Buckle your seatbelt ...

Buckle your seatbelt because not only did I get a brand new blog, I have filled my first post with PHOTOS! YAY! But since I am still figuring this thing out, everything is backwards chronologically, so you should start at the bottom and scroll up if you want to do it my way. Either way, do enjoy!
love,
Your favorite Bangkok Journaliste!

One of the buddhas we chilled out in front of.

Flowers on a bodhi tree. That's the kind of tree Buddha sat underneath when he was enlightened. On our last stop of our Ayutthaya tour, I wanted to go to a functioning, non-sacked temple, so we did, and it has this rare tree in its yard, all the way from India. Later we got sprinkled with holy water from an important monk. Hanging out inside temples is really chill and relaxing. I feel like I could sit there all day ... it's quiet, there's plenty to watch since people are in and out all day praying and what have you and there's always a fan going.

I like this photo -- Nancy took it of course. The ruined temple complex that contains Khun Poke's phallic image. Note that even the headless Buddhas get swathed in saffron robes on important religious holidays. Buddha's image is seriously worshipped here, and you might wonder where all the heads went. Did the Burmese take them after they sacked Ayutthaya and went back home? Nope. You can find these Buddhas' heads in museums and in private collections across Europe and the U.S.!

Me with the Buddha head in the tree. Now THAT'S a spirit tree! You're supposed to squat because your head can't be above his.

Khun Poke drawing something phallic in the sand. It's supposed to represent something important in the sacked temple complex we are about to tour, but I don't remember what. I just thought it was funny.

Our guide, Khun Poke (short for Poker ... Khun is like "Mr" or "Ms" and used with everyone except close friends). He's been taking people around Ayutthaya for like, a 100 years. Note his lucky mole hairs swaying in the wind. This guy is seriously lucky.

Don't climb the Buddha statues! You'll piss people off.

Me, Chris and Miah looking down scornfully at you, the viewer.

Row of Buddhas surrounded by destroyed things. A reoccurring theme in Ayutthaya and a big part of the uneasiness between Thais and Burmese.

Me, Nancy, Chris and Miah in front of a reclining Buddha that I guess survived the destruction of the temple around it! Note he is dressed up, the Buddha that is. About a week or so ago there was a religious festival, so all the Buddhas we saw in Ayuttaya, whether new or old, sacked or whole, were draped in saffron robes. It was kind of cool.

For a small donation you can purchase saffron robes for the giant Buddha. You then kneel in front and hand it to this guy who passes it up to these other guys, whose sole job in life consists of draping this giant Buddha statue with saffron robes all day and then stripping him back down later on. See that monk in the bottom right hand corner laughing at everyone?

Buddhas with breasts. Khun Poke, our guide, informed us that the Buddha was a Real Man and Not Gay when I asked why a bunch of the Buddha statues in this one temple looked like women. I was like, yeah Khun Poke, if you have to deny it ...

A Buddha a day. According to Khun Poke, our Ayutthaya guide, every day of the week comes with a corresponding Buddha pose. The day you were born on is your pose (it comes with a color too, I think mine was blue). I'm that tall one in the middle with its hands clasped at its chest. I think that's Friday. We're at stop one in Ayutthaya, a functioning temple -- or wat -- before we started out tour of old, ruined things.

Me and Nancy in front of the Giant Grumpy Buddha.

Another shot of the spirit tree. People also scratch their bark for lottery numbers. I am unclear how this works exactly, but you always see little scratches and patches peeled away on these trees.

A spirit tree. Before there was Buddhism, there was animism. After Buddhism, there is animism. People don't stress here about practicing their multiple religions and beliefs. From what I understand, all living things (and maybe inanimate objects as well) possess spirits, and really big trees are supposed to possess really big spirits, so people honor them by wrapping lots of fun and colorful scarves around them ... note the barbie doll strapped down near the top. Spirits like toys too and other fun things to play with. Most Thai households and businesses have a spirit house out front -- like a little doll house -- that is supposed to house and honor the land's spirits. People burn incense, say hello, give food and decorate it with flowers and toys to keep the spirits happy and occupied. We don't like to think about what happens when spirits are unhappy and bored, do we?

A temple we stopped at on the way to Ayutthaya by boat -- I had to pee. It's a two and a half hour ride by very bumpy speed boat so everyone had to pee, in fact. This bit is part of a much larger complex. Your head should always be lower than a Buddha's statue, so they made this one at the top of like 100 stairs so there wouldn't be any problems.

Rama the 8th Bridge. Or is it Rama the 4th? I can never frickin' remember. It's one bridge up from our bridge. Nancy took this as we sailed underneath.

Us on the boat trip to Ayuttaya! Note my appropriately conservative attire -- I knew we were on our way to see temples and monks, so I dressed accordingly. Nancy, on the otherhand, looks like a floozy.

Our friends Chris and Miah on the boat trip to Ayutthaya, the former capital of Thailand. It got sacked by the Burmese like 400 years ago (can you tell I am totally making up these numbers as I go along?) and today you can spend hours upon hours looking at identically ruined temples.

