Speaking Na’vi at Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai

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Chiang Mai, Monks, Movies & Television, Wats

Buddha @ Wat Chedi Luang In Chiang Mai

It’s not that I didn’t know about Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai. It gets good press in all the guide books. But its claim to fame: its brickwork stupa, partially destroyed by an earthquake a few hundred years after its construction – though one source claims the damage was from King Taksin’s cannons firing on the city to chase out the Burmese in the 18th (guess which story I prefer) – is not awe inspiring. It’s not like a large pile of ancient rubble is an unheard of sight in Chiang Mai. Even at a wat. A crumbling stupa has just never been enough to stir my curiosity.

It’s not that I didn’t know where Wat Chedi Luang was either. In fact, I’d been just inside the compound’s entrance during more than one Sunday Night Market. But it’s neighbor, Wat Phan Tao, with its teak wood wiharn was of far more interest. And really, which sounds more enticing: Temple of the Big Stupa or The Monastery of a Thousand Kilns? Yup, another reason my normal route directed me to Wat Phan Tao instead.

During one visit during market night I stumbled upon a large gathering of novice monks there all kneeling and chanting in unison, the large teak wood temple reverberating with their call. An incredible sight and a photo op extraordinaire. During the Yi Peng celebration, the monks filled the wat’s large open courtyard with hundreds of flames burning at ground level in small clay bowls mimicking a fleet of krathongs floating down the Ping River while the celebration’s khom loi lanterns sailed through the night’s sky. Wat Chedi Luang’s offering was its normal spot lit Buddha perched as a focal point for its circular driveway in front of the temple. From what I had seen of the wat, it was yet another of the ‘white wat/red tile roof’ school of Thai temples, reminiscent of a few hundred similarly built wats throughout the Kingdom. A bit mundane, too commonplace to draw me in.

But on a long visit to Chiang Mai with days busily filled doing nothing I decided to take a walk up to the wat and poke around. At worse I’d get a photo of another crumbling pile of bricks. The visit turned out to be much more enjoyable than I’d expected and I returned again the next day to spend more time there.

Interior of the wiharn at Wat Chedi Luang

I started my tour at the wiharn, a fairly recent part of the wat built in 1928. It has a rather imposing standing Buddha inside surrounded by large black columns intricately decorated with gold leafed designs. The pillar’s lotus shaped finials set off the temple’s red ceiling while the gold leaf shimmered, lit by a series of crystal chandeliers. It’s a rather dramatic interior, the window shutters display the same black and gold color scheme. In retrospect, the wiharn alone was worth visiting the wat. But then there’s the stupa.

The 270 foot tall brick chedi behind the temple is a massive edifice flanked on all four sides by gigantic staircases replete with naga balustrades. It’s no longer crumbling. In the early 90s it was reconstructed and today is the highest structure allowed to be built within the old city. It dominates the rear courtyard of the wat, casting its shadow on an urban park like setting that includes several small chapels and a black and plum colored building that houses a reclining Buddha statute.

At the top of the chedi are four Buddha statutes, each taking a position of the four points of the compass. The one sitting in the eastern niche is a reproduction of the Emerald Buddha, the original of which once occupied that spot before being moved to Luang Prabang and finally to Bangkok where it now sits in a place of honor at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha on the grounds of the Grand Palace.

Wat Chedi Luang Stupa

The promenade surrounding the chedi is a nice place to sit and watch the novice monks make their way to classrooms; a series of benches under shady tress make it an inviting place to stop and rest a while. Signs asking touri not to pay vendors selling caged birds to set free far out number the lonely old woman actually selling the birds.

The same black and plum colored structure that houses the Reclining Buddha also is home to a big, fat, Sangkhachai Buddha, similar in style to the ‘Happy Buddha’ you often see in China. Phra Sangkadchai was a notable Thai monk. One tale says that he was so handsome that once even a man wanted him for a wife. To avoid a similar situation from happening again, Phra Sangkadchai decided to transform himself into a monk with an unpleasantly fat body. Evidently he’d never heard of chubby chasers.

The nearby chapels are dedicated to specific monks and hold life-size statues of them inside. Though smaller in size and stature than the main temple, each is finely detailed and worth kicking off your shoes so that you can go inside.

But before you get to the chedi and the smaller temples, to the right of the wiharn is a shady courtyard filled with stone tables and benches where the monastery holds its daily monk chat sessions (from 9am – 6 pm in case you are planning a visit). As magnificent as the pagoda was, the chance to sit down and talk with a monk was an opportunity too enticing to pass up. They’re quite welcoming and large signs designating the monk chat area implore: Do not stand looking from afar and walk away! With an invitation like that, how could I resist?

