Flats in Guangzhou

Note to self: check mail more often.

 

Leanne had told me awhile ago that James was going to send me a Flat Stanley, but I didn’t really know when he’d done it to figure out when it would arrive. Mail typically takes 2-3 weeks to arrive but unless we get packages, there’s no notification. If you know you’re going to get regular envelope mail, it’s up to you to go check.

And since our mailing room is down a couple of people, mail processing has been a little slow. I have gone up from time to time since Bhutan to check my mail, but between early closures, slow processing and me being chained to my desk, I hadn’t been able to click with the timing until the day before Thanksgiving.

Once I finally made it, I had a small backlog, including a Netflix, a thing reminding me to vote (which I did, early) and a mysterious big envelope with an unknown return address but definitely Leanne’s writing.

Just so you know, it doesn’t cost extra postage to ship to me. The pouch has a US ZIP code, so you just slap regular stamps on whatever’s being mailed. No need to put $5 in stamps or anything like that.

When I got outside (we can’t open mail in the office), I opened  the letter and confirmed that it was, indeed, Leanne’s writing and it was my overdue Flat Stanley, whom I’d pretty much forgotten about.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Flat Stanley is a schoolkid project. You send him away and his host documents, with pictures and what have you, his travels.

I’m a boring host, so his trip with me has been mostly doing the running around that I need to do. Fortunately, he made it in time for the holiday, and I put him to work.

 

Wednesday we had an “early release” day and I got off around 2. With Flats loaded up, we went shopping for Toys for Tots, which our Marines are collecting now.

This is lots of fun; last year I got an East Bake Oven and Lincoln Logs, but I did it while I was still in the U.S. The Marines collected at post, but since I’d already contributed, I didn’t do it again. And I remembered them doing a late call for gifts for older kids, so this year, I headed to the sporting goods store.

Flats and I had fun in the store. I put him with a scooter, the skateboard and yard game I eventually bought, and even a pair of shoes. In his little diary, I wrote that they were a little bit too big, but really the reason he decided not to buy them was that they were Gator colored.

When we got home, I got to work cooking two side dishes and posed him with carrots and potatoes. I also shot him watching a movie, in bed (with a teddy bear) and in an E.T. pose with my stuffed animals.

Because I have no idea of his due date, I tried to cram in a lot over the weekend. On Thanksgiving morning, I took him to the gym and posed him around everything from the weight bench to the sauna.

Then we went to two different Thanksgiving parties and he posted with before and after pictures of the tables. We did serious damage, but somehow I brought home just as much food as I took.

Today, Flats went with a colleague to Foshan, which is the place with the toilet waterfall. (Two weeks ago; I posted photos.) I hope he comes back unscathed. The colleague told me that she’s taken one of Flats’ relatives to the Great Wall and managed to drop him. So hopefully James’ buddy Flats arrives home intact.

When he returns, I will finish the PowerPoint presentation I started and get it to Leanne; not sure how but I will. I have been sending photos daily so hopefully it works out all right.

Really, it’s been kinda fun. It’s given me an excuse to go out and take pictures of my apartment and neighborhood that would have normally been too stupid to do.

Bhutan: Penis envy

As mentioned previously, the penis is a symbol in Bhutan. Apparently, it wards off evil.

With a group of 14 women traveling together, driving across the countryside because a trip in search of painted penises.

They’re everywhere, and they’re not just for tourists.

Since I have so many photos of penises and not that much to say, I’m going to cut and paste some of the Wiki info given on penises in Bhutan.

Phallus paintings in Bhutan are esoteric symbols, which have their origins in the Chimi Lhakhang monastery near Punakha [I visited here], the former capital of Bhutan. The village monastery was built in honor of Lama Drukpa Kunley who lived in the 15-16th century and who was popularly known as the "Mad Saint" or “Divine Madman” for his unorthodox ways of teaching, which amounted to being bizarre and shocking. These explicit paintings can be seen painted on the walls of houses and buildings throughout Bhutan, particularly in villages. Traditionally symbols of an erect penis in Bhutan have been intended to drive away the evil eye and malicious gossip.

