Until You've Played Your Life Away

What a short, not so strange trip it has been.

I set out under the idea of visiting as many Buddhist Temples as possible and exploring the street scene of Bangkok and Chiang Mai and reconnecting with my old friend Dave...and beyond that, I just wanted to see what developed.

Along the way, I may have picked up some insight into a few things about Thailand, or just travel in general. Ten days in a foreign country does not qualify me for expert status on that country's nature, but I am qualified to share what I have learned. Most of it....not that useful to you...but, like most preachers, that doesn't stop us from sharing it anyway.

BEST LOCAL MARKET: For us, it was the one off Silom Road. By day it was the workingman/woman's neighborhood buy-this-and-that, buy-your-lunch-in-a-plastic-bag type and take it to work market. By night, the sellers stalls turned into Thai Street Food Central.

BEST RESTAURANT OFF SILOM: Hands down: Madam Suzy's. How can you go wrong with a name like that? What did they serve that was so great? Ambiance! How do we know? Where else can you dine AND rub shoulders with Toyota Corollas at your elbows....and the Toyotas are moving not stationary.

AND FINALLY, WHAT IS THIS WITH CROSSING THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE? First time I have gone that route. Very strange to lose a day then recover it when the trip is over. Perhaps it is a metaphor for life: we lose, we gain. And in the end, it is worth it all.

Peace, Bob
WHERE TO GO AND BAFFLE THE DESK CLERK AT YOUR HOTEL: the local wholesale flower and vegetable outlet. This place down by the Chao Praya River was on the map so we went. No other tourists around. Look at the colors! The Ice Man Cometh and he has shoulders that able to haul hundreds of lbs at a time!

WHAT PHRASE DRAWS UNIVERSAL CONTEMPT FROM CABBIES FAR AND WIDE IN BANGKOK! "Meter Please!" (It would be easier to arrange dinner with the King)

TAKING YOUR LIFE INTO YOUR OWN HANDS AWARD (or perhaps into the hands of God) Any time you use the Chao Praya water taxi you had best stay alert at dockside. A few weeks training with Urban Meyer would be advisable to get you in shape.

MOST IN NEED OF A FEW SHOTS OF GLADE: Surprisingly enough, in this city of 12 million it was the take-off-your-sandals-because-it-is-a-tradition-in-Thailand-to-take-off-ones-shoes, in the Jim Thompson Store and Tour. What Thai tradition does not take into account is that it is not tradition to have a few thousand visit your home each day and thus store their shoes in one room. The locker room in my Junior High (which was built in 1918) was more inviting. (The rest of the Jim Thompson House was great.)

HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE IT??? Is the lager Chang? Or Chong? or Shang? No matter. It was always delivered to the table.

WHAT TO SAY WHEN THE SALES LADY SAYS "IT IS PURE SILVER": Just smile and say, "And my name is Barak Obama." and buy it anyway if you like it.

HOW MANY AMULETS DO THEY SELL AT THE AMULET MARKET? As many as there are stars in the heavens. And what is it with Saffron-Robed Buddhist Monks and jewelers eye pieces....inspecting amulets and jewelry store gems?

FAVORITE THING TO DO IN A BUDDHIST TEMPLE Try, just try and concentrate on one thing. You cannot: the visual senses are on overload.

STOCK TIP FOR FOREIGN INVESTING I'd liquidate your 401k and put it all in 7/11 stores in Thailand. There are more of them than there are temples! No kidding.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH 2 BAHT IN THE NUMEROUS MARKETS? Pay your way into a restroom.

WHAT DOES THE RESTROOM COST IN THE FABULOUS ORIENTAL HOTEL? Nothing...if you have silver hair and act like your room is on the 15th floor. (The doorman will even open the doors for you.)

BEST ADVICE BEFORE USING A TUK-TUK. Get religion. Costlier than a metered taxi but more fun than anything Disneyland has produced. Worth the trip.