Sangkhachai Buddha

The monks available to talk with are novices. I’m sure part of the program is to entice donations from visitors; a larger part is to provide the novice monks a chance to practice their foreign language skills. The wat is home to the Lanna campus of the Mahamakut Buddhist University, so the compound is crawling with young monks. I assumed these guys are normally peppered with questions about Buddhism and the monkhood, so after being assigned a young monk and taking a seat in the shade I started our chat with a flippant question, “Seen any good movies lately?”

I’d expected maybe a laugh before we launched into a religious discussion, but Wit, my monk for the day, had just seen Avatar and was enthralled with the movie. So Wit and I spent over and hour chatting about the Avatar experience. Service as a monk aside, he turned out to be a typical teenager, really not all that different from teens back home. Though his English was a bit better.

I don’t know if the latest science fiction blockbuster is an approved subject for the Monk Chat program, but Wit had a great time discussing the movie and probably had one of his more enjoyable monk chat sessions. I returned again the next day, armed with some photos, to ask a few questions that had been plaguing me about Buddhism. Although I didn’t expect to get to talk with Wit again, when I walked up to the area I heard a delighted cry of “Avatar” come sailing out of the shadows, quickly followed by Wit in his saffron robes.

Wit, waiting to chat.

Buddhist beliefs and religious practices were not my main interest for our second chat session. Matters of a more practical nature were. What I really wanted to know was what the various color of robes monks wear signify. Different status? Various sects? Perhaps job duties? Day of the week? I’d brought several of my ‘Monk Shot!’ photos to use rather than getting lost in translation of the different colors I’ve seen monks wearing and showed Wit two of them. The first was of a monk in the standard saffron robe, the second of a monk from a visit to Doi Suthep wearing a gold color robe of a heavier woven cloth. Showing the first photo, I pointed at Wit and said, “Like you.” Showing the second, I laid my finger against the gold robe and asked, “Why he wear this color?

Wit thought about it for a minute, then answered, “He cold.”

Guess there was my answer. The other shots went back into my bag and we returned to a more weighty topic: round two on Avatar.

The made up language used by the aliens in the movie must have some kinship with the Thai language. While Wit often stumbled over English words, he spoke the language of the Na’vi like a native. During our chat the previous day he’d talked about his favorite scenes. This time he tried explaining how the way the aliens in the movie lived their life coincided with the way of Buddha and the path to enlightenment.

Wit started with the small floating white blossoms, the ‘Atokirina’, using his fingers to mimic their graceful floating through the air. Once he was sure I was with him, he proclaimed, “Buddha.” Then again using pantomime he demonstrated the joining of the Na’vi’s braided hair with the ‘Pa’li’ and ‘Ikran’ (that’d be the horse thingies and flying bird creatures for those of you who do not speak the language of Pandora). And again Wit nodded and said, “Buddha.” Warming to his subject, he pointed to nearby trees, bushes, and flowers, and then made an all encompassing gesture identifying his meaning with “Eywa” and again nodded and smiled, “Buddha!”

Novice Monks and Naga

When Wit got to the major battle sequences and started making large exploding sounds, whether he was about to add another point to his claim of the movie’s Buddhist leanings or not, a stern look from a older mink supervising the novices quickly quieted him down.

His attempt at Buddhist instruction was infectious, as was his enjoyment of the opportunity to talk about his favorite movie. I smiled and nodded a lot, encouraging him to go on though my memory of the movie was not as detailed as his. But when I got back to my hotel I turned to Google to make some sense of what Wit had been trying to communicate to me, and there certainly was a religious theme of expressing a harmony with nature in the movie. Like Buddha is to Thais, in the movie, Eywa is the guiding force and deity of the Na’vi. Buddha teaches that to reach a state of enlightenment, you must perceive the fundamental mystic truth that is inherent in all living things. This too was the philosophy of the Na’vi, expressed in how they bonded with the flora and fauna of their world.

Do not encourage the caged bird vendors at Wat Chedi Luang.

It was a shame Wit was unable to give me his take on the movie’s ending, thanks to the dour old monk keeping an eye on him. Afterward, I considered how different our two cultures are. In Thailand, a teenager see a science fiction movie like Avatar and relates it to the teachings of his religion. In America a teenager sees a movie like Avatar and is pissed he’s too old to get one of the movie related toys in a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

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Bonus Shot: Wat Chedi Luang

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Chiang Mai, Monks, Photography, Wats

Little Monk, Big Stupa

Cry Baby

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Transportation

Enjoy Your Flight

I previously posted an entry reporting on HolidayExtras.com’s poll of 5,000 of its customers that resulted in a large portion of responding air passengers saying that more than anything else they’d like airlines to ban kiddies from flights. The majority of those polled just wanted a ‘kid-free’ zone on airplanes, while a third of responders went as far as saying they’d approve of flights that ban children completely. Evidently, at least one airline was listening.

