Ayutthaya

Most of the Buddhas in Ayutthaya are missing a head and at least one hand, so I thought I’d lead with one that escaped the Burmese invasion (apparently the Burmese invaders believed the Buddha’s power was held in the head and right hand, so they chopped these off of most of the statutes in the [...]

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Make that 100 days

In my last post, I mentioned that music has been banned throughout Thailand since the death of the King’s sister on Jan. 1. I mentioned this because I truly could not imagine something like this happening in the States or in any other Western nation. If our president was assassinated, you could play any song [...]

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Happy 80th, King of Thailand

On Wednesday, we had the day off to celebrate the king’s 80th birthday. I thought about heading down to Bangkok for the festivities at the palace, but I ended up staying in Chaiyaphum to take part in the celebration here. The town erected a large stage (above) with an impressive collage of photographs marking different [...]

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Loi Krathong festival

The annual Loi Krathong festival was held last week all over Thailand, and the celebration here in Chaiyaphum was quite impressive. It was a lot bigger than anything I would have expected in a town like this. The traditional element of the festival centers on small, handmade boats (called krathongs) that are made with banana [...]

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Festival pics

There’s the postcard. There are actually a few thousand krathongs in the water, but most of the candles blew out about four seconds after the shivering 10-year-old put them into the lake. It was quite sad to watch, actually. Everyone brought their krathongs to the edge of the lake and handed them down to one [...]

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