IS THERE A BREAKFAST BUFFET COMPLETE WITH FLOOR SHOW? Well, yes there is. Mulligan's Bar which is the restaurant for the Buddy Group. Great breakfast buffet with an unintentional floor show as night turns into morning. The cast changes and it's a new day.

ARE THOSE REALLY SAUSAGES OR ARE THEY JUST HOT DOGS? I really think it is the latter and they use the former name to dress it all up.

BEST WAY TO SEE THAILAND: AIM LOW. I am not talking about low life or low expectations but you don't have to see ONLY the best and most beautiful temples and stupas and palaces. Street life and street food and market places and tuk-tuks are decidedly very non-western and thus great fun to just walk through. No one was bothered by us nor did anyone bother us. Show respect and you will be shown the same.

AND FINALLY, WHAT IS IT WITH THIS LOSE A DAY THEN GAIN A DAY WHEN CROSSING THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE? That was the first time I have traveled across the Pacific. I suppose it is a metaphor for life: lose something, gain something. And in the end, it is worth it all.

Peace, Bob

There's a Thousand Parts to Play

Everyone love street fairs and street markets and street food and anything that sort of sounds like a street festival....folks flock to them.

Such was the case last night. The Saturday Street Walk. Not to be confused with the Sunday Street Walk nor the Night Market. The Saturday Street Walk is only on Saturday on one particular street. Likewise the Sunday Street Walk is only on Sunday. Both are on the street but on different streets. Both are called a "Walk" and judging by the number of people, you are lucky to walk. Crawl is a more accurate term. But that is not to be confused with a Pub Crawl which a Thai Chamber of Commerce would never officially sanction anyway.

So....it is Saturday and we walk the street, which sounds totally inappropriate for a minister and his daughter and son-in-law to admit to. It was an intimate little gathering of every one who had been on the mountain earlier in the day at the Doi Suthep mountain temple and anyone else who had entered the country of Thailand since noon. It was crowded. I have seen OSU/Michigan football traffic that was one tenth of the traffic and the foot traffic was, well, you get the picture.

But it was fun. In the midst of all the traditional handicrafts and street food and impromptu street bands is a slice of Chiang Mai modern day host-the-tourists life. It took about 15 minutes to cross the road and get to the start of the street fair and then cover about a city block. And that was just a small portion of the total experience.

One highlight down at the end of one street was some 5 year old kid who was a drummer. Not a traditional drummer but a rock and roll drummer. His folks had an IPad or two with songs, the kid had headphones, the parents would select the song, the crowd would whip out their cell phone cameras (alas, I did not) and record it all. D-Day had fewer people recording that event. I told Josh that somewhere on the internet this kid is on You Tube. I have not tried it...but Google or You Tube, Chiang Mai Street Walk Drummer Boy....and see if something pops up.

It's a new world out there.

By the way: I have been referred to, affectionately, I suppose by cab drivers and hotel bell hops and street market sellers as....the Papa. Apparently with this white hair, my wise and dignified countenance and the presence of my daughter and son-in-law....any pretense that I might be just a cool middle-aged guy traveling has been put to rest.

The other day I was in a cab and the driver said to me:
"How old are you?"
I said, "I am 62!.
He said, "I am 67!"
"But, I have all this silver hair and you don't have ANY!" I shot back at him.
"Ha!" He retorted. "I dye my hair!"

When the cab drivers of Bangkok are bragging about routinely dying their hair. You really know it's a new world out there!

Peace, Bob

Tourist Buy the Ticket

A trip up the mountain to Doi Suthep Temple is part civic duty, part religious experience, part county fair and totally a once in a lifetime experience for an Ohio boy like me.

The mountain should be written "mountain" because you are really going up a very big hill...this is not the Himalayas by any stretch, but neither is it Hocking Hills. Somewhere in between.

To get there one has to take the official red pickup trucks converted to 10 passenger vans. The traffic safety board would not be impressed but they look like Sherman tanks compared with tuk-tuks which don't even attempt the climb.

