New Blog
Please visit my new blog, www.internationaldumpling.blogspot.com
posted by N at 6:43 PM
0 comments
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Friday, May 12, 2006
Found in the depths of my scribblings
Agalicos: A coffeehouse or rather Salon de The that perfectly
emulates the colonial vision of casual elegance. With entirely white
furniture (much of it wicker), blue and white willow china planters
full of orchids and ferns, high ceilings, windows opening out onto a
lush garden including an "ancient" asian fountain, white wooden bird
cages made to look like oriental domed buildings, a white and grey
marble floor, a misty tabletop terrarium dome with a dark sea-green
glazed base, it looks like something out of a Forester novel. The
glass-topped tables hold yellowed Twinings wrappers and linen napkins
with green line drawings of tea cups. There are copper pots hanging
above the small servinf and display area, where european pastries sit
underneath glass cake covers. A large blue vase holds a green
parasol.
The only other people in here are two women (Japanese?), dressed
trendily and drinking tea and chatting. The staff are relaxed Thais,
dressed all in white of course. To enter, you need to talk to the
guard, who sits outside in a melon colored dress uniform. He rings
the bell for you to be let in. There is no sign. At one point, a
Thai nanny came in from the garden, two small children in tow. The
entire threesome was dressed in shades of pink.
I came to this place in search of an espresso and a place to read my
book. BK magazine listed it as the closest coffeeshop to my house. I
should have known from the opening hours (F-Su 10am-6pm) that this was
no Cafe Paradiso. Instead, it appears to be a home furnishings
gallery cun Salon de The. They display books of Jim Thompson Company
Upholstry textiles and sell their own brand of tea.
Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have been
colonized, but they certainly do a good job pretending that they have
been. New subdivisions are built in a faux French Colonial style, and
they come up with restaurants like this. What I'm unclear on is how
mindful all this is. Are they envious of the coloniakl architecture
and culture that pervaded Vietnam? Or is this a knowing, semi-ironic
wink at the colonialist vision? This place certainly has more than a
bit of Ralph Lauren or Martha Stewart to it -- would the Thais
consider this an occidentalist decore? Do they feel that they are
capitalizing on our emperialist aesthetic? Or was this place designed
by a retrograde Farang with no sense of irony whatsoever? Whatever
the answer or answers may be, there is a distinct feeling of pastiche.
It's off-putting to be sitting in a place this "picture-perfect"; if
this were in Palm Beach, it would be one thing. Here, it's just a bit
too close to the (un)-truth of the history of they place.
emulates the colonial vision of casual elegance. With entirely white
furniture (much of it wicker), blue and white willow china planters
full of orchids and ferns, high ceilings, windows opening out onto a
lush garden including an "ancient" asian fountain, white wooden bird
cages made to look like oriental domed buildings, a white and grey
marble floor, a misty tabletop terrarium dome with a dark sea-green
glazed base, it looks like something out of a Forester novel. The
glass-topped tables hold yellowed Twinings wrappers and linen napkins
with green line drawings of tea cups. There are copper pots hanging
above the small servinf and display area, where european pastries sit
underneath glass cake covers. A large blue vase holds a green
parasol.
The only other people in here are two women (Japanese?), dressed
trendily and drinking tea and chatting. The staff are relaxed Thais,
dressed all in white of course. To enter, you need to talk to the
guard, who sits outside in a melon colored dress uniform. He rings
the bell for you to be let in. There is no sign. At one point, a
Thai nanny came in from the garden, two small children in tow. The
entire threesome was dressed in shades of pink.
I came to this place in search of an espresso and a place to read my
book. BK magazine listed it as the closest coffeeshop to my house. I
should have known from the opening hours (F-Su 10am-6pm) that this was
no Cafe Paradiso. Instead, it appears to be a home furnishings
gallery cun Salon de The. They display books of Jim Thompson Company
Upholstry textiles and sell their own brand of tea.
Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have been
colonized, but they certainly do a good job pretending that they have
been. New subdivisions are built in a faux French Colonial style, and
they come up with restaurants like this. What I'm unclear on is how
mindful all this is. Are they envious of the coloniakl architecture
and culture that pervaded Vietnam? Or is this a knowing, semi-ironic
wink at the colonialist vision? This place certainly has more than a
bit of Ralph Lauren or Martha Stewart to it -- would the Thais
consider this an occidentalist decore? Do they feel that they are
capitalizing on our emperialist aesthetic? Or was this place designed
by a retrograde Farang with no sense of irony whatsoever? Whatever
the answer or answers may be, there is a distinct feeling of pastiche.
