Bangkok’s Grand Palace, somewhere between beauty and gaudy, and much closer to beauty. The sprawling grounds of the palace contain an Alice In Wonderland-like maze of fantastical creatures and Buddhist temples. The buildings are covered with gold leaf, mirrors, bells, and a kaleidoscope of colors created by embedded pieces of broken porcelain that once served as ballast on ancient trading ships.
View from our bobbing water taxi along the mucky Chao Phraya that bisects Bangkok. Fast boats whiz up and down the river, and it’s the funnest way to get around the city by far. That boat in the picture is typical: powered by a large unmuffled car engine that is started with a battery and stopped by putting a hand over the air intake, the driver pivots the engine and it’s 10 foot long propeller shaft that sticks over the stern into the air. We ended up at Wat Arun, the high temple visible on the far shore.
Buddha’s omnipresent eyes, peering over the bulge of Swayambhunath Stupa, aka The Monkey Temple. Swayambhunath is impressive in its size and ornamentation, perched on a hilltop above Kathmandu’s western flank with sweeping views over the city below. The stupa was erected in honor of a monkey general who long ago brought his monkey army to the aid of a human Nepali king. Rhesus monkeys roam the grounds freely, and they have grown quite adept at grabbing the food of unwary people. One even grabbed my camera (which I fortunately still had connected to me).
A Hindu man being cremated on the bank of the Bagmati River in Pashupatinath, a primarily Indian area on the outskirts of Kathmandu. When a local Hindu dies, the family men are responsible for bringing the body here and cremating it in public. The ritual brings together the Hindu beliefs of birth from the river and death returning to the river, into which the dead person’s clothes and ashes are swept. The river is very polluted, and just down river people were washing, cleaning food, and bathing.
This is the ancient city of Patan, beside Durbar Square where you buy ducks, goats, and chickens. The city contains an eclectic mix of architectural styles and buildings, many of which were once royal establishments that now serve as well adorned slums. 70% of the buildings here and in Bhaktapur were destroyed in a 1934 earthquake, so what remains is being reinforced in the event of another shaker; most of that work is performed through international agencies since the locals don’t share the foreign interest in “a bunch of old crumbling buildings”.
The now-stagnant-green baths of the Malla kings, in Bhaktapur. Fresh water was piped in from many miles away, spouting out of the carved serpent’s mouths for the kings to luxuriate in.
The centuries-old public water supply for the residents of Bhaktapur. Since homes do not have running water, this is where people gather drinking and cooking water, wash laundry, and bathe. The piping systems and sculpted fountain heads are the same as those used when the water supply was originally built.
Boy moving butter-fueled candle offerings to a Buddha statue in Hiranya Varna Mahivihara (aka The Golden Temple) of Patan. The temple is very well preserved, mostly due to centuries of continuous patronage from local merchants. It still houses a working monastery, 3 tortoises that roam the courtyard, huge rat-like mice eating all the offerings, and elderly devout Buddhists repeating prayers as they circumnavigate the temple in a clockwise direction while spinning the prayer wheels (some of which are visible in front of the boy here).