Footloose in Siam: Some of the stuff I've been doing

This is a new kind of blog post.

We stayed in an amazing resort hotel in Trat. It is about as close to perfect as you can get this side of paradise. Except for the mosquitos

And I went to a wedding. That is boss Somjet on my left and Kareem on my right. The bride and groom are standing in the back. Sara, is sitting on the far left.

And we're back in Trat. Interesting architecture

The whole resort is in the middle of a mangrove. At high tide the ocean rises and covers everything on the ground.

I asked if I could go swimming in the ocean. They laughed at me. But there was a very nice pool.

I really liked the mangrove. Mangroves are some of my favorite trees. They have a special adaptation that allows them to filter salt water.

Mangrove trees supercharge some of their leaves with nutrients. These leaves die and fall in to the water where they attract fish. Fish eat the nutritious leaves and fertilize the mangrove roots.

Sunset in the mangrove

Here is something unique. I often hear people say, 'Oh, he worships money." or some such metaphorical way to describe people who spend a lot of time thinking about their economic welfare. To these people I can now say, "No, the people in Thailand who pay homage to a giant 1500+ year old golden coin worship money. The person you're thinking of is just greedy."

Ok, not sure why the computer rearranged the order of these pictures, but ok. These are the most important people in their respective schools. I get a kick of encouraging these bigwig directors to jump up and down and do other silly things.

The guy on the far left is a total goofball.

This picture and the ones that follow are of Watnakornluang Temple. We were the only human beings there. The whole temple is built according to very precise geometrical structures. Most of what follows is are pictures of cool patters in the building.

Christine and I feeling like Indiana Jones

Question: How does a culture come to the conclusion that: a) feet are dirty and we should avoid showing our feet to anybody and b) the Buddha's footprints are among the holiest sights in Thailand? It just seems like the Buddha might have left behind any number of things, but the Buddhists chose to revere something that came from feet.

Then we went to feed monkeys

These monkey's used to be an endangered species. Now they live at a temple.

After feeding the monkeys we went to Thai Hell. Yes there is Hell in Thailand, it reminds me a bit like Disneyland.

Here we have the tree from Hyperion.

There are some scenes from the local mythology

You can light a candle for the monkey god. Oddly enough the name of the temple is Wat Gai, "Chicken Temple"

And then I went back and fed more monkey?

Some more mythology

And now we must be in Hell.

Creepy

The whole idea, is that you take your children here at night and you tell them, "If you steal cookies from your brother, giant black demons are going to saw you in half."