It's off-putting to be sitting in a place this "picture-perfect"; if
this were in Palm Beach, it would be one thing. Here, it's just a bit
too close to the (un)-truth of the history of they place.
posted by N at 3:28 PM
0 comments
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
carnet
Anyone who reads Gridskipper or The New York Times has most likely discovered articles about Carnet, this god awful website that claims to be a classy and luxurious guide through the poshest areas of the world's poshest cities. What infuriates me about the guides is neither the reported $5,000 per day reporting budget (hey, I'd do it if I could) nor the premise of such a guide. Rather, I am offended by the design of the website, which looks like a late 90's fashion illustrator's rendition of Carmen San Diego Dressed as Jackie O. The fictional guide, Eva Hamilton-Clarke, "sophisticated and savvy world traveller" wears knock-off Chanel flats (oops, name-dropping is so gauche) and the peek into her teal leather "carnet" involves goofy animation of a passport and more cutesy cartoons of women hailing cabs. Since when do sophisticated travellers need their travel advice mediated through graphics designed for twelve-year-olds?
And then there's the narration, which includes such gems and inside knowledge as:
"Elizabeth [presumably another fictional character] and I met at the Mercer Hotel for a late-ish breakfast. Their pancakes are divine, perfectly light and not too greasy. Elizabeth and I did a once over of my stores for the morning. They were mostly home decoration and furnishing stores in Soho. She stopped and asked me about the galleries. Much to her surprise, she couldn't believe it when I told her that high rents pushed all the galleries and artists out of the neighborhood and into Chelsea."
Choppy sentences, clichéd descriptions, and come on, I knew that the rents were high in Soho when I was ten, and I grew up in Chico-aahmonds-not-ahlmonds-California.
I just feel that the presentation and content does not match up with the PR of this guide that claims to be too elegant to include the Upper West Side, let alone "(God forbid you'd be there) Brooklyn." In Hong Kong I found a collection of upscale guides to Asian cities. Each pamphlet was letterpress printed on heavy paper in a classic font, and while the brief listings tended to be a bit precious and pretentious, e.g. "of course you wouldn't stay anywhere other than the Sukhothai, dahling," they did manage to root out tailors who specialized in making cheongsams out of vintage silks and colonial-chic tearooms that only open on the weekends (I found that one by myself, thank you very much). A well-done guide to the best a city has to offer, small enough to fit in a handbag and tailored to tourists who enjoy luxury and leisure is a fine thing. But if you're going to be a snob, get the packaging right.
And then there's the narration, which includes such gems and inside knowledge as:
"Elizabeth [presumably another fictional character] and I met at the Mercer Hotel for a late-ish breakfast. Their pancakes are divine, perfectly light and not too greasy. Elizabeth and I did a once over of my stores for the morning. They were mostly home decoration and furnishing stores in Soho. She stopped and asked me about the galleries. Much to her surprise, she couldn't believe it when I told her that high rents pushed all the galleries and artists out of the neighborhood and into Chelsea."
Choppy sentences, clichéd descriptions, and come on, I knew that the rents were high in Soho when I was ten, and I grew up in Chico-aahmonds-not-ahlmonds-California.
I just feel that the presentation and content does not match up with the PR of this guide that claims to be too elegant to include the Upper West Side, let alone "(God forbid you'd be there) Brooklyn." In Hong Kong I found a collection of upscale guides to Asian cities. Each pamphlet was letterpress printed on heavy paper in a classic font, and while the brief listings tended to be a bit precious and pretentious, e.g. "of course you wouldn't stay anywhere other than the Sukhothai, dahling," they did manage to root out tailors who specialized in making cheongsams out of vintage silks and colonial-chic tearooms that only open on the weekends (I found that one by myself, thank you very much). A well-done guide to the best a city has to offer, small enough to fit in a handbag and tailored to tourists who enjoy luxury and leisure is a fine thing. But if you're going to be a snob, get the packaging right.
posted by N at 12:57 PM
2 comments
Friday, April 22, 2005
Trains
The Bangkok train station is an old-school European-style station, with a lofty round-vaulted waiting room complete with a large analog clock on either side of the room. At 6:00pm bells sound, and everyone stands up for the national anthem, many from the plastic or straw woven mats layed out picnic-style on the floor of the hall.
