterior. I love to look at the big palaces of glitz sparkling in the noonday sun \u2013 sure, who doesn\u2019t? But it ain\u2019t the only<\/em> way to go, as we can see here. Rather lovely, too.<\/p>\n There\u2019re a bunch of copies of this explanation sign posted around the grounds. Quite the little cliffhanger, cutting off in mid-sentence as it does.<\/p>\n Just in case one can\u2019t find one\u2019s way, from two feet in front of the door, into and\/or out of the hall\u2026<\/p>\n The interior is as restrained as the exterior. Unfortunately, the stairs to get up to the upper levels were locked out.<\/p>\n Best part is actually the floor<\/em>, if you would believe it. It\u2019s all decorated out in an oceanic theme.<\/p>\n And if you was wondering, \u201cDude, that shit\u2019s nice and all. But in among all the elephant-fish and the tiger-fish the and buffalo fish; never could they find a spare bit of floor to lay down a god damned lotus-bearing merman?\u201d<\/p>\n Uh, yes, they could!<\/p>\n Chinese temple on the grounds also gots a great floor.<\/p>\n Pretty cool shrine in there, too.<\/p>\n The best sign in the temple \u2013 maybe in Thailand entire!:<\/p>\n I asked Rata what does the sign say? It\u2019s that the reader of the sign has reached the dead end of a dead-end street, and must be very stubborn\/stupid to have come all the way this far. As stupid as a buffalo, basically. Now Rata wants to get one of these signs to put up in the hostel.<\/p>\n From certain angles, the temple looks architecturally much like a magic kingdom.<\/p>\n Wandered around the grounds for a couple of hours, checking everything out. Was just getting ready to leave, and thought I\u2019d go over and look in that non-descript little shed over there. Figured it must be a food court; and being about lunch-hour, hoped there\u2019d be some weird eats on display.<\/p>\n Turned out to be not<\/em> a frickin\u2019 food court, but rather the site of the all-important Buddha \u2013 the one described in the sign! I\u2019d totally forgotten about that shit! There were so many pilgrims mobbing the scene that it was more difficult than not to get an unobstructed shot of him. But here he is; quite a nice likeness, I should certainly say.<\/p>\n Everybody and their brother was all hot-and-bothered to rub the little gold squares into Lord Buddha\u2019s person. The looks on their faces were that in so doing, they expected to hereafter be on the receiving end of most excellent luck. So they\u2019ve got that going for them.<\/p>\n Lo and behold (there\u2019s one in every crowd, ain\u2019t it?), one of the supporting Buddhae, up there on the dais, had got a gold square stuck into him like as though it were a freakin\u2019 booger <\/em>hanging down. Wasn\u2019t me! (Wish I\u2019d thought of it\u2026)<\/p>\n Oddest thing going on in there was that everybody \u2013 I mean everybody<\/em> \u2013 was offering up\u00a0 a basket of eggs.<\/p>\n I mean, in the abstract it\u2019s no more odd than offering flowers, or bananas, or oranges — or certainly bottled water with a straw in it. Just that I\u2019ve never before seen this particular offering. Huhn, I guess there must be a lot of brown-egg-bearing chickens (or ducks?) in Chachoengsao.<\/p>\n Anyhow, I arrived back to Bangkok in time for aerobics; so that was nice.<\/p>\n So, Saturday, as I mentioned before, I wanted to go up to this Durian orchard in Nakhon Nayok. I\u2019d told Dree, the Korean Durian-head, of my proposed mission; and himself and his three Chinese friends joined me as well.<\/p>\n We busted out of the hostel at 6:15 in the AM, and caught a cab up to Mo Chit bus terminal (the taxis here are quite inexpensive when shared between a few people). The trip up to Nakhon Nayok took a few hours. According to the outline Rata\u2019d secured, I was to moto-taxi it from the bus terminal up to \u201cDurian Temple\u201d.<\/p>\n As there were five of us and not one, now, we got a regular car-taxi; and I didn\u2019t have to set my fear of motorcycles against my obsession with Durian. Which event brought me peace of mind \u2013 but I guess I didn\u2019t, in the end, experience any kind of defining moment of personal growth. Looking deep into the core of one\u2019s being to see just what it\u2019s all worth, and all that. Oh, well; maybe next time.<\/p>\n \u201cDurian Temple\u201d is so-called because it\u2019s located up on \u201cDurian Mountain\u201d. The mountain is so-called\u2026well, I suppose<\/em> it must be because the area is too right for Durian trees. Anyway, what do you think? Durian Temple is pink? Yes, Bob: Durian Temple is pink!!<\/p>\n Very beautiful, too.