The Phra Phuum

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Thailand, Pattaya, 008-03-2009, nighttime.

A lith young lady still dressed in her short brightly blue colored bikini and probably on a short break in between her erotic acts on the stage of a nearby Go-Go Bar, is kneeling before a small spirit house in Soi 6, making a quick offering to the Phra Phuum - Thai for Guardian Spirits - of her choice, a bit of insence, a small glass of Mekhong whisky, a bit of rice and pieces of fish on a plastic plate to spoil her personal Phra Phuum before having to go back to her bar, throwing her light brown legs high in the air defying lustfull Farang eyes.

Though Buhmipol's Kingdom might be officially Buddhistic in its religious nature, the signs of the earlier animistic way of life are still visible anywhere you look at any time of the day or night...

Dollhouse like structures occupying a spot at the weirdest places usually on stone or cement pillars, shrines to offer shelter to displayed spirits, ghoulds the mystical spiritual remains of those who can not find an entry into the next life, daily offerings to keep them happy...one never knows what evil an unhappy spirit might be up to.

Inside these dollhouses/spirit houses, or sometimes outside on a small balcony nailed to a tree, you might spot small ceramic statues. Rumour has it that the spirits and lost souls aka ghoulds enjoy spending time inside the figurines, the closest they can get to being back in the corporal world again.

I've promised Moo I would take her out tonight to Soi 6, the rowdy and raucous bar ally where the giggles of the bar girls mix with the drunk belching of mad Belgiums, young English lagerlouts on a two week s*x party and overweight Germans with balding problems speaking harsh gutteral Deutsch. Burmese day labourers make a bit of change selling polaroids of your holidaying fun.

A lone TV screen is showing a local soap series set in Bangkok and sporting good looking men and beautifull women fill the ranks of actors and actresses. Though the Lady In Red by Rod Steward is blaring away on the bar's sound system deavening the Tv conversation the story-line can hardly be realistic featuring mystical dragons and wizarts that came from way beyond Oz.

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Photos

seen on a door
of a Chinese temple in Penang

bicycle taxi
in Penang

Lord Shiva
seen in a Hindu temple in Penang