This sitting around eating on any concrete floor available is a favorite Southeast Asian pasttime. In Hong Kong the Phillipino maids hold similar picnics on their Sundays off in the covered walkways that connect the city's high rises. For a city that seems so modern, rituals like this highlight the extremely stratified class structure in a distinctly foreign way.
I suppose the reason these Phillipino women congregate in the areas reserved on the weekdays for commuting bankers is that they have nowhere else to escape the houses in which they work and live. Their families are back in the Phillipines, and Hong Kong parks are so regulated that laying a mat down on the hourly-swept paths probably warrants a silver sign with some icon that means no eating or talking with friends.
Near my apartment on Hollywood Rd. there was a lovely little park, complete with a karp pnd, walled tai chi area with a circular entrance, and plenty of green-tiled Chinese spendor. Its tranquility, however, was due to a barrage of rules: no lying down on benches, no smoking, no playing games, no hawking, no feeding the feral cats, no skateboarding, etc. Each rule comes wih its own cartoon figure carrying out the offensive act, crossed out with a large red circle. The signs were spaced at about six-foot intervals on the wall surrounding the park, impossible to miss.
Not that Hong Kong's parks aren't lovely, in fact they were one of my favorite things about the city. Hong Kng Park, where first started jogging, was situated right in the middle of high rises, with the mountains and pink skyscrapers on one side and the harbor buildings on the other. The Hong Kong Zoological Gardens, just a few blocks up, house flamingos, other exotic birds, and a jaguar. Tai chi is popular here, and young children pose to have their pictures taken in front of the statue of some British king or consort. A very steep walk or tram ride up the hills leads to Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's premier tourist attraction. The two-mile loop aroud the peak offers views of Kowloon and the south side of Hong Kong Island. Sweet flower smells waft across the path, and the flow of visitors is occasionally interrupted by a Mercedes or BMW emerging from one of the luxury residences nestled ostentatiously on the side of the mountain.
My favorite of these houses was a simple modernist villa painted a reddish persimmon. The large square windows looked out over Central Hong Kong and revealed a stark white interior. It was unclear whether the place was inhabited or waiting for a certain 22-year-old expat with champagne tastes to move in and make it home.
But back to Thai trains. The interiors are a stunning retro combination of robin's-egg blue walls, cobalt curtains, brown leather seats, and silver luggage racks. When you first board the train the seats are in upright facing pairs, but by 10 pm a conductor has come by and unlocked the upper compartment, which turns into a sleeping berth, and then unfolds the two lover seats to make the bottom bed. Both are covered with a soft brown mat, clean sheets, a pillow, and a terrycloth blanket.
The lower bed is more desireable, and more expensive, as you can look out the window at the passing scenery and all-night food stalls (Thais love to eat at any time). Being on the bottom also bypasses awkward scrambling up narrow metal ladders to get to sleep.
Thai train attendants, like Thai policemen and other government officials, are unusually attractive. This is undoubtable due to their close-fitting uniforms, either entirely brown or a classic white shirt/blue pants combo. The hats and silver buttons are snappy, but the real key to their sexiness is the snug trousers.
Rolling past a shanty town on the outskirts of Bangkok, I realize the only time I have ever seen slums like this in Thailand is through a train window. You see other things as well tavelling by train: gigantic Buddhas perched on hills, large SUVs speeding off into the suburbs, a bored teenager lounging on top of a wall, one leg dangling toward the track.
The passengers on these trains range from well-heeled young Thai women rolling suitcases behind their stillettos to upcountry families who carry their luggage in red, yellow, and green striped plastic totes to Indian businessmen in identical white undershirts and khaki pants. Some routes, like the train to Chiang Mai or down to the islands, are more prone to the backpacker set, solo ragged travellers or blissful couples. On the way back from Chiang Mai I shared a car entirely filled with an aging French tour group. They were the loudest of all, carrying on over their boxed lunches and bottles of beer.
This train, heading up to the Laos border, is nearly empty, but I managed to meet an Indian computer programmer who wanted to talk about the US and a Canadian kid just out of highschool who is travelling around by himself for a few months. The Canadian and I ended up heading to the border together, where we met an English bloke also travelling alone. We've ended up sticking together and getting triple rooms in guesthouses, which saves us a bit of money and provides some company.
This sitting around eating on any concrete floor available is a favorite Southeast Asian pasttime. In Hong Kong the Phillipino maids hold similar picnics on their Sundays off in the covered walkways that connect the city's high rises. For a city that seems so modern, rituals like this highlight the extremely stratified class structure in a distinctly foreign way.