Malaysia Airlines has introduced a baby ban after receiving a number of complaints about crying infants from first class passengers. Malaysia Airlines CEO Tengku Azmil says that in response to first-class passengers complaining about spending a lot of money and not being able to sleep due to crying infants, the airline has decided not to install bassinets in the first class cabin of its new Airbus A380 and Boeing 747-400 fleet. Passengers wishing to travel with babies will have to book bassinets in business or economy sections instead.

The airline’s baby ban will only cover their long haul flights. Malaysia Airlines’s 747-400s fly between Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, as well as on their KL-London and KL-Amsterdam routes, with the Airbus A380s due to take over those routes next year.

Of course crybabies around the world are complaining about the airline’s decision. The rest of us know that nothing dooms a trip quicker than spotting a pint-sized fellow passenger within a few rows of yours when you get onto the plane. You know the next fifteen hours will be a hellish nightmare of screaming, crying, and the waft of baby poop floating through the cabin. So far the airline seem to be sticking to its guns. If their attempt to provide a more enjoyable flight for the majority of their passengers is a success, more airlines might follow suit in the future.

Monk Shot! #23

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Cambodia, Monks, Photography, Wats

A Window To A Better Day

It was such gorgeous day outside that I took a long stroll through the downtown area of Siem Reap. A slightly chilly morning had evolved into a spectacular afternoon of crystal blue skies; just warm enough to be comfortable, not so hot as to send you running in search of air conditioning. Walking through the compound of Wat Preah Prom Rath I spied this novice monk stuck in a classroom, his attention not on his teacher’s instruction but instead on the beautiful day that he was missing.

Running on Empty

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And More!

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s hero and role model, serial killer and baby rapist John Wayne Gacy.

Two weeks after she filed her candidacy papers, yesterday morning Congresswoman Michele Bachmann – aka that crazy bitch running for president. No the other one – officially launched her presidential campaign in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. Standing in front of her childhood home, Bachmann told Fox News, “that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,” comparing herself to fellow former Waterloo resident John Wayne Gacy.

Finally a politician who tells the truth. And Ms. Bachmann’s distinct brand of craziness starts to make sense. Gacy was a serial killer who dressed up as a clown for children’s events and is responsible for raping and murdering at least 33 young boys during the 1970s. Born in Chicago, Gacy moved to Waterloo to work for his father-in-law and was sentenced to 10 years for sodomy while living in Bachmann’s hometown. He began his killing spree after his release, and his return to Illinois.

Bachmann continues to demonstrate her presidential chops and a cute knowledge of American history. After previously misidentifying where the American Revolutionary War began, today she showed that she didn’t know the difference between The Duke and a crazed kiddy rapist. Or the difference between her ass and a hole in the ground.

In an earlier speech Congresswoman Bachmann rewrote history again by stating that the founding fathers abolished slavery when the previous record held that at the time our country was born, by law, blacks weren’t considered people, but property. Some of the founding fathers were slave owners, including Thomas Jefferson who fathered children with one of his slaves, and George Washington who yanked nine teeth out of the mouth of one of his slaves so he could have dental implants for himself. (And why were we taught as children about George chopping down that damn cherry tree instead? The teeth thingy is a much better story.)

Since announcing her papers were in the mail two weeks ago, Bachmann’s star has risen quickly among crazy tea party Republican voters. In a recent Rasmussen Reports poll Bachmann is favored for the country’s top spot by 19 percent of voters, in second place behind ‘Mitt For Brains’ Romney at 33 percent. The leading candidate was the ever popular Undecided. Bachmann’s rapid rise in popularity is due to her, uh, um, well, ok . . she, um,uh . . . wait ! I know! She was . . . oh, no, that wasn’t it, so, um, uh . . . . did you hear about the Gacy thing?

Meanwhile, fellow republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has answered a burning question that has plagued white people across the land: What are we suppose to call you folk? In the 60s the politically correct term was black. Then African American became the correct term. Then, sometime in the late 90s, black started duking it out for supremacy once again. Over the last decade white America has been confused, unsure of which of the two is correct (except for Dr. Laura who stuck to the traditional ‘nigger’).

Cain has settled the question, providing liberals with the word on the word. It’s American Black. A patriotic term that the people formerly known as black can now claim, right up there with American Back Bear, American Black Duck, American Black Hereford, American Black Ale, and the ever popular American Black and Tan Coonhound. Cain, busy whipping up a pizza, had no comment on whether or not his country’s founding fathers owned slaves.

