Leaving Luang Prabang

The Baci Ceremony

Briefly the Baci is a ceremony to celebrate a special event, whether a marriage, a homecoming, a welcome, a birth, or one of the annual festivals. A mother is given a baci after she has recovered form a birth, the sick are given bacis to facilitate a cure, officials are honored by bacis, and novice monks are wished luck with a baci before entering the temple. The Baci ceremony can take place any day of the week and all year long, preferably before noon or before sunset. The term more commonly used is su kwan, which means “calling of the soul”.

http://www.laoheritagefoundation.org/ceremonies/baci.jsp

"Extraordinary travel is magic often created in the simplest of terms"
Lisa Lindblad.

Travel Art Posters

http://www.allposters.com/-st/Travel-Art-Posters_c6384_.htm

Neilson Hays Library

The Neilson Hays Library was founded in 1869 by the Ladies' Bazaar Association, which formed the Bangkok Ladies' Library Association to serve the reading needs of the large English-speaking community in Bangkok. The building and property now occupied by the Library were part of an endowment received from Dr. Hayward Hays in 1922 in memory of his wife Jennie Neilson Hays who had served on the committee of the Library for at least 25 years. It is the oldest non-profit association in the Kingdom of Thailand.

Current Exhibits: http://neilsonhayslibrary.com/exhibits.shtml

Kathmandu Gallery

The KATHMANDU PHOTO GALLERY, in a wonderfully-restored old pre-war shophouse aptly located near the Indian (Sri Mariamma) Temple in Bangkok’s financial district. Its owner, Thai photo-artist Manit Sriwanichpoom, has modeled it along the lines of photographers’ shops of old, where one could walk in and sift through folders of signed prints for sale. Downstairs the antique green walls are literally covered with framed black and white photographs of varied subjects from Manit’s travels, making it seem like a treasure chest, while the airy upstairs gallery plays host to the current temporary exhibition. A book corner offers a few art, photography and spiritually adventurous titles, such as books by Carlos Castaneda.

http://www.kathmandu-bkk.com/

The Meditation Boat

ANN HAMILTON presents The Meditation Boat

During her first visit to the city in August 2005, she was struck by the flow of the Mekong River, which became for her “a visual embodiment and confluence of cultural currents, where a traditional past mixes with the modern present.” She also visited four monasteries in the forests surrounding the city, each of which included a long, narrow building designed specifically for walking meditation. Inspired by these structures, she decided to design a boat for spiritual meditation by the monks and novices of Luang Prabang. The architects Laurent Rampon and Yushi Kawaguchi, along with Jean-Pierre Cuomo, refined her designs, and the boat builder Sichan Phongsavath and his team at the boatyard in Luang Prabang built the vessel. The boat was blessed in a ceremony at the stairs of Vat Xieng Thong on the Mekong, on October 9, 2006, by Phra Acharn One Keo Sitthivong, five monks, and three novices as well as more than fifty participants.

"Our physical bodies are repositories for cultural knowledge and memory inherited, repeated, and passed down through generations. The role of an artist is often to address specific actions and processes through which this cultural knowledge is physically embodied. It can be recognized in the quotidian rhythms and patterns of walking, sewing, weaving, or writing—patterns that in their familiarity can become invisible or lost when not perceived. How can art help us attend to what is becoming lost or eclipsed under the pressures and force of a globalized world? How can an artwork participate in local and daily traditions and help us to see ways in which such rhythmic patterns of quietude remain relevant? These two boats address such questions. Linked physically together, they also link the present to the past, the sacred to the secular, silence to voice. Within this visual and aural relationship, they demonstrate a practice in this place for this time."

http://www.thequietintheland.org/laos/project_hamilton.html
http://www.thequietintheland.org/laos/category.php?id=ann-hamilton
http://www.annhamiltonstudio.com/
https://www.artsy.net/artist/ann-hamilton 

The meaning of the Tak Bat

The Tak Bat is a profound expression of generosity, a cardinal virtue for the Lao people, and is a significant source of religious merit for the Buddhist community. It is probably the closest religious interaction between lay people and monks. Whenever it is performed, it is done with a profound sense of beauty and affection, with piety, care, thoughtfulness, and with deep commitment. Most of the Buddhist believers of Luang Prabang practice this ritual every morning. At sunrise, they prepare the offerings by cooking the rice and kneeling on a mat, in silence, waiting for the monks to approach, their heads and feet bare in humility. They quickly and silently place a small amount of rice in the monks’ alms bowl without making eye contact. Sometimes cakes and fruits are offered. They practice this generous act with joy knowing that it will benefit them, their living or departed relatives, and all beings.

