...a "rescued" monkey at the elephant camp, chained around his neck, offered for photo shots.
...a dilapidated, ramshackle bungalow called (tongue-in-cheek, I imagine) the "3 Seasons."
...the lower half of a mannequin, randomly clothed (though whether intended as a comical or decorative statement is uncertain).
...a photo shoot for purposes we could not fathom (an Asian Alice in Wonderland?) at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.
...an architecturally remarkable lodging (bright pink dragon's limbs!) on Koh Samet.
...a strikingly modern coffee shop, "Coffee Blue," off a busy highway in rural Thailand.
...two stray cats taking shelter from the mid-day heat on a busy Koh Samet beach.
...my breakfast each morning.
...a baby walker abandoned on a busy city street.
...an enigmatic sand sculpture found on the Le Vimarn beach at dawn.
...the flotsam and jetsam collecting on a random branch at low tide..
...Amira's favorite fruit shake stand near the Sabai-Sabai.
...simple serenity.
...a shoe display at a Skytrain station.
...an abandoned spirit house at an abandoned building.
...a lone and lovely Thai cricket, burnished like fine wood, hiding behind the bath towel in the posh hotel (I rescued and released it in the garden on the balcony).
...the shrine at the elephant camp.
...chillin' on the beach at Koh Samet.
...an art exhibit that should, I think, be titled "Thailand," but wasn't.
...deities reclining in the lobby pool at Le Vimarn on Koh Samet.
...dragon fruit (also called pitaya) at a street market, its flaming exterior a disguise hiding the surprisingly bland white and black-speckled flesh within.
...a stray white dog on a white-hot sidewalk in Koh Samet village.
...random trash piled at one of the entrances to the popular Koh Samet public beach, whose photo follows.
...the Dan Kao Cabana Pier off Koh Chang.
...twin fishing boats we saw off the pier at our return.
...the giant shrine at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
...more chillin'.
...across the street from a "fish spa" on a Koh Chang street, where tiny (toothless!) garra ruffa fish nibble your feet clean (and where the Bangkok Post emphasized there was a serious risk of infection).
...the sign for the unconvincingly designated "Digital Park," pictured in the photo that follows.
...a modern convenience store, Thai-style.
...another view looking out from the the peerless Trat airport.
...birds-in-paradise draping down from a giant urn in the lobby of Le Vimarn.
...a photo commemorating the consecration of the Ban Changtai Elephant Park.
...spirit houses, at night, on a busy Koh Chang village street.
...a children's playground thoughtfully provided inside the Trat airport.
...the next tattoo I want to get.
...a garden outside a window at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
...the sign for Ban Changtai Elephant Park in its idyllic vision of itself.
...a monsoon shower at Rim Chiang Hotel during breakfast.
...the makeshift "home" of the fellow who rents the motorbikes.
...a blossom caught on the rental car door handle.
...fragrant frangipani floating in a ceramic rain-catcher.
...the body as sacred manuscript on the beach at Koh Samet.
...a few minutes of sublime peace.
...a photo that looks like a chalk pastel of children playing on the beach at night.
...one of three shrines immediately outside of highway 7-11 store, with, of all things, cans of soda as a votive offering.
...a garish, distorted figure, a tragic symbol of the sex industry in which approximately 2.8 million Thai women and men work (as estimated by a Thai professor in 2004), including 800,000 minors under the age of 18.
...a chipped and crumbling Thai statue with the ingratiating grin of the servant, holding bags of gold and silver, profits he hands over to his master.
And then there are just the random moments, not captured on digital film, but nonetheless so telling, so moving.
...a black dog limping painfully out of a city parking garage in early morning.
...a man fishing in a ditch filled with murky, polluted-looking waters by the side of the road.
...a flock of Asian Openbill storks lifting above a rice paddy.
...a woman nursing an infant while sitting in the passenger seat of an old pick-up truck hurtling past on the crowded road.
...a darling littleThai girl in front of an open air restaurant on a busy street very late at night, pressed into being a shill for the tourists when she should have long since been in bed, grabbing Amira's hand as we passed and trying to pull her by the arm to a table.
...a motorbike lying on the shoulder of the road, its young rider dashing out to retrieve his helmet from the middle of a busy two-lane road.
...a young, stunningly handsome, modern Indian male sitting at an airport table across from his modest and plain wife. As they leave I see a dark, heart-shaped bruise on her upper arm.
...a dilapidated spirit house with fresh votive offerings on the shoulder of a busy highway.
...a motorbike on which sit a mother, a father, and their toddler, improbably wedged between his father and the handlebars of the motorbike, racing past us on the shoulder of the road.
...a thin, bare-chested young Thai male turning to his side to throw a fishing net into a pond on a country road at dusk.
...a large pick-up truck crammed tightly with dusty, pale pink pigs, fat as the sausages they were soon to be.
...a black dog leaping out of the path of a dirty white pick-up as it aimed to hit him.
...a mammoth billboard spanning the width of an eight-lane highway advertising Dunlap tires.
...all traffic stopping at the Suvarnabhumi airport as the royal family motorcade drives up.
...a ten-foot tall black marble Buddha standing serenely in the back of a pick-up truck speeding down the highway.
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