Siem Reap’s Night Market(s)

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Cambodia, Markets & Shopping

Siem Reap’s Angkor Night Market

From the number of markets crammed into this tiny town, you’d think Siem Reap is all about shopping. However, most touri, if not all, visit Siem Reap to see the ancient Khmer temples just outside of the city. Shopping is just an add-on bonus, something to do at night when entrance to the temples closes down. At night,non-shopaholics head to Pub Street to soak up another Siem Reap speciality: a hangover. I’d already spent a few mornings ruing my previous night of fun and decided shopping might be a less detrimental form of entertainment. At least for one night. And figured any SE Asian town has got to have a night market.

The Old Market, located just a few streets away from Pub Street, is open late into the night. Though by then its customer base is all foreign. Locals pack the place early in the day shopping for produce, meat, and household goods. The tourist knickknack booths are available for perusal during daytime hours, but the majority of visitors are out at the temples or viewing the surrounding countryside.

Whether you drop into the Old Market during the day or at night you quickly realize there are about a dozen different booths offering different merchandise. Multiplied by a few hundred. Same stuff over and over again with far too much of the local handicrafts being made in Viet Nam and shipped in from Thailand. I’d visited the Old Market on my previous trip several years before, so I was pleased when reading a free ‘What To Do’ publication that there was a new night market in town. And it promised a selection of handcrafted goods not available anywhere else in Siem Reap.

Wooden souvenirs from Cambodia, made in Viet Nam.

Cambodians are as skilled as Thais at reading maps. Which wouldn’t be a problem except that skill level transfers over to making maps. The nice map included in the magazine made no sense so I manned up and asked the front desk clerk at my hotel for directions to the night market. “Which night market?” he asked. Yup, there’s more than one. Because in a town that covers maybe 12 small blocks downtown, a single spot to feed a touri’s shopping jones would make too much sense. So I pulled my handy little guide out and pointed to a picture. He smiled, and drew a simple diagram showing the route from my hotel to the market. Nice. And close. Out of curiosity I asked him where the other night market was. He smiled again and placed a big X right next to the spot he’d designated as the market I wanted to go to.

So if you are headed to the night market in Siem Reap, don’t be concerned about which is which because the first, the Noon-Night Market, just off Sivatha street, flows along and then dumps you at the entrance of the second, the Angkor Night Market. If you miss the large lit overhead sign of either, you won’t know that you just left one and entered the other. And if you can’t find either because you are trying to follow the map in the free What To Do guide, don’t despair: just head over to the Old Market instead; regardless of the market, they all sell the same stuff.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother trying to find the officially designated night market(s) as opposed to the market is just open at night or the night market that is also open during the day. Prices were surprisingly less there than you’ll find at the Old Market. T-shirts were a steal; everyone settled on the same deal displayed on a variety of homemade signs: Buy Four $8.00, Get One Free. (Cambodia uses the U.S. dollar; their version, the riel, is close to being worthless and is usually only handed out as change). Five T-shirts for eight bucks is cheap. And, their XL size really is XL. I loaded up; at that price they become disposable, their cost cheaper than what it would run to launder them. It’s doubtful they’d last through many washings anyway.

Trinkets for sale under thatched huts @ Angkor Night Market.

If you are going to the night markets from the Pub Street area, the first market you come to is the Noon-Night Market, primarily storefronts running along both sides of the street with a few mini-arcades stretching deep into a few of the buildings. I ran across the first DVD store I’d seen in Cambodia at the Noon-Night Market, and like everything else in the country, prices were dirt cheap. The discs are undoubtedly pirated movies, eh, sue me. I bought the first two seasons of Torchwood, a British TV show I’d heard about but had not yet bothered to see, and ended up paying less than $1 per disc. The vendor carefully loaded each disc into a player showing me they all worked and were all the movie they were advertised to be while I enjoyed the shop’s air conditioning. Most illegal DVD sellers in Thailand do the same. The problem for an American is that most times they are not formatted for US players. As with the metric system, we don’t use the same system as the rest of the world. But I lucked out, they all worked when I got home. So DVDs that played at home and T-shirts that actually fit: damn! Thailand could learn a lesson from the Cambodian pirated goods industry.

At the end of the bustling street a dirt road separates the Noon-Night Market from the Angkor Night Market. This is the market advertising a different selection of merchandise, handcrafted items not available at the other markets. Maybe they mean not available at the other markets in Peru. To be fair, there were a few stalls offering something different, though most were stocked with the same stuff you’d already passed on back in town. But the vendors were all careful to tell you that they handcrafted their merchandise themselves, an obvious lie but told with such a straight face you had to give them a few points for the effort. And the Buy Four $8.00, Get One Free T-shirt signs were, technically, all handcrafted.

Shopping for a brew at the night market.

