After a disappointing Saturday, much of which was spent floating around waiting for the wind to gust enough to ride, I grabbed my camera and decided to go find something to shoot. My original goal was to go to the “Sanctuary of Truth” up in Naklua (just north of Pattaya), but I realized that I had yet to be to Pattaya’s famous Buddha on the Hill, despite it being only a 10 minute drive from my house.
As you walk up the path towards the Buddha, a bunch of ladies run up to you with bird cages telling you that if you release it on top of the hill, it will give you good luck. I didn’t buy any.
There were, however, some chickens walking about at the bottom of the steps. I took a picture since it explains why it is so difficult to get chicken breasts in this part of the world. I then chased them off the path. I hope that is close enough to setting them free to bring me good luck.
The lighting was incredibly harsh and I didn’t get a whole lot of good pictures, but the buddha was surrounded by a lot of statues of various things that looking increasingly Hindu.
There were also a large number of little statues, many of them broken, some of them on top of other statues. Here is Buddha on the leg of Thailand’s great king.
A lot of families came up the hill with cages of birds.
It was a typical photo event. I heard a whole lot of Russian, some Thai, and a few other Scandinavian languages. No English.
Of course, lots of little birds, means lots of little cats. The hunter stalks from the base of the tree in this shot.
On my way back home I stopped by the Pattaya Windsurfing Championship. It was so far off shore that I couldn’t see a thing, even through my longest lens. No one on the beach seemed to care either.
This remains my favorite photo.
Also, I bought a plane ticket to Singapore for the Makha Bucha holiday coming up at the end of February.