A Day in Narnia, a Night in Phang Nga continue… September 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Bangkok, Germany, Hotels, Tour , 3commentsNext morning in the market, shopping for a picnic, our struggles with the phrasebook brought an English-speaking Thai to our rescue, explaining that the quail eggs we had bought were raw, but could be cooked for us in the soup cauldron wherever we took breakfast. And the performance with the nails and the knives? A thanksgiving. All those who went through the ordeal had at some time survived an accident or illness when their lives had been despaired of. In gratitude they undertook to walk the nails and climb the knives every year until they died. They spent the day chanting and dancing, and when they came to walk and climb they could be heard speaking Chinese, a language none of them could speak during the rest of the year. (more…)
A Day in Narnia, a Night in Phang Nga September 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, Tour, Trip , 3commentsOn the village green in front of the Chinese Bhuddist temple a fairground was being erected. The skeleton of a Ferris wheel loomed; shooting galleries and hoopla stalls were being knocked together.
The purpose of the structure immediately outside the temple was not so obvious. The men hammering it together had beckoned us, beaming, inviting inspection. A raised wooden runway, carpeted with the pin-sharp points of six-inch nails hammered through from the bottom, ran out 50ft and ended in a bed of nails laid on the grass. At the foot of the bed, guyed by wire ropes, a forty-rung ladder rose vertically. The rungs were steel knives, blades up. (more…)
I travel in Rome June 21, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, Las Vegas, Museum, Restaurant, Sweden , 1 comment so farArriving in Rome from Bangkok at the end of January 2007, I experienced a sense of euphoria at the sight of the umbrella pines, the perfect architectural proportions of an old farmhouse, the ruins of a medieval tower. We spent mostof our time in the city simply recovering from the flight and adjusting to the change. But we did see Caravaggio’s St. Matthew triptych in San Luigi dei Francesi, or as much of it as possible in the thirty-second installments purchased by inserting coins that slowly switch on the ceiling lights. Alva and I were back in the city in May 2007 on our way to Magna Graecia, of which I knew little more than Paestum, visited with Stravinsky. My objective in 2007 was to see the Villa Giulia, which had been closed for many years. In April the Stravinskys and I explored the Etruscan tombs and their frescoes systematically, going almost daily to Tarquinia and the other great sites in a car provided by the Rome Radio, and no less frequently to the Villa Giulia. A madness for things Etruscan was afloat at the time, and the King of Sweden, one of its victims, lived above me on the top floor of the Hassler Hotel at night, but worked in an excavation during his days. (more…)
My Thailand Travel Diary part 3 June 12, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, India, Japan, Museum, New York, Singapore, Thailand , add a commentSome attractive old wooden buildings survive in Chinatown (Yaowaraj), most of them owned by gem-cutting and money-changing establishments. I go next to the zoo to see the white elephants. The mother of Buddha having dreamed of one during her pregnancy, these off-pink albinos are regarded as holy and are the property of the king. Mr. Niloubel assures me that most of the reptiles in the zoo can also be encountered in the city’s parks and canals. Near the entrance is a pet shop advertising “Newly- Whelped Tigers.”
For me the main attractions of the Emerald Buddha and the Dusit Palace are the electric fans. The emerald-and-jade idol is small and at a squinting elevation, while the decor of the palace’s royal audience room will make little impression on anyone who has seen the Oriental Hotel first. But this is niggling: the gold statues of mythical man-animals, of warriors with roosters’ tails, and the music of golden bells windblown under temple eaves are dazzling. (more…)
My Thailand Travel Diary part 2 June 12, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, London, New York, Thailand, USA , add a commentToday’s Bangkok Post features a photo of the float on which a Buddha relic was taken yesterday to Sanam Luang for veneration. Other photos are of barefoot and ragged children from the north who have been subsisting on dried lizards. The front-page story is about monkeys pickpocketing tourists and snapping television antennae in the vicinity of the summer palace of King Rama IV (Yul Brynner). It seems that an attempt was made to entice the marauders into banana-baited cages, but the ruse failed when a long-tailed macaque successfully ejected a clump of bananas before the trap had sprung. A parliament of monkeys was then convened on the palace roof, after which none of them approached the cages again.
Mr. Niloubel, who comes for me at 8 A.M., spends most of my temple- visiting time praying. The solid five-and-a-half-ton Golden Buddha sits in stifling heat, humidity, and incense at the top of steep staircases, the saffron scarf of peace draped over the left shoulder. (more…)
My Thailand Travel Diary part 1 June 12, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, London, Thailand, Tokyo, Travel Clinic, USA, Vietnam , add a commentTokyo, the Okura Hotel. Girls in kimonos and obis stand by the elevators on each floor to greet arriving and departing guests, with a great deal of bowing. After unpacking soiled clothes, I anxiously fill out a list stamped with the warning: “Garments badly worn out will be returned unlaundered.” Ergo, my frayed shirts and frazzled underwear will probably be rejected. The room-maids trot, rather than walk, and they bow low both before and after turning down the bed.
The drive to Kunitachi Hall, in Tsuyama, takes two and a half hours on streets even more clogged with Toyotas, Isuzus, Hondas than Manhattan’s. The average age of the players in the Kunitachi Orchestra is only twenty. But they are lightning learners, good-looking, well-dressed, polite, and harder-working than American and European orchestra musicians would be able even to imagine: we rehearse for four hours without intermission or break. (more…)