The big difference at the Angkor Night Market is the layout. The shops are thatched huts strewn along a series of pebbled walkways. It is more aesthetically pleasing than the other markets in town and a cooler shopping experience, the layout allowing a gentle breeze to waft through the aisles. There are also two large bars inside toward the back so you can kick back and rest a bit, drink a few beers, and realize you’re back to doing exactly what you’d been trying to avoid doing by taking a night off to go shopping in the first place.

A Snapshot On Ethics

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Blogs, Photography

Yes, you have a camera, but do you have ethics?

I’ve been a photography buff for decades. Ever since I bought my first SLR camera, I’ve been addicted to taking photographs. I’ve been fortunate to live in some pretty damn photogenic places. So anytime I’m bored I grab my camera and head out to spend the day shooting whatever I come across. I’ve also been fortunate in being able to travel to some pretty exotic places, locales where it is almost impossible to not take a great shot.

I don’t tend to take typical touri shots when travelling. I seldom snap establishing shots, those showing the name of the place I’m visiting or, using a temple in Thailand as an example, the entire wat. My eye is attracted to colors, especially when they play off each other, patterns or lines that repeat themselves, and movement. I lean more toward shots of small details than those showing the big picture. But that’s because I shoot when I travel to provide photographic remembrances of where I’ve been and of what I experienced. Not for proof I was there. So I never take the ‘here’s me in front of (fill in the blank)’ shot. A photo of an intricate or unusual door knocker rather than the entire building resonates deeper for me and years later when I run across the shot it immediately triggers the day’s excursion, if not the entire trip, in my mind. And despite the advice I was given on a street in Penang, and as much as I appreciate the disciplined simplicity of The 7 Shot Rule, I snap away at whatever catches my eye. I take tons of photographs on every trip.

As fascinating as buildings, street scenes, and touri attractions may be, it really is the people of a place you visit that speaks to that locale’s soul. I’ve a photo I took of an old lady performing janitorial duties at a small shrine on the grounds of Tanah Lot in Bali – a shot I’ll come back to here in a minute – that I treasure much more than those I took of the temple that day. I don’t think it is possible to really capture the feel of a place unless you also capture the picture of some if its residents. And there’s the rub. And where one’s moral compass and sense of ethics, not to mention common decency, come into play.

I recently read a blog post that was about older farang and Thai bar bois. I think. The blogger’s fascination with stringing trite overblown phrases together made the narrative difficult to follow. I don’t know if his point was that such relationships were good or bad. I don’t know if he ever made a point, or if instead he too became lost in the inanity of his prose. The post wasn’t interesting enough to take a second stab at and I clicked over to a local weather report instead, something vastly more entertaining. But before I did, his lead-in photograph slowly loaded. It was an obviously surreptitiously taken shot of an old white guy and a younger Thai man starting their way across a city street. And I immediately thought, “Well, that will be a nice surprise if either of those gentlemen run across this blog.”

Surprise: yes. Nice: not so much.

Do you have the right to post a person’s picture on the internet without their approval?.

I highly doubt the blogger knew either of the two; it was a snuck shot taken from too far away for him to have been part of the group. I highly doubt whether he bothered to ask if he could take their picture. Or he would have taken another one, closer, and better framed. And I highly doubt if he bothered to talk to them and find out if in fact their relationship was what he assumed it to be. But he had no qualms about posting their picture as a graphic portrayal of a older/younger/ gay couple, most likely involved with Thailand’s commercial sex industry. His assumption about their relationship may have been correct. And probably was. But it could be as likely that the picture was of an elderly straight English teacher and a student, or even a elderly visitor being shown around town by a younger member of a family he was friends with. You’d think one’s ethics would demand investigating the circumstances surrounding that shot before publishing it on the internet. And asking for permission. But, obviously not.

I’d probably let that photo pass without comment if not for having previously read a post by the same blogger who stated he’d been taught that anyone out in public was fair game to anyone with a camera. I’m not sure if it was in the same post or another, he also once said that when someone asked him to not take their picture, he almost always assented to their request. Almost always. In other words, this blogger feels he has some inalienable right to take anyone’s picture at anytime. Even when they have asked him not to do so. Forget any question of ethics, morals, common decency, or respect for your fellow man . . . if I want your picture I will take it. And publish it on the internet too if it amuses me to do so. That the same blogger routinely attempts to portray himself a as a saint . . . well, I sympathize with him. It must be a hard life and damn difficult to be a saint when that halo keeps sliding down to hang noose-like around your neck.

With the advent of digital photography, everyone is a photographer these days. You don’t even need a camera. In many cases, your cell phone will suffice. Digital camera technology is amazing. Point and shoot cameras allow for professional looking shots with no need on the part of the photographer to know anything about the art. I have a friend who became fascinated with photography late in his life (well, in his early 30s; he’s not even 40 yet). Not surprisingly his love affair with taking pictures started in Thailand, when he was teaching English at a small school up north.