I suppose the reason these Phillipino women congregate in the areas reserved on the weekdays for commuting bankers is that they have nowhere else to escape the houses in which they work and live. Their families are back in the Phillipines, and Hong Kong parks are so regulated that laying a mat down on the hourly-swept paths probably warrants a silver sign with some icon that means no eating or talking with friends.
Near my apartment on Hollywood Rd. there was a lovely little park, complete with a karp pnd, walled tai chi area with a circular entrance, and plenty of green-tiled Chinese spendor. Its tranquility, however, was due to a barrage of rules: no lying down on benches, no smoking, no playing games, no hawking, no feeding the feral cats, no skateboarding, etc. Each rule comes wih its own cartoon figure carrying out the offensive act, crossed out with a large red circle. The signs were spaced at about six-foot intervals on the wall surrounding the park, impossible to miss.
Not that Hong Kong's parks aren't lovely, in fact they were one of my favorite things about the city. Hong Kng Park, where first started jogging, was situated right in the middle of high rises, with the mountains and pink skyscrapers on one side and the harbor buildings on the other. The Hong Kong Zoological Gardens, just a few blocks up, house flamingos, other exotic birds, and a jaguar. Tai chi is popular here, and young children pose to have their pictures taken in front of the statue of some British king or consort. A very steep walk or tram ride up the hills leads to Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's premier tourist attraction. The two-mile loop aroud the peak offers views of Kowloon and the south side of Hong Kong Island. Sweet flower smells waft across the path, and the flow of visitors is occasionally interrupted by a Mercedes or BMW emerging from one of the luxury residences nestled ostentatiously on the side of the mountain.
My favorite of these houses was a simple modernist villa painted a reddish persimmon. The large square windows looked out over Central Hong Kong and revealed a stark white interior. It was unclear whether the place was inhabited or waiting for a certain 22-year-old expat with champagne tastes to move in and make it home.
But back to Thai trains. The interiors are a stunning retro combination of robin's-egg blue walls, cobalt curtains, brown leather seats, and silver luggage racks. When you first board the train the seats are in upright facing pairs, but by 10 pm a conductor has come by and unlocked the upper compartment, which turns into a sleeping berth, and then unfolds the two lover seats to make the bottom bed. Both are covered with a soft brown mat, clean sheets, a pillow, and a terrycloth blanket.
The lower bed is more desireable, and more expensive, as you can look out the window at the passing scenery and all-night food stalls (Thais love to eat at any time). Being on the bottom also bypasses awkward scrambling up narrow metal ladders to get to sleep.
Thai train attendants, like Thai policemen and other government officials, are unusually attractive. This is undoubtable due to their close-fitting uniforms, either entirely brown or a classic white shirt/blue pants combo. The hats and silver buttons are snappy, but the real key to their sexiness is the snug trousers.
Rolling past a shanty town on the outskirts of Bangkok, I realize the only time I have ever seen slums like this in Thailand is through a train window. You see other things as well tavelling by train: gigantic Buddhas perched on hills, large SUVs speeding off into the suburbs, a bored teenager lounging on top of a wall, one leg dangling toward the track.
The passengers on these trains range from well-heeled young Thai women rolling suitcases behind their stillettos to upcountry families who carry their luggage in red, yellow, and green striped plastic totes to Indian businessmen in identical white undershirts and khaki pants. Some routes, like the train to Chiang Mai or down to the islands, are more prone to the backpacker set, solo ragged travellers or blissful couples. On the way back from Chiang Mai I shared a car entirely filled with an aging French tour group. They were the loudest of all, carrying on over their boxed lunches and bottles of beer.
This train, heading up to the Laos border, is nearly empty, but I managed to meet an Indian computer programmer who wanted to talk about the US and a Canadian kid just out of highschool who is travelling around by himself for a few months. The Canadian and I ended up heading to the border together, where we met an English bloke also travelling alone. We've ended up sticking together and getting triple rooms in guesthouses, which saves us a bit of money and provides some company.
posted by N at 2:13 PM
4 comments
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Update
It's been a while since I posted here. Long enough, in fact, for me to: a) spend a few days in Krabi, Thailand, where I rock climbed for the first time ever and sea kayaked to the most gorgeous beach I have ever seen, complete with crystal clear water and vast karst formations and b) spend a month in Hong Kong, where I crashed on my friend Dave's floor until I decided to stay there for a few months, found a room in an apartment with some very cool Hong Kong girls, and promptly realized that I am incapable of commitment to any given location and hopped back on a plane to Bangkok.