<\/p>\n Put in a call to the farm; and after some issues with the language barrier, we finally worked out that a representative from the farm would come and pick us up at Durian Temple. Turned out, the representative was the farmer hisself!<\/p>\n So what was going on up there, there was an NGO whose charge is something to do with biodiversity, and it had set up this field trip to the farm (if you didn\u2019t read the article<\/a> I linked to before, in short: it\u2019s an organic farm begun about forty years ago, whose mission has been to preserve rare species of Durian). When we arrived, everybody was busy sampling the many different varieties of Durian grown on the farm.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the farmer carving up the Durian there (it was his now-deceased father what started the farm); girl on his immediate left is from Scotland. I think she must be some sort of bigwig in the organisation\u2019s structure. She was talking to us for a while, giving us the lowdown on the day\u2019s activities. Everybody was pretty astounded that we\u2019d just shown up, seemingly out of the blue, to chow down the Durian; and wanted to know how we even knew of the farm\u2019s existence<\/em>; let alone that we\u2019d come all the way from Bangkok to simply check it out.<\/p>\n Here are some of the fruits the farmer had lined up to let us try. The fucked-up part was that all the Durian had been frozen, because Thais love to eat their Durian cold. (Crazy mofos that they are.) Not that they were rock-solid by the time we were eating them; but they were plenty damned cold. Still awesome and all, don\u2019t get me wrong. But, shit\u2026<\/p>\n After the Durian tasting, the farm served lunch to everybody. We were invited to join in as well; but I had a walk around the orchard while they were doing.<\/p>\n Oh my god Durian! There\u2019re other fruits,\u00a0including pineapples, interspersed with the Durian trees.<\/p>\n Check all the sproutin\u2019 Durian seeds! Future Durian trees of tomorrow, yo.<\/p>\n After lunch, it was time to get down to brass tacks and open up the ol\u2019 pocketbooks. I wanted to purchase this torpedo-looking one; but wasn\u2019t permitted, as it had been brought out only for demonstration\u2019s purpose. I think they were worried it\u2019d be all suck-ass, as you can see that it\u2019s quite well advanced in its self-opening.<\/p>\n I bet it\u2019d have been great, but didn\u2019t press the issue none.<\/p>\n After this, the farmer had a discussion with the attendees, presumably to do with his methods and results and whatnot. The discussion was all in Thai, alas. Would really loved to have been privy to the proceedings\u2019 exchange. But, that\u2019s that; I don\u2019t speak Thai, so far as I\u2019m aware.<\/p>\n Dree asked me how we would be able to get back to the bus station. I proposed that we hitchhike; and Dree very happily told me that he loved the way I think (or words to that effect).<\/p>\n We wanted to get a group shot with the farmer, but were somewhat shy to interrupt the ongoing tete-a-tetes for such a touristic conceit. Instead, we finally decided to just say goodbye; at which point the farmer broke away from the discussion, and we were able to wrangle a few moments to get a shot.<\/p>\n We asked a few of his employees from which road to hitchhike to the bus station, and they told us to go out to the end of the driveway, then go right, right, and right again, and we\u2019d be on the main road back to town.<\/p>\n Just as we were setting off down the drive, bags of Durian (and in my case pineapple) in tow, we were stopped, and directed to enjoy a ride into town on the farm\u2019s behalf. We went in the farmer\u2019s truck, driven by one of his workers (I dunno, maybe it was even his son?). Here\u2019s one of the Chinamen, standing up behind the cab. Just tell me this guy ain\u2019t Livin\u2019 The Life, Man!<\/em>. (Or if you do<\/em> tell me that, you\u2019re a damned fool.)<\/p>\n We tried to pay our impromptu chauffeur, but he wouldn’t hear of\u00a0 it.<\/p>\n The bus to Bangkok was an hour late in arriving; but arrive it at last did. As we were boarding, the ticket-seller lady, who\u2019d come out from behind the booth to inform us that our bus had arrived (was pretty obvious already), grabbed my bags of fruit and went off, I assumed, to put it down in the coach\u2019s underneath storage. I watched her closely as she done so; and was horrified to witness her giving it to the driver of a second<\/em> bus which had pulled in after ours.<\/p>\n I heard her calling out \u201cMo Chit!