The boy doesn’t have a pedophiliac bone in his body, or he wouldn’t be my friend. But you’d be suspicious of his motives thanks to the pictures he likes to take; his initial shots were all of his young students and he got so many compliments on them that those type of shots remain his primary subject matter. I kid him constantly about his Margaret Keane school of photography. He doesn’t know an f-stop from a hole in the ground. And wouldn’t know how to set the aperture to take such a shot if he needed to. But he has a natural eye for composition and last year sold one of his pictures to National Geographic for their annual calendar. Professional photographers with a vast knowledge of technique and years of experience would undoubtedly like to kill him. Slowly. With much pain involved in the process.

With everyone out and about armed with a picture taking piece of technology these days, and with no need to know anything more than what button to push to take a shot (though many of today’s cameras do not even require that level of skill) the question of ethical photography plays an even greater role. Especially since so many of these photos get published on the internet. A few years ago, on a primarily gay website, I ran across a shot taken at Tawan during one of their Handsome Man contests. The picture was of the contestants on stage, but included some of the audience. And there I was, front and center (well, actually front and slightly to the right). I’m not closeted, so I didn’t care. And wish I’d saved a copy of the photo. But had the shot instead appeared on the cover of Time, I doubt I would have been as pleased. So the question is, if someone is out in public, do you have the right to take their picture and publish it without their consent?

Not A Happy Camper

Easy answer: No. Regardless of what your misguided high school photography teacher told you. Professional photographers seldom publish someone’s picture without first obtaining a consent, or release, to do so. Accredited journalists exercise the same degree of care, though crowd shots of significant newsworthy events are usually acceptable without obtaining permission of those photographed. In both cases, it is more a question of legalities than ethics that come into play. The ‘anyone in public is fair game’ argument would hold up in a court of law about as long as it took the defense attorney to get that dubious bit of wisdom out of his mouth. When it comes to photography, the courts have held that there is a different standard for public figures and private citizens. One’s ethics should tell you that without having to get the courts involved. My somewhat more sage high school teacher passed along a better piece of advice: If you have to make an excuse for, or justify your actions, ethically, you were wrong in the first place.

If the shot you are taking is for your own personal enjoyment and will not be published, it is a slightly different story and your conscious should be your guide. For me, even if that shot will never be seen by anyone but myself, I still would not be comfortable taking someone’s picture who has indicated they do not want to be photographed. The old lady in Bali I mentioned earlier is a good case in point. I love that photo. The expression on her face is priceless and speaks volumes. But when I took it, well, there’s some disgust there; I wasn’t sure if part of what her face was saying was, “Don’t.”

I could have easily ignored that reading and wandered off to take other shots. Instead, I followed her to where she dumped her basket of trash and showed her the pictures I’d taken of her. She did not speak English, and my Bahasa is minimal. But she laughed at the photo and at the look I’d captured, Rather uproariously for an old woman. So I was probably good to go. Even then, I asked, “okay?” and hugged my camera to my chest, asking her permission to keep the shot. With some of the smile still lingering on her face she patted my arm and nodded yes. Had she said no, I would have deleted the photo. Instead, not only did I get to keep a picture I treasure, I have a brief interaction, a small moment of enjoyment shared with a local that brings an even warmer memory than the shot alone would ever be capable of doing.

As far as publishing her picture on the internet? Mmmmmmmmm. Enjoy it now, I may think better of it later.

Turtle Ass Award Winner: Unethical Photographer/Bloggers

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Gems, Scams, and Greed in Thailand

I Fell In Love With A Bar Boy: Four Eyes

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Gay Thailand, Markets & Shopping

Any guy can look hot in sunglasses.

Noom, my bar boy friend and current love of my life, is a hottie. A vision to behold. Granted, my opinion is a bit biased. But even if you are not fond of muscles, ink, dark skin, or guys who look older than twenty, there is no denying that Noom is attractive. When we are out and about in Bangkok, too many people check him out, with obvious lust in their eyes, for my opinion of his looks to be wrong. That he has an exceptionally open and friendly face just adds to the package.

One of the things I hate about him is that the most god awfully hideous piece of clothing transforms into fashion worthy of a top runway model when he tries it on. So when we are out clothes shopping, while I diligently attempt to find a shirt that fits and looks good on me, he slips on shirt after shirt each fitting like a glove and each eliciting the same reaction in me: “Damn he looks good in that.” Quickly followed by, “Damn he’d look good taking that off.” Fortunately he’s happy just trying clothes on and looking in a mirror or I’d quickly go broke.