Anyway, catch a red truck at the city gate. The driver wants 500 baht per load for the trip up. 10 people...50 baht a piece. But you wait for the total of 10...if it is an hour....you wait. We had 7 and we waited about 20 minutes. Josh jumped out, offered to make up the difference. All the other passengers gladly chipped in an extra 20 baht and the driver had his fare and we had lift off.

Through the city streets. Past the University district. Up the mountain. Up and up. Hairpin curve after hairpin curve. It was rather like the Monte Carlo Rally...red trucks, motor scooters, every conceivable type of truck loaded with countless people. I've seen movies of refugees fleeing the invading army of the enemy...in this case, every person in town was heading to the Doi Suthep. Unless you were delivering a child at that moment or were six feet under....you headed up the mountain.

Once you got there, there was every possible sales pitch and tourist item to separate you and your money. The sales pitches were mild compared to what I experienced in India but you wanted trinkets, food, sacred items for the temple, cloth, more food, small engine parts and weed wackers...this was the place. You arrive. Pay the cab driver and marvel at the sea of humanity which has come from seemingly the surrounding seven nations bordering the country.

First off you have to walk the 300 steps to the temple itself. We foreigners were strictly told to "buy a ticket." I did. No one ever took it and they may have to rethink this notion of trusting people to buy a ticket and then not having anyone to collect the ticket. No ticket...no entrance. Not a concept they have yet to embrace.

Once near the temple and wat and other side temples, one can sit along the sides and observe the faithful and the curious. I went into the temple and frankly it was like sale day at Wal-Mart. People chanting, walking in a prayer circle, snapping photos, buying amulets. I loved it. I then went back outside the main temple and sat and watched the parade of people, let my altitude light headedness subside, listened to the temple bells which we could ring. Found a coffee bar and had an ice coffee and contemplated the meaning of life at one of Thailand's most famous temples.

Like so much of what we do in life; the journey is the goal. Today the journey up the mountain, with others in a red bus, meeting with countless others on the mountain top and sharing the experience which was part sacred and part secular...was a good thing to do. I'd put it right up there with visiting the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower. I'm glad I came.

Back down the mountain. And even though there were about 690 red pickup cabs outside the gate, the driver who took us up the mountain, amazingly found us and was ready to take us down. We hopped in. We thought for a second, realizing he was waiting for 7 more, which could take hours seeing as how the competition for riders was red hot. We hopped out and said, "we'll pay 500 if we go now." "We'll go NOW!" he exclaimed. At such a moment, capitalism beats socialism hands down.

We headed down the mountain and did what anyone else would do who had been on such a pilgrimage of faith: found a Mexican Restaurant in the middle of Chiang Mai, Thailand which was playing Frank Sinatra CD's and ate burritos. We all have our religious experiences in this life and Sinatra after Doi Suthep makes for two in one day. The gods were smiling down on us.

Peace,
Bob

Update Facebook Status to: Non-Existent

So we are walking down the street near the old town...near the canal and suddenly from the busy street comes the whine of sirens and a police escort and trucks wailing on bullhorns and back about a half block is a huge motorcycle brigade with flags on every one of the motorcycles. I am thinking...."OMG...it's the King! How fantastic that in our 10 days in Thailand we get to see the King go by!!

The pickup trucks with their bullhorns going loudly are proclaiming something in the local language which I assume to mean, "Long live the King!" "May the people prosper!" "Health and Good wishes from a grateful people to our King!"

This is going to be great! Even Obama does not get anything like this!

And I was right....Obama does NOT get anything like this: turns out the police escort was for about 50 NEW Pizza Delivery motor scooters for Mr. Pizza! The entire delivery band of motor scooters with heated metal boxes for freshness was on an advertising binge across Chiang Mai today. They raced by, Mr Pizza banners flying in the breeze, police escort with sirens and pickup trucks announcing this glorious addition to the lives and hearts of the people of Chiang Mai.

Actually, it was a pretty good stunt and makes Madison Avenue in the States look like a backwater of creative ideas. Though I must admit: I have been in the heat of Chiang Mai for a couple days and the last thing a pizza delivery person needs on their motor scooter is a metal box to keep pizza warm. Though.....perhaps the box is solar heated and bakes the pizza on the way to the customer. THAT would be a break through greater than the presence of the King....even though he is greatly loved in this country.

