On Saturday night an extraordinary and heartbreaking scene unfolded on the doorstep of our Bangkok neighbourhood, resulting in a clash between the army and “Red Shirt” protesters that left 21 people dead and over 800 injured.  We left the area about an hour before the violence occurred, and I strongly encourage you, if you can, to take a look at the video that Katheryn put together: Bangkok riots 10.4.10

We had been out of Bangkok on the island of Koh Tao for the last two weeks, but that blog has been superceded by the drama of recent events.  Because of the upcoming Songkran festival, when transportation can be difficult to book, we decided to return to Bangkok last Friday.  Unknown to us it was also the day the Red Shirts planned to stage their “biggest ever” rally, and has been the case throughout these protests, it resulted in traffic gridlock hell.  It also resulted in something the Reds had not tried before: the occupation of the downtown shopping and business district.  Whether this was the final straw for a government that some viewed as weak for not cracking down on the protesters, we don’t know; but things changed on Saturday.

The normal morning tranquility of our little riverside enclave was disturbed by two black military helicopters doing repeated forays low over the rooftops.  Never mind: our plan was to go in the opposite direction of the blockades to Jatuchak Market, on the north side of town.  It soon became clear, however, that the situation wasn’t normal, as the traffic on the street was backing up, and no buses were running.  No problem: can’t let a little protest get in the way of our shopping.   We go with plan II, which is to walk to the amulet market and buy the fun little acrylic Buddhas for the shop.  Coming back, loaded with 50 Buddhas, we have to cross Ratchedamoen St., on which the protesters have been camped for a month.  Well, we think, may as well see what’s going on…  

We are well within the Red’s territory when two falangs (foreigners) hurry across the street to intercept us.  In a surprise move, one pulls out his badge and says he is undercover with the Thai police.  We’re packing a lot of Buddhas; could this be a bust?  In a heavy German accent he informs us that we should not go any further, it is too dangerous: clashes have occurred; tear gas and rubber bullets have been used; and a car bomb has gone off.  Good reason, we think, to go back to the hotel.  And get the cameras.

We have followed the situation in Thailand closely over the years, and we have a good feel for a dangerous situation, and a well-developed sense of self-preservation.  We approach the area cautiously, from the back alleys to the north.  In my case, I have been coming to this neighbourhood for almost 30 years, and I know it well; but I have never before seen heavy armored vehicles in the square by Wat Bovorniwet.  The military have bottle-necked the access to Tanao, the street on the east side of the world’s favourite back-packer haunt, Khao San Road.  The soldiers look stylishly futuristic in a game-boy kind of way, clad in hi-tech body armor.  For all of the latent violence represented by their equipment, there isn’t a feeling of hostility in the air.  Locals are in the street, and some bring the soldiers food in take-away containers.  Tourists from Khao San walk through the military lines taking pictures; many of the soldiers take photos of themselves and their buddies with their cell phones.  Katheryn even has a young guy offer her part of his dinner.

There is a no-man’s-land on Tanao St. between the military and the Reds where even the most brainless of Khao San backpackers doesn’t go.  However, by taking a back alley we end up at the Burger King at the junction of Khao San and Tanao, in the Red Shirt camp.  We linger for a while, but the sun is down and it’s getting too dark for pictures.  We walk to the front line of the Reds, facing the military 50 paces away.  Unlike the soldiers, all they have, it seems, is flags and sticks, but they too seem fairly relaxed.  When someone hands us face masks for protection from tear gas, we figure it’s time to go.

It’s a surreal situation, walking up Khao San.  All of the businesses at the Tanao St. side are shuttered, but further on more and more are still open, proving once again that if the world were ruled by tourism it would be a happier, stupider place.  There are two large restaurants facing each other across the road, playing loud music, with full tables spilling out onto the sidewalk.  Both have arrays of large screen T.V.’s, and all of them are showing the same footage from this afternoon: the fighting a few blocks away.  We stop, and soon all the passers-by, Thai and falang, are clustered watching the scenes of tear gas and truncheons, while the diners at the tables continue with their fettucine.

An hour later and a little farther away, we ourselves are having dinner.  Over the ambient noise of the street and the rustling of leaves in the nearby temple, we hear the popping which from a distance no normal person would believe is gun fire.  And a louder bang, again muffled and dismissable.  The helicopters are still flying, but without lights; in the night they are ominous moving waves of sound.