 

The Divine Madman was a crazy saint who extensively travelled in Bhutan, who was fond of women and wine, and adopted blasphemous and unorthodox ways of teaching Buddhism. His sexual exploits included his hosts and promoters. He was utterly devoid of all social conventions and called himself the "Madman from Kyishodruk."

Drukpa Kunley's intention was to shock the clergy, who were uppity and prudish in their behaviour and teachings of Buddhism. However, his ways appealed to lay practioners. It was he who propagated the legend of painting phalluses on walls and flying hanging phalluses from roof tops of houses to drive away evil spirits and subdue demonesses.

Among some communities in eastern Bhutan, every year during a particular period, phalluses are worshipped with flowers, ara [this is some kind of alcohol I had a shot in celebration of my roommate’s 30th birthday, but I have no idea if it had a phallus in it earlier or not. I really hope not.] and milk seeking protection from the evil spirits. In central Bhutan, a wooden phallus is immersed in the cups before the drinks are offered to the guests. Some phalluses, especially in rural Bhutan, are endowed with comic eyes. [Some also have teeth!]

The belief that such a symbol brings good luck and drives away evil spirits is so much ingrained in the psyche of the common populace in Bhutan that the symbols are routinely painted outside walls of the new houses and even painted on number plates of trucks. The carved wooden phalluses are hung (sometimes crossed by a design of sword or dagger) outside, on the eves of the new homes, at the four corners.

 

An interesting ritual is performed in Bhutan, as part of house warming ceremony of new houses, which entails erecting the phallus symbols at the four corners of the eaves of the house and one inside the house. It involves raising  a basket filled with the phalluses carved out of wood to the roof of the house to fix them at the four cardinal corners

[End Wiki quote.]

 

I will add that in one part of the Wiki page it mentioned that they are rarely found in temples, but I did see them in at least one. (I got bored with the temples and stopped going in.) In one, and since you are not allowed to take photos in temples in Bhutan I cannot prove it, to the left of the alter thing was a Budda with quite a hard-on. I kid you not.

So, that was more than anyone needs to know about Bhutan’s penis envy, am I right?

Bhutan: Whatchoo takin about?

Moving along in Bhutan, I learned the national animal is the takin.

Yeah, you heard that night, and, chances are, unless you were a zoology major (like two of my fellow travelers, who were both vets), you’ve never heard of it. So here’s a description, courtesy of Wiki: “The takin, also called cattle chamois or gnu goat, is a goat-antelope found in the eastern Himalayas.”

I have no idea what a chamois or gnu is in this instance, but it is one weirdo critter. They are only found in the high mountain areas and it’s illegal for Bhutanese folks to eat them.

They’re rare in the wild, but what do you know, you can view some in this kind of sanctuary that we visited. This is the same one, which we were excited to see, especially since it was one uphill climb to get to the big free-range pen that housed the takin.

In other photos, here’s a shot from the site of the Big Buddha. If you've seen one Big Buddha, you've seen them all, so this is another shot of the scenery around it. If you look closely (and you can click to enlarge to see better), you can see in the top right, mountains that look like "snow on the mountain" cookies. These are the Himalaya!

Archery is the national sport. People come out and watch this every day. Kids learn how to shoot at a young age. And you know what? It’s awfully boring to watch. You couldn’t even see the arrows once they left the bow.

Note the clothing. That’s the national outfit for the guys. It’s pronounced “go,” although I forget how it’s spelled in English. The kind decreed that everyone has to wear the national clothes to work and to school, so basically if you see someone jeans, it either means they’re Indian migrant workers or are breaking the law.

And yes, I am trying on the men’s national clothes. The main reasons here were because I was curious as to how they made these two little folds in the back and because I was bored to death. We stopped at this rug/fabric-making place the second day and watched women weave (hence the yarn) and then went to their store. We were told it would be “a short visit” but my God, we were in there for two hours. After about an hour, I got bored and asked about the men’s clothing and how it worked, so I got to model it.

 

The answer to how to create the folds is that you put it on like a big bathrobe, except as you wrap the one flap under, you then grab it with the outer flap before bringing the outer flap around and then grabbing it with the other inside fabric.You then taken both sets of fabrics and hitch them up and fold them under, adding a belt to keep it all together, but you can’t really see the belt because the top part of the fabric flops over it.

