Southeast Asia

I returned last Friday from my wonderful trip to Bangkok, Cambodia and Vietnam. It was an amazing trip and a peek into such a different culture. I'm finding it difficult to plow through my photos, correct the lighting, delete duplicates and decide which one to show. Enough procrastinating! Today I will only show you some from Bangkok. Our three day stay was an extension to our tour, which started in Saigon. We thought that if we were going to fly that far, we might as well see as much as we could of that part of the world.

The next five pictures are from Wat Arun in Bangkok. A "wat" is a temple and we saw lots and lots of them. You know how you can get cathedral and museum overload in Europe, well here it is temples.
This was a huge complex, only showing a small part here. We were able to climb quite a way up and go inside.

A great deal of this temple was covered with mosaics of stone and ceramic.

So now you know not to get a Buddha tattoo.

I remember seeing this huge gold Buddha about 40 years ago with my late husband. It impressed me then and still did now. It has an interesting story, much abbreviated here. It was probably made in the 13th century and moved more than once. At one time it was plastered over and inlaid with stones, perhaps to discourage thievery. In the last move, in the 20th century, it was dropped and bits of plaster came off to reveal the gold beneath. It is solid gold, some 18k and some 14k and weighs over 5 tons.

Yes, there are McDonalds everywhere, but I've never seen one in this traditional greeting pose. I couldn't resist taking a picture. This was outside a modern shopping mall not far from our hotel.

We went to visit a flower market, which mostly sold orchids and marigolds, primarily used for gifts to be left at the temple. Orchids just thrive in that hot humid climate

Typical offering to leave at the temple.

Alright, that's enough for today. I don't want your eyes to glaze over. Come back tomorrow or the next day and I'll show some more.