In the morning the city awakes to the tragedy.  There is still a lot that isn’t clear, but it is obvious that the decision to displace the protesters by force was a poorly conceived, badly executed operation.  Perhaps, as some claim, the Reds fired first.  The bang we heard was a grenade fired at the soldiers.  The military claim they didn’t use live ammunition, but the shutters and walls around Burger King are pocked with holes.  17 civilians and 4 soldiers died Saturday night, most from head wounds or asphyxiated by tear gas.  The official count is 858 injured.  The military claim it stopped the operation to avoid further civilian bloodshed, but eyewitnesses report complete confusion and disarray.

And yet, after all of that, there is still a degree of normalcy in the city.  The Reds are still entrenched, and the army is licking its wounds.  That life goes on is a testament to the resilience of the Thai people.  Ultimately it is that strength of character which will get this country through the current morass of polarized political petulance that it is in.

Some of you may remember a little over a year ago when huge protests closed Bangkok’s airport for over a week.  Those were the “Yellow Shirts”, and they were unhappy with what they saw as a flawed election.  The result was that the Prime Minister was removed, and a candidate agreeable to the Yellows, Abhisit, was installed in his place.  This year it’s the “Red Shirts” who are protesting Abhisit, and the day we fly into Bangkok from Bali we get caught right in the middle of their demonstration.

We had no news of what was going on when we were in Bali, except for one brief and enigmatic clip on a hotel lobby T.V. that the manager smilingly dismissed as “nothing”.  It turns out it was a bizarre episode (which a Newsweek top ten article rated the “strangest act of protest of all time”) in which the Reds dumped buckets of their own blood on the parliamentary steps.  By the time we arrived the Red Shirts had turned one of the busiest streets in Bangkok - Ratchedamoen Ave. by Democracy Monument - into their camp, and were running “mobile protests” from there which were paralyzing the city.  At the airport when our taxi driver heard we wanted to go to Phra Artit - a small street in the same neighbourhood - he gave a disgruntled laugh, and we spent the next 15 minutes trying to communicate what the problem was.  All he could come up with was “accident”, and we were left pondering what sort of accident could turn a large area of Bangkok into a no-go zone.

As we got closer we were able to figure out that it was the Red Shirts, and that we could drive only as far as their barricades at the Golden Mount.  It was 2:30 in the afternoon, in the hot season, and it meant we had to walk for a further ½ hour with all of our luggage.  The Red camp was a little like the Yellow camp we went to last year, but less festive.  Of course Red protest accessories - T-shirts, head-bands and foot-clappers - were for sale, and there were plenty of enterprising noodle carts and foot massage tents.  At the main stage just off Democracy Monument the usual polemical-sounding speakers were trying to harangue the audience, but the heat put pretty much everybody into an anesthetized stupor.  We soldiered on up Ratchedamoen.  Even my fingers were perspiring.  Usually eight lanes of kamikaze traffic, it was surreal to walk down the middle of the empty avenue.

Despite the histrionics of the protest, and the disruption of the traffic, the Red turnout has been less than expected, and the government doesn’t appear too disturbed by it.  For the moment they have the army on their side, and it is the army which is the real power-broker in Thai politics.  The wild card in all of this is the health of the King.  He is 83 and has just been in hospital and appears fragile.  All the expats and long-term visitors we know here are extremely concerned about the situation.  For a start, when he goes, the entire country will shut down for a month.  After that it may really get chaotic, with a protracted country-rending conflict being a distinct possibility.  Never mind us falangs, this is the last thing most Thais want, but it is a subject that is almost impossible to broach.

Nyepi is Balinese New Year.  This year their calendar will be changing from 1931 to 1932.  Nyepi is better known, however, as “Do Nothing Day”, an enforced day of rest when all movement outside is banned (the airport is closed), no human sounds should be heard, and no lights shown.  It is taken seriously: in case of a medical emergency, we were warned, the Nyepi committee has to be consulted, and special permission given to go to the hospital.  Although Bali is Hindu, and the observation of Nyepi is enforced by Hindus, there is certainly no equivalent in India: it seems impossible there could be one universally accepted moment of silence in that charged up country.

India, though, would really like the day before Nyepi.  Like Mardi Gras to Lent, it is a day of noise and processions before the big renunciation.  The purpose of the festival is to lure troublesome spirits out into the open, scare them away, and then when they return pretend that the island is deserted so that they won’t see any point in stopping and settle somewhere else.  The day before Nyepi people sweep out their houses, purify them with burning incense, and leave beautiful offerings in front of their doors on the street.  In the meantime, elaborate foam and papier mache diabolical figures called ogoh-ogoh are being built.  The streets around Ubud are full of these creatures.  Many, like the one on our alley, seem to consider huge breasts and pointy nipples especially fearsome.

