"The pleasure of the three realms is as fleeting as a dewdrop on the tip of a blade of grass, vanishing in a single moment" - the Thirty Seven Bodhisattva Practices.

Bangkok, 12/10/06

How hard it must be for the saffron robed monks walking in a line down the crowded sidewalk to remember this. Bangkok. Bigger, dirty, noiser, more expensive than several years ago. How could it not be? With fifty percent of the world's population living in urban areas today, and with a predicted seventy five percent by 2050, the prognosis for the future is not particularly good. How much energy do these urban areas consume? Supposedly by 2050 the world's energy consumption will double. How can that be?

Our arrival here was a bit of a let down. We had so many hoops to jump thru before we could leave the states, and our expectations were accordingly great. Now, sleeping restlessly in a sweat soaked bed, with traffic roaring 24/7 in the street
below one wonders if it was all worth it. Certainly it feels like an end of an era.
Perhaps the days of cheap, unencumbered travel is over. Really, in a global economy who has time for it?

Bangkok has been for some time before our arrival in a state of continual excitement. First the coup, then the King's 80'th birthday. Then the King's 60'th anniversery of coronation. Tomorrow will be Constitution Day. Virtually every thai, man and woman, is wearing a yellow shirt -with the king's seal - to commemorate these wonderful events. Just a block away from our guest house is the Chao Phraya River, the commercial and emotional lifeline of Bangkok. You can sit in a park along the river's edge and watch rafts of floating hyacinth, longtail boats, tugs and barges and ferries moving up and down the muddy brown flow. Yesterday, from a small white washed fort that had guarded the river from French and English incursions in the 19th century we could see viewing stands erected on the far side of the river. Accompanied by ear-splitting popular music, teams of dragon boats were training for a race. Popular all over asia, these dragon boats are a tremendous elongate canoe with up to fifty paddlers, the pointed bow and stern, festooned with ribbons and streamers dipped almost to the water. But the screaming! The race announcers, screaming in a staccato tag-team frenzy, was something out of a bad movie. We thought it better to leave Bangkok for awhile so tonght we depart on an overnight bus for a backwater island on the Thai/Burmese border. Two weeks of sun and sand and navel gazing should prepare us for the asian adventures of the future.