About This Blog
Started 29 August 2005, this blog is meant primarily to follow my adventures around the world. There will undoubtedly be detours into other things that interest me.Return to the Grand Palace, Part II
As with Wat Arun, some of the Grand Palace buildings are decorated with chunks of ceramics - bowls and plates broken into pieces.
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Return to the Grand Palace
I was hugely taken with Bangkok's Grand Palace on my first visit, two days after my arrival in Bangkok. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to do it justice then, so I returned to see it again. I was interested to realize that I was going two days before my departure, giving my Grand Palace visits an odd symmetry, book-ends around my southeast Asia journey. I had a glorious sunny (and exceedingly hot) day this time, and I'm so happy with the photos that I'm going to post five of them in two blog entries.
One of many beautiful glowing rooflines to be seen throughout the grounds.
These are perhaps my favourite feature of the entire place. They enclose and "support" two big chedis on the grounds. You can see another one in this previous post. They were all upgraded and/or restored in 1982 - some of their predecessors are on display in a museum on the grounds. They had lost not only much of their mirror tile, but in some cases were reduced to the rebar form that supported the concrete. The surviving mirror tile was generally reduced to black.
Technically these shots are all on the grounds of Wat Phra Kaeo (rather than the palace itself), which is enclosed within the Grand Palace grounds. This is a picture of the wall of one of the Wat buildings.
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Land Mines
Try this search on Google, skim some of the links: landmine manufacture agreement. The U.S. refused to sign the international agreement banning the production and use of landmines: they're in good company with Russia, China, India, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and North and South Korea. Wait - that includes two of Mr. Bush's three "Axis of Evil" countries, an odd choice of alignment for the U.S. Cogent quotes from a couple of the search results:"Every 22 minutes someone falls victim to a landmine. Caring for landmine victims saps the economies and health care resources of communities already burdened by the hardships of war. Landmines impede reconstruction of wartorn communities, remove people from the work force, render agricultural land unusable, terrorize and confine civilian populations."
"Of the nations who have not signed the agreement, the largest are India, China, Russia, and the United States. In the case of the Americans, they refused to sign because the treaty contained no ‘Korean exception’: they wanted to retain the unconstrained right to mine the ‘demilitarized zone (DMZ)’ between North and South Korea. They claim the more than one million mines they have seeded along the DMZ help maintain the fragile peace by deterring a North Korean attack. What deters this mythical attack is not landmines: it is F-16s, and Patriot missiles, and a much more sophisticated panoply of weaponry than North Korea could ever hope to muster, even if they really do have nuclear capability."
While I usually have opinions about politics and I'm not too shy about airing them in person, I don't often declare them as publicly as this. I think this is an issue that's less likely than usual to divide people along party lines. I know there are Americans reading this blog (be they ever so few) - please consider calling your congressman. Here's a parting thought for you: Vietnam's war ended thirty years ago, and mines there are as much as 40 years old. The vast majority of them are still fully functional. Landmines remain active for decades, and they don't pay any attention to ceasefires or treaties.
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Lotus Flower (Photo)
You can also see a white lotus flower in this entry.
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Transportation, Always Entertaining
When I crossed from Vietnam to Cambodia, our transportation from the border most of the way to Phnom Penh was this boat. I'm about 99% certain that it's a retired hydrofoil. Why throw away a perfectly good boat hull just because it doesn't work as a hydrofoil anymore? Rip the fins off and throw it back in the water with a big diesel engine in it. The air circulation inside the body was so bad that most people ended up outside - it was cooler in the sun than inside in the shade. The ride took about three hours - not exactly hydrofoil speeds.
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