My payback comes when we shop for pants. I’ve worn the same waist size for over twenty years and my legs are long enough that even pants of a single (long) length work fine. So my only concern is style; whatever pants I try on always fit. Noom, on the other hand, always goes for size 29, the Thai national waist size. He’s bulked up over the last few years. Muscle, not fat. He really needs size 30 now. And hates being reminded of that fact. So after trying on a pair of size 29 that are too tight and then having to move to the 30s, I make sure to loudly announce he needs the larger size. And then start discussing how terrible it is that a diet of pizza and hamburgers is detrimental to your waistline. He tries to ignore me, finds a pair of size 30s he likes, we buy them and then wander off with me thinking about how hot he’ll look taking them off. Yes, I have a one-track mind.

As hot as he looks wearing whatever he’s decided on for an outfit that day, he surprised me while we were shopping at MBK by deciding he needed a pair of glasses. Not sunglasses. Regular spectacles. I was getting a new pair from the shop on the ground floor I normally buy glasses from. As usual he was trying on a series of frames as an excuse to check himself out in the mirror when he made his announcement. My right eyebrow shot up, drenched in skepticism. Sure the boy is vain. With good reason. But glasses? Corrective eyewear is not generally considered to be something that makes you look attractive. Even people who need glasses often wear contacts instead to avoid the ‘four-eye’ look. Glasses are not the fashion spectacle most people are after.

Of course the store clerk, smelling money in the air, immediately ushered him to the back of the store where the in-house optician tests your eyesight. I have a strong feeling that the amount of knowledge required to be called an optician in Thailand is much less than what is required in the U.S. But he had the right machines and an official eye chart and was wearing a white lab coat, so who’s to say. He looked pretty official. But then I do need glasses.

There’s just something about a man in glasses . . .

Back home, kids at a fairly early age get used to having their eyes tested. Noom had never had the experience, his confusion over the entire process marking him as a eye exam virgin. I kept telling him to quit squinting. The optician kept telling him something in Thai, which when I asked for the translation, I got in reply, “I tell him stop squinting.” Maybe the doc had more experience than I thought. Not surprisingly, since money was to be made, the conclusion was that yes, Noom’s eyesight was slightly off and he’d benefit from wearing a pair of specs. Noom was a happy camper. It reminded me of the disgust my grandmother showed over a new doctor once, saying, “He couldn’t find anything wrong with me. We need to find a different doctor.”

Back out to the sales floor to check out frames again, this time with purpose. And I finally found an item Noom did not make look better simply by trying it on. For some reason he was attracted to frames of a teardrop shape, the mirrored version of which are favored by police the world over. He tried a few of that style in different sizes and I had to keep from laughing because each made him look like a Ninja Turtle. The ladyboy sales clerk let him play for a while, then steered him toward a style that better fit his face. And damn if the little bastard didn’t look hot. I’d had to go through the whole ‘I’m so embarrassed and the world is coming to an end’ trauma of my first pair of glasses in high school, and Noom walks out of the store wearing his first pair, looking hotter than ever.

And he was thrilled with them. If for no better reason than he now had a good excuse to pause at every mirror within a half a block to see how he looked in his new eyewear. Of course just wearing them was not enough. He’d take them off and put them away in his eyeglass case frequently. So that five minutes later he could take them out and wear them once again. And find a mirror to see how he looked. That night in bed he pouted like a little kid when I told him he couldn’t sleep in them.

Four eyes and a six pack.

Three months later I was back in Bangkok and reunited with Noom once again. When he showed up at the hotel he was enthusiastic about my visit as usual, but also quite anxious and a bit worried. Didn’t take long for him to tell me the sad tale of how he’d lost his new glasses. He was devastated. Right. Like I didn’t see that coming. I don’t think age matters. Everyone always loses or breaks their first pair of corrective eyewear. Fairly quickly. He’d lost his sometime one day between going to work and returning home after a night with a customer. He had slipped them into their case before taking to the stage, having quickly learned that regardless of how good he thought he looked wearing glasses, they did not have the same effect on potential customers. When he got home, they were no longer in his pocket and nowhere to be found back at the bar.

We headed back to MBK, he spent another hour trying on a whole new range of frames, finally settling on a pair that once again made him a vision of hotness. And once again I considered how good he’d look taking them off that night as we slipped into bed. Leaving the store and not realizing his loss of the first pair was expected, he promised not to lose his new pair, fretfully observing that if he did, “You’d keel me!” Yup, whether it’s his body, the clothes he wears, his glasses, or his cute accented English, Noom’s a hottie.

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Eye Candy: Apologies . . .

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Just realized there was not a single picture of naked male flesh anywhere on my homepage. This should rectify that error. Nicely.