For their part, the monks meditate on impermanence and on the meaning of the offerings they receive, which symbolise their intentional poverty, humility, and dependency on the lay community for their material needs. When they return to the monastery, they share the rice, accompanied by other dishes prepared by the community. They eat this first meal of the day in silence.

http://www.thequietintheland.org/pdf/tak-bat.pdf

Buddha's Hand Citron

Called a Buddha's Hand Citron, this odd looking fruit is actually one of the oldest members of the citrus family. Although it smells strongly of lemon, it has no juicy pulp hidden beneath its rind. Instead, the Buddha's Hand is grown commercially for its powerful zest. The aromatic rind is used to flavor lemon liqueurs and specialty vodkas, and provides aroma to lemon-scented cosmetics. Chinese and Japanese households hang it in their homes as a natural air freshener, and it even has a place in some religious ceremonies.

Caroline Carter
http://www.sanfranciscofoodie.com/scraps/buddhasHand.htm

Touching the earth

Literally Bhumisparsha translates into 'touching the earth'. It is more commonly known as the 'earth witness' mudra. The right hand, placed upon the right knee in earth-pressing mudra, and complemented by the left hand-which is held flat in the lap in the dhyana mudra of meditation, symbolizes the union of method and wisdom, samasara and nirvana, and also the realizations of the conventional and ultimate truths. It is in this posture that Shakyamuni overcame the obstructions of Mara while meditating on Truth.

Photo by "miss design" - mailto:miss_design27@hotmail%20dot%20com

Does happiness have a price tag?

Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world's most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you.

Fueling up

episode 26. khmer os

Recoded: Early October
Locations: Phnom phen, Cambodia
Tags: travel, bloggers, cloggers, cambodia, localization programs, open source, khmer os, adventure, couchsurfing
Music: .75 Adore .25 Odium by sippy cup
About: on the opposite side of new york city, phnom phen sits as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. through years of bloodletting and on the verge of oil and natural gas mining, the government has stabilized into a proto-democracy promoting the use of applications in their own language. behind the software, behind the translation, behind the revolution sits one man. this is his story.

On the luck of seven

On the luck of seven was an open-source, around the world project by Noel Hidalgo, a new york city based activist, organizer, barcamper and coworker.

For seven months, he traversed the globe. using a new media voodo (blog, vlog, wiki, flickr, couchsurfing, twitter, myspace, dopplr, and facebook), noneck harnessed the collective knowledge of the internet, and report on seven topics of freedom. This trip was funded by 253 people and supported, house, fed, and loved by countless others.

http://luckofseven.com/

The 7 topics of Freedom:
Free culture. After a half-century of broadcast communications dictating the common perspective, people are now reconnecting—one-on-one, peer-to-peer, node-to-node—and proving that traditional copyright and patent restrictions need to be reformed to promote creativity.

Free and open-source software. Software should be a tool, like a shovel. With zero distribution cost, global, boundless open-source communities are competing in a world of co-opetition.

Couchsurfers and bloggers. People—from those who blog their souls to those who reserve their couch for strangers—are using technology to augment real-world relationships and bring modernism back to our post-modern world.

Barcamps, unconferences, meetups, and coworking. The online digi-world uses physical ad-hoc meetings to socialize, share, and advance ideas.

Agents of progressive social change. Inventors and concept peddlers—though not always leaders—change the way we think about the world through technology.

The environment. When we outsource jobs, we outsource pollution, waste, and other negative impacts of consumerism; we need to continue to use technology to educate the public on the true footprint of the products we use and lifestyles we choose.

Happenstance. Receiving a random e-mail, discovering a flickr profile, stumble-surfing across a facebook page, connecting in a café—the world grows smaller with every person we meet, and there is an art to discovering their stories.”

Hall of Opium

"Golden Triangle" the words evoke images of opium poppies, of hill tribes, of mist-shrouded hills, the mighty Mekong River, and tropical forests. But most of all the words "Golden Triangle" evoke images of mystery and danger surrounding drug production and trafficking: porous borders; civil wars; armies, police, and smugglers clashing; poor hill farmers eking out a living from a beautiful poisonous plant; raids on hidden heroin factories; donkey caravans along old jungle trade paths.

The development of the Hall of Opium is the result of the initiative of the Mae Fah Luang Foundation. The museum presents the history of opium and the impacts of illegal drugs

http://www.goldentrianglepark.org/swf/swf.htm

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them...

- Lawrence Durrell

Tibetan Flags

Lucky 5

Chinese culture developed the notion that certain numbers were more propitious than others.

The number 8 is considered extremely lucky, perhaps partly owing to its unique symmetry, and perhaps partly owing to the fact that the 8, laid on its side, resembles the Greek symbol for infinity. Additionally, in Mandarin Chinese, the sound byte for "eight" is close to that for "prosperity, wealth", while in Cantonese it is similar to the sound byte for "fortune". To give an idea of how highly the number 8 is prized, the telephone number 8888-8888 was sold for a sum corresponding to USD $270,723 in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan Province.

The number 5 is associated with adventure, sensual expression, changes, and travel.