Tag: Culture
-
The Outing
The Outing Ten Lao ladies at a visit to Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang. Ten different dresses (sinhs) but all the same. Unity in diversity the Lao way. Photo of the week: Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang, Laos 2020
-
Fish meal pedicure
Fish meal pedicure Letting a shoal of hungry small fish nibble away dead skin from your feet and in addition having to pay for it! With free wifi as sweetener. Photos of the week: Massage parlour, China Town, Bangkok, Thailand 2019
-
Amalgamation
Amalgamation A river – this side and that – shadows and lights fused in a nocturnal dream. Photo of the week: A restaurant and Wat Arun on two sides of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok, Thailand 2019
-
She herself(ie)
She herself(ie) She visited Wat Arun, the white plastered Buddhist tower inlaid with pieces of colourful porcelain. The monument has Hindu influences and its three levels have symbolic Buddhist significance. It glitters and shines, like she herself(ie) with her girlish phone. The people below her at the base are wandering through the realms of existence.…
-
Tiptoeing toddler
Tiptoeing toddler It’s always lovely to see toddlers – human or animal – explore the world. With curiosity and playful candour they dare moving away ever further from their mother’s nest. Photo of the week: Wat Arun compound, Bangkok, Thailand 2019
-
In honour of the Queen
In honour of the Queen That is, Queen Shri Phatcharinthra, for her 50th birthday in 1913. A Pig Memorial because she was born in the year of the Pig. The little piggies and other knickknacks at the foot of the memorial reveal the childish taste which is typical of popular Thai culture. This tendency is…
-
Wat Pho
Wat Pho The stone statue can easily be recognized as Chinese; the way the tree branches have been steered in their growth betrays Japanese inspiration; and the Buddha images in the back are clearly Thai. Three examples of three Asian aesthetic traditions harmoniously brought together in a corner of the temple complex of Wat Pho.…
-
Food stalls, cars, Buddha’s
Food stalls, cars, Buddha’s I always like the unlikely mingling of different cultural elements. It hints at a lively, easy going interaction between people, with a light-hearted attitude to life. Bangkok has it, especially by night. But what about that Buddha Brigade, in a country yearning for freedom from military rule?! Photo of the week:…
-
Lavishly adorned
Lavishly adorned After having met the school children of last week’s post one would not have imagined their mothers and grandmothers to look like this. But in the villages of the Brokpa (or Drokpa or Dards) along the Indus River in Ladakh just before it flows into Pakistan, these elaborately dressed up women are not…
-
Comparing eyes
Comparing eyes It’s festival day. All school children have got new pencils. Even though we are in Dah, a remote Ladakhi village at the end of the road before the Pakistan border, we immediately recognize the inquisitive glance with which the one girl looks at the pencils of the other. Are hers bigger, more beautiful,…
καιρός remembered 