Monks and modernity in Chiangmai

Why the sight of monks texting, or using bluetooths or some other form of mass technology always seems, if not incongruous, at least noteworthy, I don’t exactly know.  Probably because of the juxtaposition of ancient (monks) with modern (cell phones, bluetooths, etc.).  Monks use tuk tuks, of course, a form of cultural custom and mechanical [...]

Tuk tuks and sticky rice

Out we head from Kanchanaburi, leaving this solid, hardworking little city, my grandfather’s grave and the Kwai River behind for now, setting a course for the Gulf of Siam (sounds so much more exotic than the Gulf of Thailand, doesn’t it?).
It proves another good test of our traveling bones.

We leave our hotel — the Noble [...]

Worries

On Koh Tao, still among the less heavily touristed of Thailand’s deservedly famous islands, alongside the development evident everywhere — of almost entirely guesthouses, resorts and other facilities to serve short-stay tourists — there is what seems to the casual eye palpable worry that a line is being crossed beyond which this gorgeous little island [...]

Spirits in the house

Spirit houses are found on nearly every property, shrines to spirits residing there past, present and future, so far as I understand them. This one was in a vacant lot in Kanchanaburi and I wasn’t sure if it remained from a prior construction or was part of a future project.
On a bus ride [...]

Slow train, take it easy

I thought this about captured a lot of how Kanchanaburi, away from the tourists, on slow day at the train station when sheep grazed across the tracks, felt like to us:

Graveside

I visited my grandfather Alistair William Hay’s grave today for the first time. It seems somehow auspicious that the visit falls on the 20th anniversary of the day I quit drinking and got sober. Maybe I would have visited otherwise, though that’s unlikely given where I was headed, but even if [...]

“Monk” with an angle

We made our way to Wat Po, one of the most important temples in Bangkok and home of an astonishing reclining Buddha about 100 foot long.  The Wat is a mind boggling compound of towering chedis — built to  hold relics of the Buddha — and other temple buildings from the 15th Century with [...]

Monk(s) of the day

I spend far too much trying to capture the perfect shot of a monk.  It’s silly, I suppose, but really they are very visually striking elements of life here (and in Laos and Cambodia), at first because of their robes, but then beyond that because of their ubiquity and so, by definition, they way they [...]

Chiangmai scenes

I haven’t written anything about our time in Thailand and Chiangmai because I’ve been trying to catch up with Vietnam and Laos — let alone Cambodia, which because I couldn’t help perceiving and, therefore, largely experiencing  it as a country or incredible wounds, I’ve had a difficult time writing about in depth yet.  But it’s safe [...]

Symbols of the facade

One of the interesting things about being in Vietnam and Laos was that they are communist — with single political parties and governments, especially Laos’ that brook no multiparty advocacy — but that otherwise they are places where social and particularly governmental ideology have, like China, been abandoned for the ideology of the marketplace.  A Wikipedia [...]