After the cold wind that drove out the audience for yesterday’s last set, this morning’s calm warmth is welcome. But spring in Australia is as full of shiny promises in the morning that become afternoon disappointments.
It’s not quite 6am. The same sun that is setting for the west coast of South America is now offering itself to the eastern edge of Oz as sunrise. The plaza before the main stage is empty and expectant. The street that parallels the beach is deserted. The guest house I’m now living in it just around the corner in that photo. There’s more text below the photos. Click any to expand.
Today – and almost any day – is “fly day” in Manly. Spring or Summer brings swarms of flies that would carry off small dogs were they not well tethered. They drive pedestrians to mad semaphoric wavings.
The phrase “bloody flies” is the local equivalent of the American reference to inappropriate maternal affection.
This modern transit system (Delhi Metro Wikipedia entry) is a hugely refreshing surprise. It’s also a bit humbling. I don’t know a single city in all the USA that has anything of this size and quality even under discussion . . . and Delhi’s system here is almost 90% complete. See the Delhi Metro web site.
And here’s a photo gallery that shows how modern, clean and comfortable the Metro system is in this “impoverished, third-world” country.
This morning I did two hours of walking at best speed. Had to stop a few times to ease the thigh-burn. The rain let up as I began but the wind blew so hard off the ocean that at one point the steady breeze across the mouth of the water bottle I was drinking from produced a perfect “A”.
Fairy Bower is an upscale community that hugs the top of a steep cliff that juts eastward out to sea, directly south of Manly Beach.
What’s in name? Well, as I learned, the real name of Bangkok is a bigger, hotter mouthful than a cup of harissa sauce.
Meaning?? Try this (from Wikipedia) . . .
Krung-d?vamah?nagara amararatanakosindra mahindrayudhy? mah?tilakabhava navaratanar?jadh?n? pur?ramya utamar?janiv?sana mah?sth?na amaravim?na avat?rasthitya shakrasdattiya vishnukarmaprasiddhi. It translates to “The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm.”
And, all that is absolutely, indispitable, totally true.
My flight from Kualah Lumpur landed at Bangkok’s throughly modern airport at 6am. Shortly before landing, Thai Airlines served an excellent westrn style breakfast. I had only my carry-on bag, so after swift and trouble-free movement through customs and immigration, by 6:30 I was ready for a day of touring. I needed to be back at the airport by 6pm to catch my flight out.
Now I’m one of those people who think that spending less than one week in any new city is a waste of effort. Here I am, ready to “do” Bangkok in les than a day.
To complicate matters, I was unable to sleep on the plane during the 10 flight. I’ve arrived exhausted. At 73 years old I do not lack energy, but it just doesn’t last as long as it used to without sleep.
Before I can take any tour, I’ll need at least an hour of sleep and the only way I’ll get it is in a real bed. First order of business, is find a hotel that I can crash in for that long. That’s how I wound up in a whore house. Where else can you rent a bed by the hour?
This is just a photo album of scenes at the entrance The Grand Palace. Other than the basic details about when, why, and how it was built, the Grand Palace is a visual experience. But if you want those details, here are a few links that will spare me the time of repeating what I’ve looked up.
About 600 years ago, give or take a century, an unknown group of Buddhists in Thailand created a statue slightly more than 10 feat high, weighing more than 5 and 1/2 tons. That’s heavy because solid gold tends to be heavy.
At the current price for gold, in the range of $600 per ounce, it also tends to be pricey. To that equation add the elegant beauty of its design and the excellence of its workmanship. Then you’ll have a definition of “priceless” that mocks the insipid pretensions of that credit card television commercial.
The temple in which it sits (Wat Tramit) is surprisingly small, tucked away in a corner of Bangkok’s Chinatown. Thereby hangs a tale.
Around the same time as the Battle of Agincourt, not long before the Incas reached the height of their rule in Peru, the creators of this mountain of solid gold apparently realized that there were violent, greedy people who might just want to melt it down to buy booze and oysters and women, not necessarily in that order. Warlords from neighboring countries were a particular concern.
So they covered the statue in a dark clay that hardened to the consistency of concrete, hiding its true nature. I’ll leave it to your imagination how the plasterers were persuaded – or prevented – from gossiping about what they had done.
The secret remained just that through the rise and fall of cultures, warlords and empires for at last one half of a millennium. The ugly, dunn-colored Buddha statue, and the modest little temple became neglected – and was abandoned. It sat empty and vandalized.
In 1950, due to a local version of Urban Renewal, the building and its contents were scheduled for demolition. A salvager bought the real estate package and prepared to remove the statue to a junk yard for crushing into rubble. As the story goes, in the process of trying to lift it off its base, a worker accidentally chipped off a chunk of the plaster covering.
The little temple has been rebuilt. The grounds are walled in again. Elaborate minor statues have been added to replace those that had disappeared long ago.
Today it’s not really a temple. There are no religious services nor is there a congregation. I saw no priests or acolytes, only ticket sellers and vendors. It’s a tourist attraction, pure, simple and unashamed. Admission is the rough equivalent of US$5.00.
Is that surprising? Unless you would commit the unspeakable atrocity of conversion to its base metal, what else do you do with an amazing chunk of bong like this? Well, for one thing, you put a few collection boxes around the area. You rent out space to shopkeepers who sell bottles of cold water, joss sticks and postcards.
Also, you install a row of boxes along one wall opposite the buddha. They are about the size of the newspaper vending boxes found on many downtown streets in America, each assigned to a birthday month. A tourist drops a coin into the bin and receives a piece of paper, about twice the size of an ATM receipt, printed in Thai, Chinese and English. Mine says . . .
No. 6Do not panic. Do not keep changing your mind. You will eventually succeed, though it seems unfavorable at present. Good fortune envisaged. Outstanding debts refundable. All matters are fine in general. Patient recovering. Likely to find a nice mate who could become a good match.
Doctor Pangloss was briefer but I prefer the particularity of the advice from this Oracle For A Quarter to the doctor’s diffuse platitudes. It was like finding one fortune cookie containing 10 fortunes.
Like the previous post, this is a visual experience. Just photos. (But I must comment on the photo, in the last row below, of the fat man with the dribble down the front of his shirt. He insists that it is not the result of a poorly managed ice-cream cone or some other personal sloppiness. He claims it is simply the result of the fierce humidity.)
