Living abroad is full of surprises

I’m a New Yorker living in Bangkok, Thailand, and I’ve been here for almost 4 years but the sights, sounds and people are continually a surprise. I thought I’d share some of them with you this week.

This was our taxi to the ferry boat to the regular taxi to the airport to return to Bangkok from an island in the Gulf of Thailand.

This is a Thai spirit house, which is a shrine to the protective spirits of the land in a particular place like a house. Normally food and flower offerings would go on this platform in front of it, but on this day a cat was nursing her kittens there. It’s about three feet off the ground, so she must have had quite the time getting them all up there and to stay.

The canisters had different smells in them, like what the most common gas in outer space would smell like if, you know, it wasn’t in a vacuum (no, I have no idea what gas it was). It was the same smell as raspberries, and did kind of smell like raspberries. I had never been to an exhibit where you got to sniff the installation before.