Yesterday we walked the NE quadrant of the Old CIty and saw Buddha after Buddha. Great stuff. Today we concentrated on the NW quadrant. Once again, an astounding mixture of old and new, fancy and pedestrian Temples, images of Buddha, stupas and Monasteries. I enjoyed every one of them. How they packed so many temples in so little of an area is beyond me.

One temple in particular:the Wat Phrasingha Woramahawiharn was the most beutiful of the city. Let me put it this way: If Dublin were going to have a fantastic Buddhist Temple, this one would be it...if you catch my drift. If George Lucas designed Temples, this would be it.

I really understand very little about all the significance for each of the buildings and worship areas of the temple complexes but I do have a "feel" for the devotion which the populace places in and on these temples. I am not at-one with the Buddhists but I admire the come-as-you-are attitude of Buddhists to everyday life. Something that baffles me is the number of Buddhas in the front of the temple. It seems that if one big Buddha is good, then eight must be better and maybe 17 would be stupendous! And so they put all 17 up front...for starters.

Laura is pretty good at reading the guidebooks and intricate maps and spotting a place to see and so we wander down the street and find it. Such is the case with the Kids Ark Foundation It supports HIV/AIDS kids. They have all sorts of programs and a handicraft display where they sell spun scarves and the like. Very high quality and we made their day, if you know what I mean. The volunteers for the day were a couple...the guy was from Cincy and his wife from Guyana...both by way of the UK, Canada, Iran and Thailand and New England. Interesting folks. Good cause. You over achievers could Google Kids Ark Foundation.org.

It was lunch and we did what most tourists would do for lunch, we said: "Let's roam around Chaing Mai and see if they have a women's prison ministry inmate training program that serves lunches." Turns out they do! This too was on the map. This too was quite good. We sat in a little courtyard. The drinks and meals were quite tasty (Coconut smoothie and cashew chicken for me. Laura and Josh had similar meals. Josh had iced coffee.) Great place. We were ready for the afternoon in which we went to visit more temples.

Chiang Mai is a backpackers paradise. Cheap accomodations. Lots of cheap restaurants with good meals. Lots of coffee shops tucked in here and there with wi-fi. This place is more wired than Silicon Valley. Actually the whole country is. No matter where you go, people are on line. In the smallest sellers stalls in the market place, the teens are waiting on you and when they are just waiting on you to make a purchase, they are updating their Facebook page. I am not sure if the local populace interacts anymore, while people walk by, the owner of the shop is watching You Tube videos, the latest from Psy, scores of their Kickboxing heroes from around the world. We were at this shop the other day and they had a "traditional" weaver of cloth out front to show how it is all done. Her skill was amazing. The colors were vibrant. I snapped a photo and when I walked away she pulled out her cellphone from beneath the folds of her costume and updated her status. In any case, the Women's Inmate Training Program had great wi-fi, as did the little coffee shop later. It's a new world out there.

Daughter Laura is a Rotarian and we told her that she really should attend a Rotary meeting and do their "Hands across the border" thing that service clubs are always doing. Turns out the Cincy guy from the weaving shop is Rotary and he found that one of Chaiang Mai's 11 Rotary Clubs was meeting tonight at the Huay Kaew Falls Restaurant. We should go! We did.

The place was past the University District (think: Ohio State on High Street during rush hour) which made a slow going challenge for our taxi driver. Then a ways up the hill/mountain and one will find the restaurant. Chiang Mai is a bit out there and restaurants such as this apparently don't cater to the tourists so our mutual language skills added spice to the evenings proceeding. Besides not serving many tourists, they don't seem to serve the Rotarians either. We arrived, the Rotary sign was up in front of the "Banquet Room" but the Rotarians were a no-show. Nobody. How do you lose and entire Rotary Club in Chiang Mai? They have. It's interesting to note that this club called itself the Airport Rotary and hadn't met at the airport for years. Well, here is another place in which this club has not met also. Rotary International should be updating this clubs charter.