Lust means never having to say you’re sorry.

An Important Date In Hawaii

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As the years pass I try to avoid becoming yet another grumpy old codger, complaining about the state of the world and telling one and all – or anyone who will listen – how much better things used to be. So I try to give today’s youth a break instead of shaking my head at their collective stupidity, lack of brains, and poor taste in music. We were all young once. And we all made mistakes. Some of us learned. Some of us continue to be as ignorant as we were at sixteen. And some of us still try to date eighteen-year-olds. But a rant about the kids of today, or about grumpy old farang, is not the purpose of today’s post. Instead I’ll share with you what I’ve always thought is a cute story about a friend of mine in Hawaii.

My buddy and running partner Dave, who you’ve met on these pages before, married a local girl in Hawaii, Kim. Who came complete with a ready made family. Which was cool by Dave since he got to avoid the joys of diaper changing. And the kids, his new family, had all reached puberty too, so he also got to avoid that whole mine field. But they were all still young enough they needed parental guidance, wise advise from an elder to help them learn how to deal with what the world might throw their way.

Growing up in the islands doesn’t exactly prepare you for the world beyond Hawaii’s shores. No problemo if you will live your life on Gilligan’s Island, there’s a built in fail safe community of friends and relatives. You need not master even the most basic of life skills, or even bother to learn simple English. Neither is required for a happy life in Hawaii. And that’s okay. A life spent in paradise is nothing to complain about. But if you want the opportunity of success outside of the Aloha State, a basic knowledge of how the world works is required. At the very least.

Dave took to his fathering duties with a passion. And he wanted his kids to have a chance at succeeding at whatever they desired to do in their lives. Having not had a father during their formative years, it was an up-hill battle. But he did his best, taking any and every opportunity to school them in the game of life. Kimo, the oldest boy, was a senior in high school. Good at athletics, popular with the girls, like a lot of local kids he spent most of his time at the beach waiting for the perfect wave. Off the beach, he had the intelligence level of a jellyfish. He may have mastered the difference between a green light and a red one, but that was about the extent of his knowledge of anything that did not have to do with the ocean.

Teenage guys have yet to perfect their sense of style, an accomplishment many guys never manage to master. That’s why so many straight guys are dressed by their wife. In Hawaii, kids live their lives in a pair of shorts. Occasionally a shirt gets thrown on if attending a dress-up affair. In Hawaii, it is quite possible to reach your senior year in high school having never even worn a pair of shoes. Kimo’s senior prom was coming up, he needed a tux, and Dave decided he’d help him and at the same time teach him how to go about choosing and renting one.

The selection process was going along fairly well. Just a minor glitch over Kimo not having brought a pair of socks along to try on shoes. But then being Hawaii, that wasn’t an uncommon obstacle and the tux rental store owner smoothed things over with a loaner pair. Being a teenager, Kimo kept trying on suits of various pastel colors. Dave, to his credit, let the kid exhaust his choice of blues and oranges before suggesting a rather boring black number. And then surpassed the efforts of most parents by getting Kimo to agree he looked a whole lot of a hell hotter in a classic tux than in the chartreuse one he’d been eyeballing. Senior Prom is a big thing in a kid’s life. Why parents allow their child to pick out an outfit that will cause years of embarrassment over their senior prom picture is beyond me. But maybe those years of embarrassment are a payback, so maybe that lack of direction makes sense. Not having kids I often forget one of the joys of parenthood is the psychological scars you can inflict on your offspring over the years.

Why do parents allow their kids to dress like this for their senior prom? Oh, right. So you can laugh at them for years to come.

After being measured for size and picking out a bit of bling to jazz up and personalize the staid tux, the store owner passed over the tux rental form for Dave to complete. That would have been the easy option, but Dave wanted Kimo to learn so he handed the form and a pen to the kid and let him take a stab at it. When Kimo finished filling it out he handed it back to Dave to check:

Name:
Yup, first, last, legible. Good job. So far, so good, and Dave was happy.

Address:
Numbers and letters, always a tricky combo, but again the kid did good.

Phone:
Wow! Cell and home numbers without being asked; damn this kid’s on fire!

Event:
Well, ‘Senior Prom’ was a bit generic, but this was Hawaii, from the zip code alone they’d know which school it was. So thumbs up again.

Date:
Leilani.

Lol. And he’d been doing so good! But ya know, there was some logic at work there. Dave corrected Kimo’s error and immediately began spreading what has always been one of my favorite stories. Kimo had a great time at his prom, I’m sure Leilani did too. I still see Dave and his family a few times each year. And whenever I see Kimo, I ask him for the date. And he always flips me off. How to handle a smart ass is something you learn at an early age, even in Hawaii.