Now I'm back in what is starting to feel like home, but I have scheduled my flight to real home for May 12. This is both frighteningly soon and also a ways away, and in the interim I am going to go to Laos, which everyone says is fantastic. I wanted to go to Vietnam too, but time and lack of money are getting in the way. China was called off because the travel companions kept falling through. So basically, I still have a good chunk of Asia I want to visit, and will probably start planning my next trip as soon as I get home.
Hong Kong is like a slice of New York City perched on the mountains of San Francisco or Seattle. The steep and winding streets make as little cartographic sense as those in Boston, and they have cute British names, remnants of the until-just-recently occupation. Having never been to China, I can't say how Chinese it feels, but it certainly felt more Western than anywhere else I've been in Asia. That being said, there are still whole streets dedicated to selling ginseng and birds' nests and strange black wooly stuff. I sampled a bowl of some Chinese herbal remedy at a shop that brews these herbs all day long and keeps them displayed to attract Hong Kongese businesspeople on their way to important moneymaking activities. Almost as common as the herbal medicine shops are stores dedicated to fresh soymilk and tofu, which is kept in water just like Cal's (the tofu I grew up eating in Chico).
Food is big in Hong Kong, and the markets, lit up by iconic red lamps, sell huge fish live or sliced into bloody chunks and all sorts of meat parts dangling on hooks. This meat looks far more appetizing in the restaurants, where I sampled Beijing-style pork pancakes (a precursor to mu-shu?), Sichuan dan-dan noodles, and many, many dumplings. At a restaurant specializing in Xiao long bao, delicate and juicy steamed pork dumplings, I also witnessed the Shanghainese method of noodle-making, which involves stretching and twisting and throwing around an incredibly elastic lump of dough until it somehow magically turns into long, thin noodles perfect for slurping. They say Marco Polo stole the idea for pasta from the Chinese, and this technique looked so similar to classic pizza dough manipulation that I wouldn't be surprised if he lifted some other methods as well.
Handbags, however, rule the city. Without a Luis Vuitton or Gucci logo on your purse, you may as well get back on the donkey-cart you rode in on, because these Hong Kong women know and love their designer accessories. There's an entire chain of stores devoted to reselling mint-condition designer bags, presumably because the truly wealthy women buy and discard these handbags with every season. Window shopping was quite fun, and I not only found plenty of shoes to lust after but also a store that is custom-making a pair of pumps I designed, which will be delivered to the states in a month or so.
One day I went out to Macau with Dave's friends who were visiting, and we wandered around this island city that feels strangely Caribbean, probably owing to the Portuguese colonial architecture and a fair number of palm trees. I ate some delicious eggy custard and was excited by the funkiness of the buildings, which made me want to get back to Southeast Asia.
And now I'm back, and have already consumed a few kilos of fresh mangosteen, rambutan, and watermelon. I hear Laos has good fish and some of the best coffee in Asia, so it should be a delicious finale to my sojourn.
Now I'm back in what is starting to feel like home, but I have scheduled my flight to real home for May 12. This is both frighteningly soon and also a ways away, and in the interim I am going to go to Laos, which everyone says is fantastic. I wanted to go to Vietnam too, but time and lack of money are getting in the way. China was called off because the travel companions kept falling through. So basically, I still have a good chunk of Asia I want to visit, and will probably start planning my next trip as soon as I get home.
Hong Kong is like a slice of New York City perched on the mountains of San Francisco or Seattle. The steep and winding streets make as little cartographic sense as those in Boston, and they have cute British names, remnants of the until-just-recently occupation. Having never been to China, I can't say how Chinese it feels, but it certainly felt more Western than anywhere else I've been in Asia. That being said, there are still whole streets dedicated to selling ginseng and birds' nests and strange black wooly stuff. I sampled a bowl of some Chinese herbal remedy at a shop that brews these herbs all day long and keeps them displayed to attract Hong Kongese businesspeople on their way to important moneymaking activities. Almost as common as the herbal medicine shops are stores dedicated to fresh soymilk and tofu, which is kept in water just like Cal's (the tofu I grew up eating in Chico).
