Its like buddha baby

in honour of our leaving the clean water and cinema halls of thailand for the minefields and temples of cambodia at seven tomorrow morning, i thought i should take some time to catalogue those eccentricities of this fine nation that we have otherwise failed to relate to you all. a) thais, young and old, are addicted to menthol and camphor inhalents and it is possible to see them being shoved up noses everywhere! i want to embark on a nation-wide campaign to inform people of their addiction but i think they are too nasal-cavity-fixated. b) there is a handy bum-sprayer in every bathroom, so that you needn't ever worry about being caught without toilet paper (already an obsolete item to my man and myself... we gave that stuff up months ago and you should consider making the switch yourself. do you really want to rub that shit in?) c) transvestites and androgenous people are an accepted part of the fabric of thai society. we have seen some damn pretty men. most thai women and men have the same body type anyways~ no asses and similar faces. d) even monks don't finish their food, which we think is a crying shame! everytime we approach a table just vacated by a thai party, there is enough food remaining to feed the two of us. e) thailand caters to the hardly exclusive category of male "sex tourists," who come here to DATE their prostitutes and can be seen shopping with them nearly everywhere in bangkok. there are also neighborhoods full of go-go bars, in which dozens of waifs wave their bodies around like leaves, looking exceedingly bored under coloured lights. f) as we have told mimi and jason, there is the charming tradition of spirit houses, which are miniature houses built for the fairies of the premises so that they don't disrupt the proceedings of the main building. some are very lovely looking, so go the Bangkok photos to see an example of them. g) unlike india where the depiction of phalluses is very abstract, thais prefer the more life-like approach and are alarmingly realistic, albeit often times huge. they are fertility symbols and are present at shrines, temples, and even in amulet form. h) we are very fond of the park over the canal from our guesthouse, which daily hosts a gang of people evidently practicing to be in the circus (i.e. juggling, poi, and playing with sticks), gender-bending breakdancers, and a massive aerobics course instructed also by an androgenous lady-man. have you got a clearer picture of why this is such an interesting and enjoyable place? we hope so. cambodia may be a bit behind in the internet revolution so you may have to wait a few weeks to get the next installment of notes from us. you can always rerun our previous episodes. we never did.
with jungle love~
ingrid

ingrida and i were appalled today at the restaurant of the natural history museum where three monks left their table with enough food on it to feed three other monks. this we have been seeing from other thais and had mostly thought that it was due to city ethics. well apart from these shameless monk what i want to say is, organized religion is the same everywhere, buddhism is no different. at first i couldn't figure out why anyone would convert from buddhism to islam, and i am sure there were not so willing conversions but the idoletry here is up the roof. a lot of temples there isn't just one image of the buddha but there are dozens if not hundreds, and it sort of looks meaningless. the feng-shui of a lot of temples is really whack. i can see how a mosque is much more tranquil then a wat. but ofcourse i am not defending one religion over the other allah and buddha know that i love them them both the same. the organization of the religion is really what kills the spirit of the religion. just like organized government but i will not go into that right now, suffice to say that anarshi is the best way, because it is not a description of a way. get the tao?
alp