This is from the little island of Ko Kret (Ko means island) north of Bangkok in the Chao Praya river. It didn't used to be an island, but people got tired of taking the long way around this annoying peninsula on their way up north, so they made it an island like 300 years ago or something. Anyway, there's this old pottery making community that makes their home there and we visited them as part of this educational river boat tour for science teachers that Nancy went on to plug her trade (see puppet photo below) and I tagged along. Here is a photo of them making the clay ... it's revolting and yet mesmerising at the same time. I won't describe all the things it reminds me of although I really would like to. There's a list.

I don't really remember much else from the island except for the Crazy Cat Lady who lives in a hovel and who pushed this premature kitten in our faces as we walked by and cackled and gibbered at us. A beautiful, cultural moment.

I wasn't actually here for this photo an I don't know any of the people in it, but it's one of my favorites of all time. I think it's a perfect illustration of life as a permanent foreigner. Nancy took it while she was on this trip up north in Isaan -- she was interviewing kids who receive a scholarship through this foundation she's been volunteering with called the International Support Group Foundation -- or something equally un-snappy. They need a marketing department. Everyone's heard of Save the Children.

Nancy talking to the hand. Which happens to be operating a homemade hedgehog puppet. Homemade meaning it's made out of my hairbrush.

Me learning to cook vegetarian Thai food at a class in Bangkok. Mai Kay Dee's, look her up if you're ever in town, she's got two restaurants as well. Note how intent and earnest I look. Of course, I never cooked any of it again, but Nancy is becoming a mistress of curry. Next to me is Petra, a classmate's of Nancy from her Thai language class (yeah, Nancy can speak the language and cook the food, bleh bleh bleh).

Death Boat. This is in Ban Nam Khem, the fishing village that got dealt the deadliest blow by the tsunami in Thailand. There are two giant boats washed permanently ashore in town, and this is the one that killed a bunch of people. The other one saved a bunch of people as it came plowing through. I forget why. Actually, come to think of it, this might be the one that saved a bunch of people. Oh dear. This is why I write everything down when I'm reporting.

Our new doggie.

Here is one of the daughters, Joann, with a neighbor kid. They are on the ground floor of their Knockdown, the bit under the stilts I guess.

While I was down in the tsunami-affected areas for a reporting trip last August (that's when Nancy and I took our Phuket Island Big Gay Boat Tour on my day off) I dragged Nancy to a fishing village called Ban Nam Khem in Phang Nga Province, which was hit hardest by the tsunami. The fishing village lost about 1,300 people (official Thai citizens not including the uncounted Burmese migrant workers) a fourth of its population and the army was quick to build an emergency camp called "The Knockdowns," hundreds of temporary two-room houses on stilts -- yup, you guessed it, two families to a house. Anyway, we met this American family who live and work in the camp as volunteer English and art teachers for the school, which was being rebuilt at the time, so it mostly meant them teaching under a roof with no walls to classes of 50 plus kids who just lost a lot. The family itself was fascinating: they are Bruderhoffs, an offshoot of the Mennonites, and when we showed up on a brutally hot summer afternoon they were turned out in bonnets (well the mom was) long sleeved shirts and long skirts (although, come to think of it, the dad didn't wear a skirt either). It's dad, mom and three teenaged daughters and they get BOTH rooms of their knockdown to themselves.

Anyway, this is a drawing one of their kids made in art class. They have walls of them.

I had this really original idea for a photo -- what if we hold the camera up and take a picture of us together! We are joyful and in love, sigh.

My favorite photo of Nancy of all time. She, of course, hates it. Behind her are boats that belong to the Sea Gypsies. No, these are not imaginary people. I think their official name is the Morgan and I'm not sure of much else, but from what I understand they make their living as nomads of the sea and don't take part in civilian Thai life. Everyone says they are desperately poor and their kids don't go to school. They were either decimated by the tsunami waves or escaped unscathed because they sensed the wave's approach. It depends on who you talk to. I just like to say "sea gypsies" as much as possible myself.

Yeah, life is sweet in Thailand. This is one of many beauteous scenes from our Phuket Gay Island Tour.

Ta Daaaa! And they got the boobs to look so real!

Little gay boys on the beach. This is from our cruise through the leetle islands of Phuket last August (see my previous posting about it). These are some of the Screamers who I refer to.

Banana roti! Condensed milk sugar blast goodness! Yum ... It's like a sugar burrito. Our Mexicans are their Indians.

People often ask me if Thai food is too spicy.

Me riding a bike, how riveting. This was the afternoon leg of our Bangkok bike tour ... we're actually in the suburbs of Bangkok right now. Not quite Levittown, eh? Those raised walkways were a bitch to navigate, let me tell you. Yes, I fell off once. No one was surprised.

This is part of a Bangkok bike tour we took last August ... Nancy is now teaching English to the guides. You many not know it, but we are actually kneeling and shaking our fortune sticks before the shriveled up corpse of a dead monk who is on eternal display in a glass box at this neighborhood temple. It was totally gross and I got mad when Nancy insisted on taking a photo of the poor man.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Bone -- I mean Stone! Stone!