Food is big in Hong Kong, and the markets, lit up by iconic red lamps, sell huge fish live or sliced into bloody chunks and all sorts of meat parts dangling on hooks. This meat looks far more appetizing in the restaurants, where I sampled Beijing-style pork pancakes (a precursor to mu-shu?), Sichuan dan-dan noodles, and many, many dumplings. At a restaurant specializing in Xiao long bao, delicate and juicy steamed pork dumplings, I also witnessed the Shanghainese method of noodle-making, which involves stretching and twisting and throwing around an incredibly elastic lump of dough until it somehow magically turns into long, thin noodles perfect for slurping. They say Marco Polo stole the idea for pasta from the Chinese, and this technique looked so similar to classic pizza dough manipulation that I wouldn't be surprised if he lifted some other methods as well.
Handbags, however, rule the city. Without a Luis Vuitton or Gucci logo on your purse, you may as well get back on the donkey-cart you rode in on, because these Hong Kong women know and love their designer accessories. There's an entire chain of stores devoted to reselling mint-condition designer bags, presumably because the truly wealthy women buy and discard these handbags with every season. Window shopping was quite fun, and I not only found plenty of shoes to lust after but also a store that is custom-making a pair of pumps I designed, which will be delivered to the states in a month or so.
One day I went out to Macau with Dave's friends who were visiting, and we wandered around this island city that feels strangely Caribbean, probably owing to the Portuguese colonial architecture and a fair number of palm trees. I ate some delicious eggy custard and was excited by the funkiness of the buildings, which made me want to get back to Southeast Asia.
And now I'm back, and have already consumed a few kilos of fresh mangosteen, rambutan, and watermelon. I hear Laos has good fish and some of the best coffee in Asia, so it should be a delicious finale to my sojourn.
posted by N at 8:45 PM
3 comments
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Old and New
Man Mo Temple, on Hollywood Rd., just a block away from my apartment.
posted by N at 7:41 AM
0 comments
British-Chinese
One of the first train stops built by the British in the New Territories (leased about 50 years after Hong Kong Island).
posted by N at 7:39 AM
0 comments
Incense
Inside a temple...luckily this one was an open-air courtyard!
posted by N at 7:38 AM
0 comments
Street Scene
I loved the boxy red-and-white Hong Kong cabs, particularly next to the picturesque herb shops.
posted by N at 7:21 AM
0 comments
Cantonese Opera
I stumbled upon a free performance of Cantonese opera one night. The costumes were stunning, though I could only put up with the nasal singing for so long.
posted by N at 7:18 AM
0 comments
Old Bailey St.
Dave's apartment is just up the hill from this old jail, on appropriately named Chancery Lane.
posted by N at 7:15 AM
0 comments
The Boys: Taylor, Austin, David
Austin is David's friend from Harvard, and Taylor is Austin's friend from high school. We all hung out last week; this shot is from a night out on the town
posted by N at 7:09 AM
0 comments
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Miracle Cow
On the front page of the Bangkok Post yesterday (pointed out to me by Rafi):
Khmer man claims to own miracle cow
Phnom Penh-A Cambodian man claims his cow is possessed by a magic healing
spirit that emigrated from Thailand, but religious leaders and officials say
it's not true.
Kim Chan, 40, of Kampong Trach in Kampot province, said his cow became
possessed last week and now its dung and urine cure diseases.
He had been visted by a woman on a bicycle who fell down and wept when she
saw the cow, claiming to recognise in its eyes a spirit that had until
recently possessed a cow in Thailand. The animal has become known as Preah
Kou, or Holy Cow.
Officials were quick to dismiss the bovine as an ordinary animal.
"We had a holy cow here a year-and-a-half ago. You don't get two that close
together," said Deputy Governor Khun Somnang. ---DPA
Khmer man claims to own miracle cow
Phnom Penh-A Cambodian man claims his cow is possessed by a magic healing
spirit that emigrated from Thailand, but religious leaders and officials say
it's not true.
Kim Chan, 40, of Kampong Trach in Kampot province, said his cow became
possessed last week and now its dung and urine cure diseases.
He had been visted by a woman on a bicycle who fell down and wept when she
saw the cow, claiming to recognise in its eyes a spirit that had until
recently possessed a cow in Thailand. The animal has become known as Preah
Kou, or Holy Cow.
Officials were quick to dismiss the bovine as an ordinary animal.
"We had a holy cow here a year-and-a-half ago. You don't get two that close
together," said Deputy Governor Khun Somnang. ---DPA
posted by N at 1:00 PM
0 comments
