In the north of Malaysia, there is a little bit of Thailand. It's a complex historical and ethnic story, in which language, ethnicity, religion, and nationality don't make up one neat, unified bundle, but diverge into strings of anomalies.

At one temple, we chatted with a Thai-speaking Malaysian Buddhist monk, who had just gained a Master's degree in engineering at a university in the UK, was spending a few months in the monastery to regroup, as it were, and was then planning to head down to KL to look for a job. Borderlands hold many such fascinating stories.

It's all highly picturesque, of course. We went to Wat Maisuwankiri first, where there's a dragon-boat temple and the preserved body of a former abbot, which the monk assured us we could photograph. The next stop was Wat Pikulthong, with a lovely mosaic standing Buddha (and some totally sole-destroying hot tiling you have to cross to get to him). From there we went to Wat Matchinmaram, whose huge Buddha sits atop a lotus that's straight out of a fairy-tale, complete with cute little windows from which you expect elves to emerge. (The dark side of the fairy-tale scenario is represented by the scary pictures graphically depicting the future torments of the evildoers.) Finally, we visited Wat Phothivihan, where there is a reclining Buddha, a crumblingly picturesque side temple, and a glowing Dharma wheel. Drifting across the compound came a chant from the neighbouring mosque...

All these temples, with their blend of Theravada and Chinese iconography, their trees, their stray dogs, and their birdsong, were very atmospheric places, giving no hint of the nasty little struggle that rages just across the border in three of the southern provinces of Thailand. There, the strains produced by the same roll of the historical dice have converted themselves into a bout of violence that currently shows no sign of ending.

Pluralism -- rich, vibrant, and rewarding when it's working; hard to fix when it's not.