The procession of the Ogoh-Ogoh begins after dark.  They are paraded down the street and into the main square by the royal palace, held aloft on bamboo platforms by the groups who made them.  Often they are accompanied by gamelan orchestras, and once they reach the square a frenzied running about occurs, with the huge demon figures tossing like ships on a stormy sea, and a loudspeaker extorting the crowd to stay out of the way or risk serious injury.

Fortunately we have chosen a comfortable retreat for Nyepi day.  Hotels are down to a skeleton staff, and ours is letting us use the kitchen.  We cook a little, use the pool, and basically follow the injunction to do nothing.  There are only three sets of fellow guests.  One is a French photographer now residing on the remote island of Sumba, and helping the locals address a chronic water shortage by digging wells.  He is accompanied by a friend from a tiny adjascent island, and they are taking their cooking seriously, pulverizing fresh spices into marinades and cooking soups, sauces and a whole chicken.  A pair of Dutch ladies subsist on toast and mah jong, and a lone Spanish guy insists his soda crackers are all he wants, until the mounds of chicken and rice win him over.  The biggest surprise on Nyepi, however, is the Balinese couple who have a small plot of land on the other side of a small canal, just opposite our patio.  It is a relatively deserted place anyway, and the last thing we are expecting is to see someone there on Do Nothing Day.  Yoga and his wife, unfortunately, spend all day scooping gravel from the canal for the foundation of a new building.  They can’t be seen from the alley, so all day they labour on, even though the Nyepi police at one point warned us against moving a chair too loudly in the restaurant.

After Nyepi is over we ride up to one of our favourite places, Tirta Gangga.  We have pared down our gear to the absolute minimum, and both of us and our pack fit on a 110 cc Honda scooter.  Set between two volcanoes, in the midst of verdant rice fields, Tirta Gangga is glorious.  From our balcony we look over the hibiscus and frangipani and bougainvillea in the garden, the jungle-lined bowl of terraced rice fields, the smaller volcano, Gunung Seraya, to the east coast and the sea.

Katheryn, in the early days, spent a wonderful time in a quiet hamlet out on that coast, Jemeluk, snorkeling endlessly in a splendid coral garden.  She hasn’t been back since, but it is only 30 minutes or so away, so we take our beach gear and do a day trip.  Fortunately the winding road down to the coast is still fabulous.  Jemeluk has now merged with its bigger neighbor, Ahmed, into a continuous strip of resorts and hotels.  The black pebble beach never was much of a draw, and it is still lined with brightly painted outrigger boats, as before.  We rent a mask and a snorkel, and I am the first to go into the water.  Then Katheryn takes her turn.  It is depressing.  Almost all the coral is dead.  There are still some colourful fish, but they are outnumbered by a steady current of plastic rubbish.  We intended to spend the day, but it is stinking hot on the sand, and there is no reason to stay.  There are still wooden salt-drying racks along the coast, and Ahmed is famous for having some of the best sea salt in the world.  But even when we stop to buy a bag it turns into an unhappy scene, as other vendors run over and thrust identical bags at us, at identical prices.

Riding back over the hills we get caught in the only rain we have had since we’ve been here, a soaking downpour that leaves brown rivers flowing over the road.  There are still lots of motorbike riders out, but most of them have jackets or ponchos.  We just get soaked.  But it’s a good rain to get soaked by, tropical rain, and afterward the plants all rejoice and exhale simultaneously and the air is so rich we bathe in it as much as breathe it.

See some more of our Bali photos (more Ogoh-Ogoh) at http://www.kebeandfast.com

Also, we were stymied by slow downloads when we posted the last blog, so if you were disappointed not to be able to see the latest videos, now you can!  The rest of our Nepal videos are at the end of the last blog, but here is one to whet your appetite: Bad Road Movie.  From Bali, you won’t want to miss the hilarious Pig Dance.  There are also: From Calcutta to Bali; Hiking and Biking in Tirta Gangga; and the terrifying Night of the Ogoh-Ogoh.

Before you place your advance orders for Balinese umbul-umbul (temple banners) we will take you far from this equatorial island back to a chilly morning in Kathmandu.

It is pre-dawn, and we are flying through town in a taxi, apparently to the Eden petrol pump.  This is the first step in a long sequence of events that will all have to synchronize over the next five days in order for us to make pre-booked train and plane connections to get to Bali, and at the moment it is looking a little dodgy.  Our driver is finishing the night shift, and is charged on speed and red bull.  He comes to screeching halts to ask for directions.  At one point Katheryn gasps when there is a thump and a creature goes hurtling over the bumper.  Katheryn thinks it is a school girl but it is only a pigeon.

