They May Be Worth a Thousand Words But...

I love taking photos of Bangkok to show people I love what I see that keeps me in this city, but putting them on this blog is a neverending pain in the very lower back. Once I've managed to get a few of them here, I feel so frustrated and annoyed that the writing portion of the blog gets short shrift.

So I've found another spot to post photos and that is where they will be from now on--on the photo portion of MSN's former hotmail. This blog will revert to words only once more, and if there's anybody who wants a link to the photos I will be happy to add them to my list of people I notify when new pictures go up--just send me an email.

There are some pictures that never make it on to my camera. I was spellbound by the white-garbed nuns whom I saw gliding silently through the trees at Ajahn Chah's forest temple, Wat Nong Pa Phong. If I ever make a movie, I would film the memory that I have of them.

That is a spot that had no human sound and would be otherworldly except for the crows of some very vociferous roosters bringing it back to the dailiness of ordinary life. The buildings are simple, and unintrusive except for the stupa that holds Ajahn Chah's ashes, which is gigantic and elaborate and golden--and some distance away from the temple. I think if he sees it now, it makes him shake his head and laugh. He was a man with no pretensions, who had all of his teeth extracted when the pain from them began to intrude into his meditation. When people seemed to hold him in undue reverence, he would remove his dentures. A giant golden stupa is the last place in the world where his spirit would linger.

I like to think that his spirit might have been around at another point when I had no camera. It was in Paxse, in the old French villa-turned-hotel that I stayed in. I looked in the kitchen as I was leaving after breakfast and the resident dog was trotting proudly toward the door with a large slab of butter clutched between her jaws. When I laughed, one of the hotel staff rushed over, rescued the butter, and put it back on the table. The dog looked at me as though I was first cousin to Benedict Arnold, and I ate my morning baguette with jam but no butter for the rest of my time at the Hotel SalaChampa.

My Favorite New Year--On Its Way

I love Chinese New Year and the neighborhoods that celebrate it--which in Bangkok is everywhere--but especially in the old section around Yaowarat, which is Chinatown.

Winter in a New Year

I know that this post will receive scant sympathy from my family in the interior of Alaska where it's hovering around -50F or in the Northwest where it's either fiercely snowing or disastrously flooding, but I am cold--in Bangkok, in the tropics, mere inches away from the equator. And in other parts of the Kingdom, people are dying of hypothermia.

This is the coldest winter that Thailand has seen in ten years. I've lived in places that have taught me the difference between being chilled and being truly cold, and my mind tells me that I'm only chilly but my body frequently responds to that with goosebumps. When I go to bed at night, I'm clad in a nightgown, two cotton tshirts, and socks, swaddled tightly in a sheet and a blanket, and I still wake up to moments of feeling uncomfortable. I think of people in this country who live in the mountains, in houses that are built for heat, and I shudder. I remember the woman I saw in the market at Ubon Ratchathanee who was knitting sweaters at her clothing stall and I wish I had bought one.

We'll all be sweltering in this country soon enough and I know in April I'll be waking in the night, in heat that is so profound that I'll get up to take a cold shower and going back to bed without toweling away the dampness. But somehow that is a friendly, cheerful sensation while being cold feels lonely and very sad.

To warm myself, I think about my recent trip to Laos, where I fell completely in love with Paxse and Champasak--a part of the world that is uninhabited enough to remind me of Alaska but a warm version of the frozen North...come and see...

Blue Christmas (Tree)

It's made of over 50,000 used CDs--I want one!

People Who Take Pictures

They're as much fun to watch as what they're taking pictures of, don't you think?

Christmas Can Be Fun

I wish I could show you the blaze of lights on and around MBK Center--it is gorgeous and fun and exactly like Christmas meets the Fourth of July meets Mardi Gras. This is a pale rendition of what is there--plus no live music and food and big TV screens augmenting it all--you'll just have to take my word for it.

And the new Ong Bak is proof that Tony Jaa should not attempt to write and direct his martial arts opuses (opi?) but it's fun anyway. Check it out when it comes your way--but don't watch it at home--it needs a theater and popcorn!

Taking to the Streets

If I spend too much time in my apartment, crouched over my laptop, working with people in the States and Canada, I begin to feel fragmented and lonely, wondering where I really am. 

My apartment is Western enough in its appearance that it could be in Seattle, and my soi is quiet enough during the day that I could be on the moon. (At night, when the little street urchins come out to play, it's quite another story. I leave my windows open to hear their exuberant shouts, and to absorb some of their joy.)

My attention is completely gobbled up by news and emails and web content from the other side of the globe, and my thoughts rest there as well. When I go out to get food, I blink like a dazed mole, stripped of any sense of place, and I begin to yearn for the company of friends.

My best female friend Usa is in Sydney until April, my best male friend Rodney is in Idaho until the end of this month,  my two friends Mickey and Banana, who were always at their restaurant for a drink and a chat, now live in Pranburi. A woman who was becoming a good shopping/lunch/conversation friend was called by a family emergency to London until February.

When I lived in Bangkok before, my life was one big classroom, which means I was always on stage and always talking with people. Now my life is one big computer screen.

Unless I pull myself away from it--this is an essential survival skill, I've discovered--turning off my laptop, leaving my neighborhood, getting on a bus, and finding new neighborhoods or new things in old neighborhoods. 

Riding a bus puts you in a community that the faster, more efficient subway and skytrain do not. Bus riders are all in it together--the hygienic, rapid transit capsules provide privacy bubbles for every passenger. You see and hear people behave on the skytrain and subway as though they were in their living rooms. On the bus, people are in a new, temporary village--presided over by the conductress, headed by the bus driver.  And for the moment, all passengers live together.

On a bus, there is contact, fleeting, but very real, and the view from its windows provides ever-changing entertainment. The best buses take me to a destination I hadn't anticipated, the "mystery buses" that seem to change routes on the whim of the driver, although it's actually a result of my poor reading skills, or the ones I've chosen to ride to the end of the line.

It's a bargain--community, exploration, and therapy--all for around thirty cents US. I can't do it every day of course--I have work to do, appointments to keep--but every three days or so, my prescription for disorientation and missing my friends and family is to take two buses and keep my eyes open.

Graffiti, Anyone?

Or perhaps a dog sleeping in the street?

Night Light

Night comes fast here--one minute the sky's pink and violet, then the light switches off. (Don't forget to click on these to get a larger image, and the ones in the tis the season post too. Makes a difference in what you see.)

Tis the Season

I can't help it--it is so cool to finally be able to show people the city I live in with a teeny little unobtrusive camera. So here are some things I saw today...