Monday, March 9, 2009

Where is my tropical island when I want it?

Oh, here it is!  Or was...  
We got back from Thailand yesterday and we've hit the ground running as if we never left (wait... weren't we supposed to relax more?)  
This pic was from the last part of our trip when we decided to just sit on the beach and drink out of coconuts.  The daytime was lovely on this island.  At night, it was like an extended frat-party meets american night club.  We just pulled our sun-tired travel-weary butts from beach to restaurant to beach to bungalo-with-free-nightclub-soundtrack.   It was rough.  haha.
Ok, I don't know if you noticed when I've posted a picture of a Buddhist temple in Japan, but here is one is Thailand to compare...  I think we chose the wrong country to live in order to study Buddhist art.  The inside of these places was a hundred timed more impressive.  We took lots of notes and photos so we can use many ideas in our future cob house.  I truly believe that in Thailand, art is meant to help people transcend their difficult lives to someplace beautiful, magical and peaceful.  It is powerful.
I'm not sure why I look pasty white in this photo.  Oh, right!  Because it's cold and wintery in Japan so I looked like a snow woman in Thailand.   Anyway, elephants don't discriminate (especially when they are chained to a tree and fed cucumbers which I'm pretty sure have little nutritional value and aren't a natural food for elephants, but then again we feed corn to cows...)  By the way, did you know that elephants have coarse black hairs on them?  Weird and cool.
Oh, lala!  Steps to a stupa (which I couldn't go up: "No Lady."  Only monks live here.)  Beautiful!
We took a cooking class for a day!  Delicious!  Come to our house and we will make you pad thai, spring rolls, papaya salad, coconut soup, etc!  (coconuts grow in Vermont, right?)
This is one tiny section of a wall painting in a temple.  Wow.
This is an egg pickled to be black.  I am ashamed to say that I didn't have the guts to try it. Mikel said it was OK...  but it smelled a little like cat pee.
Just ignore the fact that I look like the living dead and enjoy part of the royal palace (I had just spend 30 minutes in the ol' bathroom "wondering" what I could have eaten to make me feel this way... I swear I didn't drink the tap water!!)  
View from the train on the way to Chiang Mai.  Amazingly beautiful.

So here I go!  Back to the studio and back to life in Japan.  Mikel and I feel now more than ever that Japan may be the most proper country on the planet.  Restraint, manners, and tradition are the name of the game here.  We've really enjoyed it and have learned things about ourselves and about this part of the world we treasure.  Now we're ready for the beautiful cherry- blossom-filled spring and then for our Japan game to be over so we can start a new one!  We're trying to live each day to its fullest and make some freakin' blartwork in the process.  


4 comments:

Clare & Tim said...

With all this food you are learning to make, you are going to have to start a restaurant on the side with your art career! Half art studio, half yummy food center. I vote yes :)

Michelle Summers said...

Wow that looked like an awesome trip, envious is all I can say.

megan bisbee said...

Woah, that half yummy food center/half studio sounds like a dream come true. That`s two votes. (no black eggs though...except maybe for novelty reasons)

mudly said...

Make that three votes!