The King in Bangkok
I'll briefly touch on this: one of the most striking things about Bangkok is the omnipresence of the king's image. His
picture is all over the place. He is on every piece of money, his portrait appears on billboards, in front of buildings,
on calendars in little restaurants, on little amulets people buy and wear around their necks. Also, a lot of stuff is
dedicated to his ancestors and one of his daughters.
The king even intrudes on your leisure time in Bangkok. We went to a traditional Thai puppetry performance. Just as we were getting settled into our seats, we were asked to stand to listen to the king's anthem and see a montage of pictures of him walking through the countryside. A very similar thing happened when we went to see a movie.
I had the idea of taking a picture of every single image or mention of the king I saw for one day, just to give myself and others a concrete count of how many times and in how many different places a person encounters the king. I never did it, and as I was leaving for the airport I was cursing myself for not having taken a single picture of a picture of the king. Luckily for me, however, at the airport alone I was able to find several great examples of pictures of King Rama IX. Here are some of the pictures I took. Click on one of them during the slide show to see the big version.
The king even intrudes on your leisure time in Bangkok. We went to a traditional Thai puppetry performance. Just as we were getting settled into our seats, we were asked to stand to listen to the king's anthem and see a montage of pictures of him walking through the countryside. A very similar thing happened when we went to see a movie.
I had the idea of taking a picture of every single image or mention of the king I saw for one day, just to give myself and others a concrete count of how many times and in how many different places a person encounters the king. I never did it, and as I was leaving for the airport I was cursing myself for not having taken a single picture of a picture of the king. Luckily for me, however, at the airport alone I was able to find several great examples of pictures of King Rama IX. Here are some of the pictures I took. Click on one of them during the slide show to see the big version.