No matter. The atmosphere of the restaurant was one of faded elegance. Lights on the huge rock outcroppings and the noise of the waterfalls somewhere in the vicinity. Laura asked about a particular fish dinner which the neighboring table had and it appeared at our table. The language barrier made things lively as we discovered that any meal which our hands casually pointed to on the page, whether we wanted to order it or not, actually became our order. We had lots of food. Had the Rotarians ever appeared we could have fed a couple dozen of them with what we had on our table. But, there was Chang and Singha and night air and it was pretty nice.

Afterwards when we paid and walked out to the street, we realized that we were rather far up the mountain and the taxi's didn't come by very often. We wandered down the road. We could have used that Mr. Pizza police escort and contingent of 50 Motor Scooter delivery vehicles about then. Fortunately, it was all downhill from there.

Peace, Bob

Be Bop Stupa Trip (Thanks Makaila)

So here we are in Chiang Mai. Matt H. at church suggested this NW corner of Thailand and we were ready to see another portion of the country. (Ken and Chet suggested this also. By the way....you can go anywhere in the world, and Chet has already been there. Twice!) An hour plane ride and we are here. This is hardly the most isolated spot on earth but I will admit it is a bit more rural, small-town-grown-big-with-tourism, user-friendly, old-struggling with the modern. type of place.

Someone asked me if I am seeing a lot of people wearing those loose fitting Thai pants. Colorful, traditional.

Yes, I am. Tons of people are wearing them. All tourists from Central Europe and the States. The local populace is in jeans or shorts. Asian tourists are in Khakis. It's a whole new world out there.

On the local map it seems to indicate that there are a lot of temples here in Chiang Mai. Looking out my 4th floor hotel room one can count about a half dozen temple spires within a few city blocks. This bears looking in to.

The plan was: avoid being run over by traffic and look at and take a photo of every temple, stupa, chedi and Buddha that we could find in the next four hours. I'd say that after that time, and a rain storm that found us seeking refuge (along with several temple dogs) in a fantastic Buddhist temple and a bowl of Italian minestrone soup which increased my core body temperature by about 3 degrees in the muggy mid-90's post rain....we were successful. Though I imagine we saw but a fraction of this town's temples.

Heading down the street I kept looking down the side streets to locate the temples I had seen from my hotel room. I found one on street #3 and #6 an #8. Each one was sitting in the midst of a neighborhood and was crumbling and looked very old. They were all about the size of a small house in the States. Obviously these had been places of devotion in quieter simpler times and had fallen into disrepair but they were still used by the faithful because there were small Buddhas on the stupas and dripped candle wax. Across the street, construction workers build bamboo scaffolding for a construction project. They glance down as I circle the stupa and take a photo. Life goes on.

A quarter mile along we enter the gates of the old city. These were built in the 1400's and I note that the brick work is similar to the old stupas I have been seeing. Now we are in the heart of the Old City and the map indicates numerous stupas (sacred monuments), Buddhist Temples and monasteries. Onward we go.

We come to one which sets the tone for the others, in that, elephants decorating the temple grounds is a dominant theme here in Chiang Mai. Indeed, they do have an elephant park in the outskirts which is a big tourist draw. Isn't that the progression of things? Nature. Then religion incorporates nature into the faith and finally the government sanctions it (elephants) for a tourist draw.

Several of the temples have these beautiful, colorful pictures which depict (I am assuming) Buddha in his life and travels and travails. In all pictures, nature at its most primeval is filled with deer and wild animals abounding (and strangely enough packs of wild dogs just like the ones that ominously roam temple grounds today.) He overcomes evil forces, finds beautiful maidens. I really don't know....I'd have to schedule a "chat with a monk" to find out about the history depicted in these paintings. (And they really do have such things)

Now we are going through neighborhoods and each has a temple and buddha and stupa and many carved elephants and graceful swooping-roofed buildings. Many are under re-construction...always a good sign. Lots of saffron robed monks staffing the front desk. Lots of signs advising the women tourists what and what not to wear. Lots of female tourists totally ignoring the signs. Lots of monks ignoring the women who are ignoring the the signs. It's a very Zen existence and the parallel societies of tourists and monks get along well. (I did see a policeman at the Grand Palace in Bangkok actually stop a young Japanese woman from entering a sacred area. He indicated her Poured-into tight pants. She pulled out her T-Shirt tail to cover herself down to her knees. Everyone was happy and life resumed).

