A Walk To Remember

A few pictures from a stroll around Bangkok. It is election season, and giant campaign posters are everywhere. Here are the ads from two main rivals. The woman in red is Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In blue is the party in power now, led by Abhisit Vejjajiva.

While there is a high level of tension concerning the recent political history, it hasn't affected daily life too much and it appears the excesses will be avoided this time. Much like cricket and other products of Britain, parliamentary systems deeply confuse me.
Waiting for the SkyTrain. 

Spirit house outside of Central World mall. As this is a huge structure on a huge lot, the spirit house is correspondingly large.

A smaller spirit house in a park.

A coffee stall I visit every now and then.

And now, let me direct your attention to about the eighth product on this list. When I first passed this sign, I was baffled. What could a beauty treatment called "Pink Nipple" possibly mean? After I brought it up to some Thai friends, however,  I learned that Thai nipples tend to be more brownish, and pink nips are totally in right now. (We were at the beach, so I took the opportunity to strut around and prominently display my pinkness.) Basically, in a rough translation on Newton's third law, for every beauty treatment in the United States, there is an equal and inverse treatment here in Asia. Americans lie on the beach or in the tanning bed to brown up? Thais stay out of the sun and use creams that supposedly whiten. American female celebrities are expected to be rail thin, sinewy and bronze. But the Thai women that inhabit the pages of gossip rags have round faces and milky complexions.