The Neighborhood

By request, here are some random shots of my street. Each has been framed or otherwise cropped to appear as idyllic as possible.

The pool is a few steps from my patio and is just days old. The dog is one of three masters of the house. The flag is one of many flying over Thailand these days in honor of the king's 60 years (and counting) on the throne. What might look like a birdhouse is in fact a small shrine, in this case a replica of a Buddhist temple. The barbed wire and glass shards were installed by the previous owners, when this place was a fishery or cannery or something.

My neighbors are very nice. One woman recently treated me to one of the coconuts I watched her hack from a tree with a machete that was as big as her (tiny) arm. She cut a hole in the top and served it with a straw. The juice inside was milky and sweet, and I gnawed on the meat under the lid. Yesterday she gave me a bowl of vermicelli-like noodles with crushed red pepper, sprouts, basil leaves, chives, and a tease of lime juice. There were also a few chunks of dried fish but, yellowed and tasteless, they might very well have been stale banana chips.

I'm sure I'll get flak (again) for not taking pictures of actual human beings, but I'm just observing the Golden Rule of Photography: "Do not photograph those you do not know lest they, like you would surely if you were them, desire to shove you (backwards) into a row of garbage cans." You can look it up.