Around here, life is a bit more casual and the vast majority of tourists are respectful. I'd say the clothing that most wear is "Northface." It's probably made down the road.

In Rome every Piazza has a cathedral or two. Well, in Chiang Mai, every block has one or two Buddhist temples and monasteries and elephant carvings. Peer out the side window of one temple and you can see two more temples across the courtyard.

And we stopped in them all.

The absolute best is the: and I am not making up this name..."Temple of the Big Stupa". I've never seen anything like it. I'll offer a more complete writing of it in my "E-Gram" this week. But, I will include a couple photos of it at the bottom here #3 & #4) It is huge, from the 14th century and partially destroyed by an earthquake and at one time a temple on the grounds of this Big Stupa, housed the Emerald Buddha! That is the same Emerald Buddha I saw the other day, which now resides in Bangkok. The people up here found it or carved it, the capital city pulled rank and got it. But, as previously noted...the Emerald Buddha is not emerald after all, it is just jade. So, who gets the last laugh.?

Peace, Bob

God of Dawn

I read somewhere that there are over 31,000 temples/wats in Thailand. I make no claims to having visited that many of them but it is clear that wats are around every bend in the road and river. Many of them are major tourist draws with national significance. Today we experienced yet one more stunning wat.

This wat was named for Aruna, the Indian god of dawn, because King Taksin arrived here at dawn in 1767 to establish this as Siam's new capital. Clearly the workers couldn't unionize otherwise they would have started after breakfast. But they are right by the Chao Praya River and it seems the best views of Wat Arun are from the east side of the river so that one could watch the sun set behind the wats towers.

The best we could do to re-create the atmosphere was to take the express boat down river and stop near the Palace and transfer to the across-the-river taxi/boat. Plying waters to a sacred site is always the way to go. The central focus is on particular pyramid/tower (for lack of any other descriptive term). It's spire pierces the sky and if you want, you can climb halfway to the top via steps that are challenging to even the heartiest. But, Josh and I climbed and were rewarded with a remarkable view of the river and the palace grounds back across the river where we had seen the Reclining Buddha and Emerald Buddha the day before.

This had a golden seated Buddha for the faithful set in a smaller temple on the grounds.The statues and designs were weathered but the feel of main monuments was very masculine as compared with the smoother more colorful wats and monasteries which we have seen. The land right next to the river is extremely flat and the spires provide a remarkable contrast when seen from the river. One of the best things was that we beat the tour buses and while half of South Korea emerged from air conditioned buses to descend on the wat, we were sitting by the river drinking water and enjoying the river traffic.

Back on to the river to catch the river/taxi to another stop where we commandeered a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the Golden Mount ( though most of you probably are more familiar with its formal name: Wat Srakesa Rajavaramahavihara) . Bangkok is rather flat and when the rains come there is much that floods or is in jeopardy of flooding. So, it does not take much of a rise in the landscape for something to be called a "mount" and such is the case with this temple which sits smack in the middle of Bangkok but requires the faithful (and folks from Ohio) to climb some 300 steps. And yet each step around the side of the temple, lifts one a bit higher above the considerable vegetation at the base of the temple...and affords on an ever-increasingly more wonderful view of the city. Suffice it to say that one cannot get the full view of the place except from the air...Google Wat Srakesa or Golden Mount Bangkok for such views.

