Sunday 18 November 2012

Other animals and Thai life.

An interesting form of decoration that we came across in our hotel in Bangkok was this rear end of an elephant having a dump. I'm sure there must be some deep religious, meaningful, significance to this but it is lost on me.
In homage of the crapping elephant
Other wildlife was thin on the ground, I guess a certain amount of eating anything that moves may be the case, certainly we were told that we'd see very few creatures other than birds. But this monitor that crossed the road in front of us was truly impressive, you can judge the size of it from the road.
Water monitor
We did come across this dog with a hot water bottle in its mouth.
He'll never swallow that!
Question: When is a fish not a fish (apart from when it's a hot water bottle that is)? 
Answer: When it's a mud skipper, that's when; fascinating creatures, lolloping around on the mud well clear of the water.


Mudskipper; neither fish nor frog.
So to Thai life. We didn't see a bus the whole time we were there, maybe there are some in the cities, but in rural areas this is the chosen form of public transport.
Any fares please?

Or the executive version.
Luxury travel.
The Thai population is very feminine, the ladies most definitely are, and quite a lot of the men, even the Thai boxers don't look particularly butch, not that I'd tell them to their face of course! Even the taxis are pink!
Penelope Pitstop's personal taxi company.
Roadside distractions are numerous. One of the most obvious features of the street furniture is the fact that the royal family's faces appear everywhere. I'm not sure if this is a display of abject obedience and enforced loyalty or whether it comes from a genuine love for the royals. Long live the king is written everywhere, but whether it is a heartfelt sentiment or there by his instruction I don't know. I do know it isn't safe to insult the king, so I won't. I'm sure it is because they all love their royal family and have a great deal of respect for them, just like our dear old Queen, we should have more pictures of her everywhere too. Long live the Queen!
Not sure who this lady is, I'm guessing a princess.
Not sure of the significance of this giant crab at Bang Poo (How old are you? Stop that childish giggling!) but being by the sea, I'd imagine good numbers of them get eaten thereabouts.
Giant crab, at least it's not defecating!
There too seemed to be a number of collections of beast statues along one of the roads, we came across goats, cattle, horses and even reindeer, plus of course the obligatory elephants (also not defecating as far as we could make out).
Elephant road furniture, not recommended to crash into these.
Down by the coast we stayed in a rather lovely location, here is the view from our window...
Sigh, wish I was looking out on this vista right now :-(

... here is the breakfast we were served, you see, very feminine...
Cute!
... and here is an early morning scene from our window. Luxury or what?

But not everyone lives in luxury in Thailand that is for sure. Of course we saw some rather opulent buildings, especially around Bangkok, but out in the sticks life looks pretty hard for your average Joe, housing can be very makeshift.
A bijou residence with a vista over the river.
Local people tend not to read newspapers it seems, so, in order that they should not miss out on the local news and gossip, it is broadcast every morning over loudspeakers, unlike Jeremy Paxman, you can't simply turn it off.
Enforced up to date information.
This monkey was about the only creature I came across that looked as if it was listening, not that it or any of us had any choice, but at least I had the luxury of understanding nothing, a bit like the other monkey in the area I guess!
"Uh huh! ... Uh huh... and then what happened... noooooo!
Funny that's exactly what happened to my tail too!"
So, of course everyone wants to know... what about the girls and the red-light district? Well curiosity got the better of us too and we couldn't resist taking a peek, just to see what all the fuss was about, reminded me a bit of Newport Pagnell on a Friday night actually. 
Took us ages to get a shot with nobody's husband in it!

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