Alright, new year, and a new series… and a new photo essay!
In 2019 I got to visit Thailand for the first time. Unfortunately I didn’t really get to venture out of Bangkok, but fortunately there are lots of really cool things to see in the city. When you’re in Asia, you inevitably end up visiting a bunch of temples and shrines. To a degree they all have their similarities, but I enjoy the nuanced differences that can be seen in each country and culture. In Thailand, I immediately noticed the ornamental-looking “horns” (for lack of a better word) that adorn the roof tops of the various buildings in the temple complexes, and then this is mimicked with the pointy windows and even the pointy helmets the various deities and creatures wear in the sculptures throughout the temples. The other thing that stood out to me were all the ultra-complex tile mosaics that covered entire buildings. It must have taken an extremely long time to pull that off (pay close attention to the details in the photos below)! Impressive! The last thing that stood out to me were all the “pompom” trees. I’ve seen small versions of these here in the US (Holly and I tried to grow them on two different occasions and managed to kill them both times! 🙁 ), but never massive versions of them… like full-grown tree sized. I guess they use ladders and lifts to keep them groomed so well? No idea, but it was very beautiful.
All this gave Thailand a sense of uniqueness to me that I appreciated.
More next week!
–Dan Thompson