\u201d while she was doing; but I didn\u2019t want to be separated from my premium-priced farm-fresh Durian, so made mad-motion to go out and apprehend her little operation before it\u2019d come to full (if one\u2019ll pardon the pun) fruition. But the bus started moving, and we were just out of there<\/em> before I even knew what was what.<\/p>\n So I spent a most<\/em> anxious couple of hours, seated next to a maniacal nasal-spray huffer, who eventually shot up at least twenty times between Nayok and Bangkok. (The Thais are so crazy with this frickin\u2019 nasal spray. I think it\u2019s just for kicks; to have a nice scent in their noses. But you see them walking all around town with these damned spray nozzles jammed up their friggin\u2019 nostrils. They\u2019re nuts!)<\/p>\n So we pulled into Bangkok, and exiting the bus, Dree noticed my Durianless hands, and made as though to remind me to go back to my seat and grab it. \u201cWhere is your Durian?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cFuckin\u2019, that lady took it from me!! I have to go find it!\u201d They had not had theirs (one large one to share among the four of them) taken from them.<\/p>\n I very animatedly sought out the porter to inquire the whereabouts of my Durian. He held up one finger to indicate it\u2019d be just a moment or two. \u201cNext bus.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNext bus?\u201d I happily executed a very heartfelt wai in his\u00a0 general direction, and began to try to explain to my colleagues what I knew (which was not much) about what had gone down, and what was still in future to<\/em> go down.<\/p>\n Every few minutes, we\u2019d look at the porter accusingly. \u201cNext bus,\u201d he always and ever smiled, holding aloft the one index finger. \u201cNext bus.\u201d<\/p>\n After about fifteen minutes\u2019 time, the porter motioned for all of us to get back onto our<\/em> bus; which was now of course fully empty, save for the driver, and this one lady dressed in civilian clothes, laughing her ass off at my plight.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d my companions asked, after boarding (this<\/em> time their Durian had been taken from them, and stored underneath).<\/p>\n \u201cHow the fuck would I know?? I don\u2019t speak Thai!\u201d<\/p>\n The porter used hand gestures to indicate that the Durian are too stinky, and thus the need to keep them locked up in quarantine. I asked why, though, did it have to be quarantined on the \u201cnext bus\u201d?<\/p>\n I think he thought I was talking about my friends’<\/em> Durian, not mine. And, anyway, he didn\u2019t even really speak English. So he just kept fanning his hand in front of his nose, to ward off the Durian\u2019s supposed evil stench.<\/p>\n I hoped they might be taking us to Ekkamai terminal, to meet with the other bus there. Ekkiamai\u2019s totally close to the hostel, so that would\u2019ve been just fine. But instead, they just drove us around to the other side of the terminal! We could\u2019ve walked in five minutes, but instead we drove, just the handful of us.<\/p>\n We followed the porter into the terminal\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026where he burst triumphantly into the carrier\u2019s control booth, calling out for the Durian.<\/p>\n Naturally, neither his brethren nor his sistren had the faintest clue what the fuck he was on about. After debriefing them, he left us, smiling all the while, assuring us that the Durian would soon be produced, and we would be on our collective way.<\/p>\n We stood there waiting, in front of the ticket window, for five minutes or so; when at last a couple of layabout employees of the carrier asked us what we wanted.<\/p>\n I cried out, \u201cI want my Durian!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere do you want to go?\u201d they asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to go anywhere! I want my Durian!!\u201d<\/p>\n Following some moments of perplexity, they asked us to go out in the lobby to sit down and wait.<\/p>\n After several minutes\u2019 waiting, I purposed to take matters into my own hands, and burst into the control booth myself, demanding to know the whereabouts of my Durian. After failing to communicate in mutually exclusive languages, the clerk typed into her translation engine that (as translated), \u201cThe Durian is yet to come.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long?\u201d I wanted to know. \u201cFive minutes?\u201d I wondered, holding up my five fingers.<\/p>\n The translation engine spat out: \u201cBetter yet, you will only have to wait up to one hour.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"sothon1\"](\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/sothon1_thumb.jpg\" "\\"sothon1\\"")
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