The men top the outfit off with what look like really high trouser socks. Most wore shiny shoes.

The women’s dress, called a kira (I can spell that one) is basically a really short jacket that folds over and a very long, slim wraparound skirt.

So that’s the Bhutan lesson for today. More photos later. I'm playing in Hong Kong this weekend.

Bhutan: Prayer flags and first stop

I have hundreds of photos of Bhutan and people have asked to see some of them, so I am going to do a little Bhutan series starting now.

In an effort to move the photos from my hard drive (where there is no space) to my USB, I’ll go day-by-dayish but also theme them somehow.

First theme is prayer flags, because they are everywhere. The idea behind these, I learned, is mostly in memory of the dead. Something about reincarnation and aiming toward heaven. Again, I’m not interested in Buddhism whatsoever, so I tuned out a lot, but to me, they’re reminders to pray.

They’re generally found in the higher spots and honestly, there are so many that it’s basically just littering. They just leave them up and a bunch of them look pretty nasty. Some have pre-printed writings on them; I assume they’re prayers.

You do see them everywhere, both horizontally and vertically. There’s something magic about the number 108, and I think at some point you’re supposed to hang 108 of them.

They’re found hanging from one cliff to another and we speculated on how people do that. Since archery is the national sport, we theorized that someone would tie a strand to a bow and shoot it across the chasm.

The big critter is a yak. We saw several of those, but since I’d been in Mongolia three weeks before this trip and had them in my front yard, they didn’t impress me all that much.

The two other photos: As a segue from last week’s Foshan trip, I am including a photo of the toilet in my first hotel. It looked like a throne. I thought it was funny. The chain bridge scared me. I didn’t for one minute think it would collapse, but I really had a hard time keeping my balance on it. I pictured falling over and tearing my other PCL or something.

My weekend went to pot …

…and that’s a good thing. That’s what the place is known for.

Took a daylong road trip today to Foshan, which, while technically is accessible via the extensive metro system we have here, but was far easier get to by signing up for the trip offered by my office. I didn’t have to navigate or do squat except get to the “bus leaves from” place by 9 a.m.

The office tries to do these kinds of trips every month or so, but I've only been to about three. I happened to be in town this weekend, and someone told me Foshan was a cool place to go, so I figured why not.

Somehow I misjudged the time. I got up at more or less the regular time and went to the gym to do the elliptical part of my workout, then ran home, ingested pancakes and darted out because I was thinking I had half an hour to get there. 

 

Just as I was hitting the lobby, I glanced at my watch and realized I’d timed it to get there at 8:30 and not 9. Crikey. So I turned around and ran back up for 20 minutes or so. I have no idea how I mucked that up.

This reminded me of Rally

Anyway, Foshan is known for two things: ceramics and toilets. The ceramics were everywhere, like in this big temple we visited, but the toilets – oh, that was something to see.

Foshan is known for its porcelain, of which toilets are made. And 10,000 of them were recycled in 2009 to make this huge waterfall public art display. It’s 100 meters long and five meters high, made up of old toilets, sinks and the occasional urinal. 

And for some reason, out in front, there is a statue of a cricket, grasshopper or something in a dinner jacket and playing an oboe. I certainly didn’t understand that part, but the toilet waterfall display was just worth the price of the trip.

It’s one of those things that you can honestly say you’ve never seen anything like. A wall of potties. Who would have ever thought?

Back from Bhutan

More photos later, but here are some to start. I got back last night and am wading into the real world now.

First impression of Bhutan: Holy crap, we flew in where?

This is because the airport is absolutely amazing. You essentially fly into a valley, with mountains all around you. It’s also at a very high altitude, something like the second-highest airport in the world. There are only a handful of pilots who can handle flying into it, and we applauded the pilot upon landing.

Prayer wheels everywhere.

Once we filed out the back of the plane, the whole airplane full of people just wandered on the tarmac, slack-jawed at the beauty around us. It really is amazing.

