Thailand

February of 2007

          During the flight back from Kuala Lumpur in late November (2006), I had found it curious that the sheng canopy over Malaysia had already connected with that over Taiwan. I wondered how far it extended east, and when I learned that Eddie (from Japan) would be in Thailand during February, I asked him if he would like to join me in an excursion through that country. Not only was he willing, but he had a good Thai friend Eck, with a small Suzuki 4-wheel drive, who would go with us.
          On the 14th of February I landed in Bangkok. Ed met me at the airport, and we took the bus into the old city, where he had engaged a room for the night. Next morning I was surprised to find that the sheng canopy was visible to the east. This meant that it was not only over part of Thailand, but likely over Vietnam and Cambodia as well, if as likely, it were the extension of the one formed last November.
          Ed had some business in town, but we opened one latent vortex in Bangkok, and that near the original temple of the city, the famed Wat Po . It was a bit tricky opening it without being seen, but Ed acted as scout while I did the spade work.

          Ed’s Thai partner Eck lived up north, so that night we took a sleeper on an old train up to Chiang Mai. On the way, we had gradually moved closer to the sheng canopy , and upon arrival, the edge lacked but little of being directly overhead. We arrived in the city in the morning and, from there, we rode in a pickup bed to the town where Eck lives, and he picked us up with his Suzuki 4-wheeler.
          Eck’s wife fixed us lunch, after which we headed west over the mountains to a town where Ed and Eck have a building project. On the pass, we found two more latent vortices, one close enough to open. It must have been a strong one, for when I awoke the next morning, I found that the canopy had spread past us to the west, at least as far as Burma or, as it is now called, Mianmar.

          Next day we spent making a supply of TBs.

I had brought some with me, but not enough for the extent of country we planned to cover. In the evening we drove to a small village

in the neighboring mountains of the Karen hill people (who had been there before the Thais). Ed and Eck knew a shaman there, whom they wanted to visit. On the way we stopped to climb and gift one special hill, where lived a quite strong sheng being.

When we arrived at the village, we were invited into the house of the shaman’s family. Later we visited the neighboring village where his mother lived, and then came back to eat there. It was a quite good, but simple meal, consisting of fresh and lightly cooked green vegetables grown nearby, with rice.
          That night on the drive down the mountain, the sky was perhaps the clearest I have ever seen it. When we got out of the car part way down, the stars were so many, that they literally looked as though they formed clouds.

          For about half of the distance south toward Bangkok, the sheng canopy was present as far as the eye could see in all directions; and so for some time we could drive without interruption. We started late in the afternoon, but this day we could travel at night. Nearly as I can recall, we stopped to sleep somewhere south of Sukhothai.
          Sometime in the morning of the next day, we drove out from under the sheng canopy , and so began once more to hunt vortices: that day they were on the tops of hills.

It was somewhere northeast of Bangkok where we slept that night.

          Ekk wanted to attend a family reunion down in the South, which was scheduled for the following night, so we decided to drive straight though that day, and leave the vortices over that part of our route for the return trip. We reached Ekk’s home town (east of Krabi on the map) shortly before dark. Many of his extended family were there, and a good time seemed to be had by all.
          Thailand is mostly Buddhist, albeit with a sizable Muslim population in the south. But, as in China and Japan, the people still honor the traditional folk gods and spirits. Outside in the yard at Ekk’s brother’s place, where the reunion was held, were three shrines: one to the spirit protecting the house, one to the spirit protecting the immediate area, and one to the spirit protecting the greater area around the farm. One of Ekk’s sisters is a medium, and several spirits visited that night, speaking through her. The most impressive of the bunch was the sheng being whose job is managing a nearby mountain: what the Chinese call a "tu di shen". These matters are not strictly germane to the subject of this thread, but one thing the sheng being said that night bears reporting, because it agrees with what I have heard elsewhere, and because, if true, implies that present times, and how we act in these times, are of more importance that usual. The sheng being spoke in Thai through the sister, and so I did not directly understand, but Ekk translated. He said that more and more sheng beings are showing up, but that equally more and more sha beings are coming too; that there is a struggle going on between the two groups as part of a more general struggle; and it is not clear which group will win.

          I neglected to mention earlier that there are two CBs up in northern Thailand, courtesy of Ed. There had been three, but we dismantled one of them and took it with us down south. It now stands among the rubber trees behind Ekk’s younger brother’s house.

          Next day we went vortex hunting, opening one on the beach of the Gulf of Thailand to the east, and one on a mountain not far from Ekk’s place, on which there was a large television transmission tower. The sheng canopy over Malaysia, which Hari and I had worked on last November, stretched now up to us from the south, except on the far west. So on the following day we headed south and west to the city of Kantang, where one of Ekk’s sisters lived.
          Perhaps the strongest vortex we found on the trip was located on an island west of Kantang. Ekk’s brother-in-law showed us where we could hire a boat, and for about $25 the skipper took us out to the island. He said he would only wait for an hour, and the vortex was up on a hill, so we had to hurry to get up and back in time. Fortunately most of the hill was covered with a rubber plantation, and so we did not have to bushwhack. On the way out to the island we were welcomed by several sylphs (it is remarkable how these creatures seem to know what one is intending to do).

As the boat motored back away from the island, the swirling sheng qi coming up from the vortex was already palpable.

          By the next morning, the positive canopy extended as far as I could feel, in every direction. We headed back north that morning, reaching sufficient vortices much difficulty. Some, which we neglected, would have required more than our mountain climbing skills.

One particulary interesting vortex, was at the base of an old tree, on the coast where the big sunami of 2004 had hit. There was a mangrove forest on a nearby island which had provided enough resistance to the wave that the tree had not been destroyed. The tree was on a boat charter site. The owner, like nearly everyone in the tourist trade in the area, had lost much business in the aftermath of the tsunami. He was happy to have us bury our TBs on the place, hoping they would bring good luck to his business.

He had been present when the big wave had hit, and described it to us. He said that before it appeared, water from the bay was sucked out into the ocean (which had never happened in his experience before), and that before he saw the wave, he heard a sound like that which a large animal makes coming through the forest.

          In two days time we arrived back in Bangkok. When we had passed by the city driving south, the country to the west was not covered by the sheng canopy . Now the sky was covered in all directions, so far as I could feel.
          Next morning (February 28, 2007) my plane left Bangkok at 6:45AM in clear weather. I had a window seat, the more easy to observe. The flight was east over Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos toward the Philippine Islands, and thence north over Taiwan to Tokyo. There was nowhere during that first leg of my return home where there was not sheng canopy overhead, and it stretched as far as the eye could see. This means that most of southeast Asia is covered, and likely the east coast of China up to Beijing. At this time, I do not know how far inland into China it extended. The coverage from Tokyo to Seattle appeared much as it had been on my trip home last November.

          The photographs in this post are all due to Ed, for whose generous help in every facet of the trip I am sincerely grateful. I must also thank Ekk, for use of his vehicle and kind help.