When we get out I am still dubious we are even at our destination.  We have booked seats in a Sumo – an Indian-made jeep – to the border town of Birganj, but all we have to prove it is a scrap of paper which reads “Govinda Gee. Opp. Eden Petrol Pump”.  Our driver picks the pigeon off the grill, retrieves our packs, and speeds off.  We are on a congested, dusty, ugly down-trodden stretch of road on the east side of Kathmandu, where buses, mini-vans and jeeps all stop and shout and vie for passengers.  Touts grab our precious piece of paper, study it, and direct us one way or another, and in this fashion we arrive at the office of Govinda Gee.  By 7 AM, our supposed departure time, it looks like there is a consensus that we have seats on a Sumo, and by 8 we are underway.

The arrangement is less than luxurious, but tolerably; we are in the front, the seat is worn out, and Katheryn has to sit with the stick shift between her knees.  It gets worse when we hit the “new highway” which at this point is a 4-WD track through the mountains.  It’s first and second gear all the way and some of the hairpins are so steep that the tires spin and throw rocks as we make the corner.  However, we make it to Birganj in a mere 5.5 hours, a trip that by local bus can take more than 12.

Some of you may remember our famous “Escape from Birganj” story three years ago, when we were caught here by rioting and curfew, and had to sneak out past road blocks at 4AM.  We find a room at the same hotel that we stayed at then – The Everest – and congratulate ourselves on the success of Step One.

Step Two starts the next morning, and involves crossing the border into India.  This should be fairly straightforward, but India recently (8 weeks ago) changed its rule on multi-entry visas, basically rendering ours void. It took an entire day at the Indian consulate in Kathmandu, more money, and a half-inch stack of photo-copied documents to get permission to cross this border, and the lone office working out of a derelict shed here still isn’t sure about it.  He tells us we are the first people in our position to have the authorization to enter since the rule came into effect – everyone else he has sent back to Kathmandu.

The next step is to get on the 10AM train to Calcutta; again, normally a routine operation we’ve done one thousand times, but now, even though we booked berths a month ago, we still aren’t confirmed.  What we have is a berth between us “R.A.C.” – Reserved Against Cancelation – which means someone down the line has to drop out in order for both of us to have a bunk.  A businessman opposite has managed to squeeze his daughter, wife, and mother-in-law into one bunk – against the rules – and laughs when I say they should add another AC sleeper car.  “I’m surprised there is a train at all! I’m surprised there is a road at all! All they used to have here was oxcarts!”  And it’s true: we are in the notoriously-poor, lawless part of India, Bihar, where even motorized transport can’t be taken for granted.  Fortunately the seating situation gets resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and the Maoist insurgents don’t blow up the tracks, as they have been prone to do.

Our scheduled arrival time in Calcutta is 4AM.  We will the train to be late, and succeed, and arrive at 9.  The rest of the trip: flight to KL; overnight; flight to Bali is hardly worth mentioning. We are even picked up at the airport by our friend Peter, and driven to a hotel – with a swimming pool – that he has booked for us: that’s how easy this has become!  However we have come a long way from Kathmandu, 46 hours of travel in 5 days, which leads us to the umbul-umbul.

Thanks to everyone from the last blog, by the way, who made a request for some of our Nepali  treasure.  The response was great but there’s still lots left in case you’re just now getting around to thinking about it.

If you visited any of our sales last year, you probably noticed our tall, elegant banners outside. These are Balinese umbul – ceremonial banners – and there was so much interest in them that we constantly regretted that we only had our five display pieces.  Now we have agreat source for them in Wayan, umbul, umbrella, and ceremonial cloth maker.  They are all 5 meters tall and will retail at our sales for $16. We are stocking the colours you see in the photo (for a bigger image double click it) although quite a few (we cleaned out Wayan’s stock) are in limited numbers.  As a special offer* and if you order NOW they are on sale for 5 pieces for $60 or 10 for $100.  Keep in mind how charming they would be at all those parties, weddings or special events coming up this summer.  If you are interested, let us know by email:  katheryn@kebeandfast.com and we will set aside your selection.  When we are back in Canada in the middle of April, we will contact you about payment and delivery details.

*It is the Nyepi festival here tomorrow, Bali’s famous “Do Nothing Day”, when everything, including the international airport is closed, and no one goes outside, turns on the power, or anything.  More on that later.

Here are some of the videos from Nepal.  Check them out!

