Boating in Eire Dolmens and Blarney, feeling of plunging Water, eXhilaration Adventure continue… July 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Air Tickets, Airlines, Asia, Cairo, Cars, China, Round The World, Sightseeing, Thailand, The Nile, Tokyo, Tour, Travel Gear, Travelling Bag, Trip, Victoria Falls , 3commentsLooking nervously over his shoulder in case the priest should hear, he scratched his head and rolled his eyes, all the time muttering that terrible word. Then suddenly he clicked his fingers and spat the word out.
“Pagans! Dere’s an old Protestant graveyard, overgrown now, you understand, up dere, by de old crossroads, as used to be dere.”
I waited patiently while he told me forty different ways to get there. Then, thanking him, I beat a hasty retreat to the sacristy door and knocked. (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…)
Later Additions to the Temple of Karnak April 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, China, Egypt, Library, Lodges, Malaysia, Museum, South Africa, Thailand, The Nile, Travel Clinic , add a commentThis is a singular monument, perhaps unique among all those preserved in Egypt. Its general orientation is not east-west like the Amon sanctuary, but north-south. It is in rectangular form, divided into two parts that go along the entire length of the structure. The western part includes a colonnaded room whose minor axis is aligned with the axis of the sanctuary of Amon ; north of this room there are three chapels. The eastern section is subdivided into three parts: the southern part includes a colonnaded room surrounded by smaller rooms; the central part consists basically of three rooms aligned on their axis but oriented east-west; finally, the northern part includes a series of rooms that culminated to the north in a solar sanctuary (the same kind as we have seen in Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri). (more…)
