Koh Phangan (an island) and Bangkok

Unless you're Ansel Adams, I generally feel you shouldn't impose your landscape shots on other people. To do so is only marginally better than copiously documenting your ability to follow a recipe on your blog. But I want to convey, once (and badly -- I know I am a terrible photographer), that Thailand is a magic place sublimely over-saturated with color.






Maybe, at the Sapphire Restaurant, if you don't want a Coke, you'd like a Cock or Cock Light.

Regrettably, we did not take the Snoop Dogg tour of the island Koh Phangan. I could never decide if Snoop was a play on the word sloop -- it seems unlikely.



I dedicate this shot to Pakistan.




In Bangkok before we left:

I never got around to calling Pot Head, unfortunately.





Here we are in a park in Bangkok.


On our last night in Thailand we went to a sprawling, five-story shopping mall. I'm in the frequent habit of deriding consumer culture, but after three months in Islamabad, I walked through the crowded, florescent-lit halls and sustained trembles of appreciation for Adam Smith.

In Pakistan, I have only seen women's undergarments on sale in one place, Chen One Department Store. There, next to the women's changing closet, was a door with a sign that says, "Ladies Only. Very Private." I looked inside, of course, and found pairs of white, polyester, waist-high, decidedly-not-French-cut granny panties; laceless beige slips; and one black, opaque, knee-length, sleeveless nightgown that provided more coverage than a conservative cocktail dress.

The mall in Bangkok, in contrast, has a glut of lingerie stores that all fell between Vicky S and Fredericks of Hollywood. The Larry Flint fare must be elsewhere. I thought this poster, on one store window, was especially funny. I was imagining that you could walk in and say the appropriate food name (if you can't read them, the labels say cranberries, oranges, peaches, lemons, papayas, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes), and then someone would bring you corresponding selections from the Peach Line or the Sweet Potato Line or whatever. I didn't go in to find out, though, because I liked imagining that process too much to discover it only exists in my head.


Griff has a Dairy Queen Green Tea Blizzard.

Ronny bids us farewell, Thai style.