Boudinath, the stupa of the relic

The Better Road Movie

and soon to be a classic Bad Road Movie

also TONGBA! is a lot of fun

and there are two more cityscapes: Durbar Square, Patan and Kathmandu

Greetings to all our family and friends!  Thank you for your emails and updates.  It sounds like we missed a pretty good time in Vancouver; we weren’t sure whether the tremor we felt here was the shock wave from Chile or Canada jumping up and down after the men’s gold medal on Sunday.

We are now in Kathmandu, a place that doesn’t really care about the Olympic Games.  That doesn’t mean it doesn’t know how to celebrate.  One of the year’s biggest festivals, Holi, just finished.  Somewhere there may be something religious about it, but mostly it’s an excuse to get very boisterous and spray everybody with water and coloured dye.  The city shuts down, since if the water bombers from the roof-tops don’t get you, the roving bands of teenage boys will.

Apart from that, we have been busy getting our Nepal shipment together.  It is one of our favourites, since we get to work with Malik, our Tibetan jeweler, and scour the bazaars of this most interesting of cities.  And we have found treasure!

As a special offer to you all, we are posting a selection of our findings here, and if anyone is interested in something let us know, and we will save it for you.  In addition, if you commit now, we will mark it down 30% from the retail price.  Our shipment will be underway soon, and should arrive in Vancouver early in May.  When it arrives, we will ensure everything is in good order, contact you, and take your credit card information for a 30% deposit.  At that point it depends where you are as to how we will get the item(s) to you.  Delivery can be arranged in person, if we are in the vicinity, by post, or at one of our sales events.  For those dates see our 2010 sales schedule on the blog home page or on our website (http://www.kebeandfast.com).  Enquiries can be made to katheryn@kebeandfast.com.

Last year we ran out of singing bowls early on in the season; this year we have found a great source.  We have made contact with the Tuladhar family, brass and bronze casters from Patan, where metal-work is an ancient tradition.  Yesterday we went to their workshop on the fringes of that town, and watched as they cast bronze bowls in a manner that hasn’t changed for centuries, except for a power-grinder and polisher to finish the process.  We learned the difference between the brass machine-worked bowls, which are cheap but loose their timbre after a few months; the cast bronze bowls, which are nice but uniform and rather characterless; the hand-beaten bronze bowls, which are things of beauty; and the old, used beaten bronze bowls, called thadobhuti, which are heirlooms, and have the most fantastic songs.  We have purchased only the last two types of bowls.  For pictures and sizes see below.  We also have one magnificent lost-wax-cast brass Buddha from the Tuladhar brothers.  It is the only one we will have this year, Sakyamuni in the “Calling Earth to Witness” mudra.

And speaking of treasure, we have our best selection of Tibetan and Nepali art ever! The political situation in Nepal drove our friend Govinda to India. A collector for many years, Govinda took all of his goods to a warehouse south of Delhi. He has some absolutely amazing pieces - rice grinding boards 7 m long and a metre thick, carved from a single tree-trunk; huge ceremonial doors from Naga villages - but what drew us to him in the first place was his Tibetan doors. These doors are made in Tibet from original doors, but the painting is often more recent, say 15 to 25 years old, done on canvas which is glued to the door, often with plaster embelishments that create a raised-finish, metallic-looking detail. We have two doors: one has the Buddha Sakymuni, and one a Tibetan king.

Also from Govinda are some original tribal carvings that we only have a few pieces of. These come from Nepal, and are often quite whimsical - like the fanged mask with granny glasses, or the stack of cats. One of my favourites is a three-piece door frame, all elaborately and boldly carved. The pieces all come apart, and are great sculptural panels on their own, but we think it should be kept as an integral unit.

Here is the price list for the items on offer.  Please note that G.S.T. and P.S.T.  will be added, as well as any additional shipping costs.

SINGING BOWLS:

Hand-beaten bronze large (23 cm. diameter, 1.4 kg) retail $150.  SALE PRICE $105.

Hand-beaten bronze medium (14cm, 500 gr) retail $55. SALE PRICE $38.50.

Old bronze thadobhati (18 cm diameter 800 gr) retail $110.  SALE PRICE  $77.

Brass Buddha (26 cm, 2.76 kg) retail $300.  SALE PRICE $210.

TIBETAN DOORS  approx. 60” X 36″ retail $900.  SALE PRICE $630.

NEPALI FOLK CARVING:

Round-eyed mask retail $25. SALE PRICE $17.50.

Goat boxes retail $60.  SALE PRICE $42.