My group of 14 kind of wandered, gaping at the plane, the mountains, the funky architecture and the billboard of the king and queen, snapping photos like we’d never seen any more, which we did.

Really, it was the trip of a lifetime, the kind you save up for, have a wonderful time doing but would never go again.

The place is fabulous, but when you reflect on it, it might be so fabulous because you’re only allowed to see the fabulous parts.

Dogs everywhere.

Bhutan isn’t like most vacation spots. Most spots you can buy a ticket and go visit, sometimes with the added layer of purchasing a visa, but sometimes not.

Bhutan isn’t like that. You are obligated to go with a guide and driver, assuring you that you’ll see what they want you to see.

Obstinately, there’s nothing wrong with this, because really, who knows much about Bhutan? You want to soak it all in, so who better to guide you than locals?

But halfway through the bliss, you really do start to wonder if there’s anything negative out there, like poverty, bad health or whatever. And you never really figure it out, because you’re consistently told about how the king takes care of everyone. It’s a little creepy.

Penises everywhere.

And very Buddhist. My tour came billed as Buddhism 101, but really it was some kind of advance class that I tuned out early on. I think the architecture of temples is awesome and it was very fascinating to wander around stuff built in the seventh century, but the whole Buddha-down-your-throat thing got old really fast. I, and several others in my group, got “templed out” and started to not take off my shoes to enter the temples and instead just wandered around the courtyards, taking pictures of prayer wheels, ravens (the national bird) and all the pretty flowers.

The prayer wheels and prayer flags were pretty cool. They have some kind of Buddhist meaning, but I figure anything that hints at the power of prayer can be interpreted by Christians, too. I felt the same way about the Islamic call to prayer in Morocco and Jakarta!

Big, bigger, biggest Buddha.

I’ve posted a photo of the prayer wheels on this post; will get to prayer flags later. I took close to 600 photos and I’m still sorting. The prayer wheels are found singly and in rows at temples and near these things called stupas, which are some kind of thing for the dead. (Seriously, I tuned out the Buddha stuff really fast. Didn’t know much about it going in; wasn’t interested in learning – too many other cool things to see.)

We did go up to a big Buddha under construction, which was kind of neat because it gave us an aerial view of Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. I also liked the way the sky looked with the Buddha. When it’s done, it will be bigger than the one in Hong Kong, although, having seen both, I don’t see how it is. It doesn’t look as big as the Hong Kong one.

At some point during the trip, we took a flight for 81 air miles, flying us back from Bumtang to Paro, a drive that, through the mountains, took 14 hours.

I have a million shots like this.

THAT airport was the tiniest thing you could ever see. I’ve posted a photo; that’s the airport in its entirety, including the tower. The flight was 25 minutes and it really was a jet. On a good day, you could see the Himalayas. That day, we really couldn’t, but we did see bits and pieces of them during the trip. Bhutan is in the foothills. It’s just so beautiful.

There are dogs everywhere. Unlike Morocco, they seem to be well-fed, but they’re not owned by anyone or played with. We had two vets on the trip and they said the dogs were pretty listless and probably sick. They had no energy to play, even the puppies.

But many were neutered and they weren’t all starving. Buddhists apparently believe that in reincarnation, being a dog is the last stop before becoming human again. Or something like that.

The Bumtang airport. All of it.

But the dogs were everywhere. Just tons of them. On the last day, when we hiked up to Tiger’s Nest and back down for a picnic, there were nine of them waiting for leftovers.

Another thing that was everywhere: penises. Holy smokes. EVERYWHERE. Somehow, in the land of Buddha, a penis is a symbol that wards off evil. I do not know how that’s possible, but there are wooden penises hung outside houses, paintings of them were slapped up on houses, etc. It was very strange and pretty darn ugly. Some homes had very pointy and painful-looking penises on every corner of the house.

Tiger's Nest. Hiked up here.

The architecture was like nothing I’d seen before. There are no buildings more than five stories on account of earthquakes and the structures are made of concrete and intricately painted wood. I’ve seen stuff close to it, but nothing exactly similar.

I did come back with a pretty bad cold and my brain isn’t quite functioning, so I think I’ll leave it at the photos for now and go for something more cognizant later.