It is also interesting to note that numerous of these holy sites which are major tourist draws (though the Golden Mount is a bit off the major tourist trail, which is too bad, it is magnificent) have posters which invite you to download and App for your cell phones or Ipads and thus have access to more photos and history. It's a new world out there. Apparently they are electing a new Governor too and countless election posters line the city streets for the candidates who are all looking alternately tough on crime, compassionate in local floods, praising beaming high achieving school children or embracing hi-tech instruments as they ask for your vote. At the bottom of each poster is where to reach the candidates Face Book page.

But, I digress. Besides serenity and views the Golden Mount has bells around every turn in which the faithful or even us tourists are invited to ring...insuring good luck from the gods. When we descended from the Mount we decided on a restaurant and hailed a cab...a first for us since Tuk-tuks have been our main mode of transport. What a revelation, the cab was air conditioned, we rode through noontime traffic listening to his Bee-Gees CD while his taxi meter kept an accurate/legal fare. It was MUCH less than a tuk-tuk...alas not as exciting and we decided that getting ripped off by tuk-tuk drivers is OK if you figure part of the journey in a tuk-tuk is the gritty sense of being at-one with the cityscape. After lunch we tried to find another metered cabbie but they all insisted on side-stops to some tourist haven and we just walked away to the river pier, bought a ticket for pennies and went to the nearest dock to the Metro Train which took us to the house of Jim Thompson.

Here's an interesting story. Jim Thompson was an American Princeton educated architect who served in WWII and afterwards settled in Thailand and revived the Thai Silk Industry. He disappeared mysteriously in 1967 in Malaysia (he may have been CIA) and yet his foundation and industry thrive. We toured his teak home and grounds (rather like seeing the home of some great author or statesman and entering a time warp of life in another era). But it was wonderful. It was very strange to go from the ancient sacred sites to a more modern elegant home. I'd recommend it.

But, Madam Suzy's Thai Food restaurant was calling us. It's located just a block from our hotel in a little neighborhood. The street market of the morning and daytime becomes a street scene of plastic tables and chairs which sit but a few inches from the passing traffic. The food was good and the open wok on the outdoor stove made certain that the temperature where we were seated never dipped below a balmy 95. All the more reason to have another Singha!

Peace, Bob

Monks in the Market Place

Perhaps this is the reason I came.

Yesterday I mentioned a neighborhood market. It covers the entire street next to the hotel. It begins at one major street and ends at a parallel street several hundred yards away. But that few hundred yards is a true slice of life.

Yesterday we observed people going to work and countless food stalls lining the street. The office people would pick up their lunch as they walked by. Many would sit at the little tables and have their breakfast. School kids walked and were led by parents and grandparents. If you want veggies or chicken or pork or fruit or numerous things which I could not recognize for your lunch or breakfast...it was there. Coffee. Tea. Soft drinks. Singha and Chang Beer.

At one end of the street is an Indian Temple. It has been around for about 150 years. It looks just like the countless Hindu Temples I visited a few years ago in India. Half way down the block, in the middle of the street market is an Islamic Mosque. It too has been around for a long time. I've been in numerous Mosques in Istanbul.

Today as we walked the market street we noticed many Buddhist Monks in their saffron robes. That in itself is not anything unusual here in this Buddhist country. These monks appear and then seem to disappear to wherever it is they go. There are lots and lots of Buddhist temples and monasteries around this city though and we've been to many. I am not certain where these monks in the market were from. I did not see them yesterday but today I was there earlier and I noticed that they were standing near many of the food sellers. Just standing there...with bags and baskets.

The local people, mainly Buddhist, were purchasing food for the monks and the other monks at the monastery. The monk would stand there. A Thai citizen would get eggs or tea or bread or more. Kneel before the monk and present it. As an offering. The Thai person would then collect his or her office satchel and Iphone and proceed to the office.

But even more interesting was that all of these offerings to the Buddhist Monks (photo #3) took place in the street between the Indian Hindu Temple (photo #1) and the Islamic Mosque (photo #2) Much of it directly in front of both houses of worship.

And by the way....all of this was observed and surreptitiously recorded by a Christian Minister.

Peace, Bob