Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Dragon Fountain In Sakon Nakorn



This was outside of my hotel in Sakon Nakorn. It was a nice place, fifteen bucks a night with free breakfast and dinner, a refrigerator in the room, and a nice TV with seventy cable channels, about ten of which were in English. When I see this kind of dragon fetish, it usually means that the Chinese-Thai community is involved. My guess is that the hotel is owned by a Chinese-Thai family. There was so much trouble in China, and for so long, that lots of families bailed and moved themselves to Thailand. One family that I know is Chinese on both sides at the grandparents level, although no one speaks Chinese anymore. The stories of those two families were very different. The mom's family came from Macao with little more than the shirts on their backs. The father's family came from Shanghai in a good sized boat that they'd rented for themselves, bringing all of the ancestral furniture, clothing and probably a kitchen sink too.

Thailand is known as "the land of smiles," but you could as easily call it the crossroads of South East Asia.

1 comment:

Plane Ideas said...

You are a helluva explorer..I admire YOU bigtime:-)