Take note, kids: Buddha is NOT for tattoos

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My daughter just posted this picture of me in the vicinity of Wat Pho in Bangkok. I liked the message on the awning.

Of course, I don’t much like ANY tattoos, but at least we should be able to avoid using Buddha as personal skin decoration. OK? Buddha is for respecting. Here’s the website on the awning.

5 thoughts on “Take note, kids: Buddha is NOT for tattoos”

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      I enjoyed that part — seeing a message to respect Buddha in a medium where you expect to see “Enjoy Coca-Cola”… I love a touch like that…

    2. Brad Warthen Post author

      There are two things that I particularly love about travel, and they are opposites:

      1. When things are exactly as I imagined they would be, just as books or movies or whatever had prepared me to expect. Examples: Listening to the accent of a New York cop, riding down the street in London with every building just screaming “England” at me. Those hats Bobbies still wear in London. A guy bringing a live chicken onto the bus in Thailand.

      2. When I see things I couldn’t possibly have imagined in advance. Such as messages to respect Buddha presented in such a commercial, Western manner. Surprises like that delight me…

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Another one of my faves from category one… the time I got onto the bus from Oxford to Woodstock, and while fumbling with my cash to pay the driver I dropped a 20-pound note onto the floor.

        As I bent to pick it up, a guy in a nearby seat said in a mock-disgusted manner, “You Yanks, comin’ over ‘ere and chuckin’ yer money about…”

        Thereby evoking the classic complaint about Americans in Britain in the couple of years before D-Day. The Brits loved the Yanks, saying there were only three problems with them: They’re overpaid, oversexed and over here.

        I should have just given the guy the 20 quid in appreciation for the moment…

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