Good Links for Today

Some good things for today:

Andy Brouwer visited the fantastic Khmer temple site of Wat Phu in Laos, and provides us with some wonderful photos. His series of posts can be found here, and I heartily recommend them.

Speaking of temples, and especially the symbolism of royal power in Southeast Asia, texturbation’s been visiting Cambodia lately, and has a gut-busting meditation on the ubiquitous shivalingas that focus so many Khmer temples. A snippet:

is the depiction of the Churning Of The Sea Of Milk.

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The Churning Of The Sea Of Milk relief runs along a long corridor. It depicts a couple hundred guys holding onto a massive snake, which is attached to a mountain that sits within a sea of milk.

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Tradition has it that as the demons pull on their collective snake, the mountain turns, churning the sea of milk into the delicious life-giving cream of creation.

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And Thus was the Universe Created.

Great big daisy-chain.

Texturbation needs to visit Bangkok (get it?) and see this shrine:

It’s probably good that Gabon officials busted this order-service human skull provision service. Yeah, you read that right. On the other hand, this quote reminds me of stuff I just finished writing yesterday:

In Gabon, the knowledge that human bones are used in the potion was nearly as shocking to many as the news of the graverobbing operation.

“I was initiated by Bwiti. I’m scared that I ate a person’s body,” said Jeanne Mba, a middle-aged housewife in Libreville. [via BB]

This brief blogpost from Details Are Sketchy made me laugh out loud. Dead on.

Although it’s not strictly ‘good news,’ it’s always good to hear from the fantabulous Rong Chhun, one of Cambodia’s true contemporary heroes, fighting for teachers and against corruption in the best way possible. As the president of the Cambodia Independent Teacher’s Union (CITA), he normally comes up with superb analyses of what’s going on. Here he is, a few days ago, discussing the celebrations of the Preah Vihear World Heritage Status. Sounds prescient now.

The celebration ceremony at Olympic Stadium is nothing special as Preah Vihear temple has been Cambodia’s property since 1962 under the crusade of former King Norodom Sihanouk,” said Rong Chhun, president of Cambodia Watchdog Council. “The celebration is simply being used for political gain, which only confuses voters before election day,” he added.

A Cambodian monk has joined the 300-plus election observer group:

“Even if I’m a monk, I have the same rights as a civilian citizen,” Huy Man Kheang told VOA Khmer in a recent interview. “The monks have the right to create organizations also.”

“We have monks who go to vote also, like the ordinary citizens,” he said. “Observation is only to monitor if there is violence from one party to others and to monitor in order to have a smooth election process.”

Right, there we go. Next post is less pleasant.