Buddhist Temple in Sisaket Built with Beer Bottles (and others)

I never posted my photos of this temple because I didn’t any great shots – the lighting was all wrong but I still took about 50 photos. I’ll add them to this post as I find them. There are many more buildings than this article shows – but the idea is well captured.

If you live in Sisaket or Surin -somewhere around there you might as well go – can’t go to the Cambodian border and see the temple anymore, can ya?

Buddhist Bottle Temple in Thailand…

How Important is Face in Thai Society?

I saw an article in The Nation today about a Thai man that set himself on fire in a street. Why did he do it? From the looks of the article I’m going to guess it had a lot to do with face he was going to lose when he couldn’t give his family money so they could hire rice pickers for the harvest. The family was counting on him for money apparently and he wasn’t able to give it because his employer cheated him out of the money (which may or may not really be the case – but no matter).

I’ve written about the Thai concept of ‘face’ a few times here at this blog and also at some of my other sites. Without going deeply into it – face is the backbone of Thai social interaction. Face is akin to respect or value… worth in Thai society. A Thai person gains face by doing the right thing in the eyes of others. He gains face when he overlooks mistakes or errors by another person and instead encourages the person to try to do better the next time. He gains face when he has friends in high paying or highly respectable positions in Thai culture and is seen with those friends. He gains face when he has accumulated wealth himself or in some position of power.

Losing face occurs when someone tells a truth that hurts to your face or behind you back. If someone is gossiping about you behind your back you are losing face with those people because you’re being spoken about negatively. The things said might be right on and truthful, or they might be lies but either way – face is lost when you find out.

Losing face occurs when a man’s girlfriend goes with another guy instead of him. Thai men will often kill the other man or kill the girlfriend. Thai women usually kill themselves it seems.

Losing face might occur if you have a temper that easily flares up and causes you to become loud in public or to hit someone or worse. Losing temper or getting emotional (negative) causes loss of face. Being stupid and being found out causes loss of face. Gambling and losing a lot will have people talking and you’ll lose face. Being wrong and having someone point it out causes a loss of face.

Losing face is something every Thai strives to avoid – even more so than building face because I think naturally all Thais have an idea in their mind that everyone else has face until they lose it. It’s a given that people have a decent level of face until they show that they don’t deserve it.

For some reason the man that killed himself by fire was going to lose face whether because he wasn’t bright or quick enough to see that his employer was going to screw him out of his pay or whether he was just powerless to do anything about it when he found out he was going to be screwed out of his money. It doesn’t matter whether he lost it gambling it away or for whatever other reason – the whole point is that he couldn’t pay his family money they were counting on to be able to harvest their rice. He was going to face a severe loss of face within his family and that was unacceptable to him.

It brings to mind some discussions I’ve had with my girlfriend about her needing to give money to her parents because they can’t take care of themselves anymore. I understand it in her case. I’ve met her entire family and my girlfriend was basically brought up by her aunts and uncles because her parents couldn’t do it. Literally, couldn’t. I won’t go any deeper than that about it.

When your Thai girlfriend or Thai husband or whomever tells you that they need to send back a couple thousand baht to their family so they can help support them it’s really in your best interest to do so. A couple thousand baht – even 5,000 baht – I don’t see a problem with. If you’re sending 10,000 or more baht each month I guess if there were extenuating circumstances then it might still make sense. Anything over that and I’d have to wonder – why must it be so much?

I’ve met guys here in Thailand that send 0 baht per month and I’ve met guys that send 25,000 per month to their Thai tee-rak’s family. 25,000 baht is a lot of money for family support each month and in my mind wouldn’t be justified for any but the most urgent need – perhaps your tee-rak has 17 kids that her parents are taking care of or maybe her mother needs some 24-hour nurse care and dialysis that costs a lot of money, or something like that.

Sending something is probably necessary – especially if the family knows the daughter or son has a farang partner. All their needs must be taken care of, so now the son or daughter should take care of the parents needs too. It’s Thai societal expectation – this is the way life goes. A son or daughter loses a lot of face if they can’t contribute to ma and paw’s monthly income. After all – the son or daughter went to college and can get a decent job making more than enough to take care of their own monthly expenses AND send some home. That’s the whole goal. That’s the reason most young educated Thais head for Bangkok to work outrageous hours (10-14 per day a lot of them with the commute). They need to make enough for themselves AND their parents. Girls have it extra hard it seems like because frequently the sons are screw-offs and don’t send money home to help. The family forgives this – but the girl’s are then held to a higher standard. The girls are put under more pressure to come through then.

So, this guy set himself on fire in the middle of a street which showed me how much face means inside a Thai person’s head. It’s everything to them. It’s their whole world. If you cause a Thai to lose a lot of face – they might as well burn themselves in the street – the pain is less than they feel inside over losing a considerable amount of face.

Thai man immolates self … (The Nation 10/30/2008)

Your Digital Photos Aren’t Worth ANYTHING

I had a weird experience the last couple days and it got weirder today.

I wrote a small company on a very small island and told them I liked one of their photos they use on their site. I also told them I was writing an article about the island and would mention their small business favorably and put a link in the article linking to their site AND another link on the photo with credit to them and a link back to their site if they would allow me to feature the photo in the article.

This was not for ThaiPulse incidentally, but no matter – could have been for any site.

The girl co-owner, a Brit, writes back that she couldn’t let the photo be used without charging for it.

I thought she didn’t understand so I wrote again to clarify everything. It’s in the best interests of her business to be mentioned – didn’t she “get it”?

She got it, at least she thought she did – but, in the next email back she wrote again – that the article is worth more with a photo and she’d need to charge for it.

Let me explain further. The shot has nice color. That’s about it. It is only about 400pixels by 250 and not high resolution by any means. Anyone or a monkey could have taken the photo – it’s just that the perspective seen is from high above the ground.

I have access to Getty images for free. I have credits at Dreamstime.com enough for hundreds of photos – basically free. Or, if you equate credit to dollars – I have the $3 it would take to get a photo of the island from the same or much better perspective.

I like to help small Thai businesses that I like, that I believe in. For free. I don’t make any extra money writing this article, I’m paid a salary at the place I was writing for. It’s not freelance… anyway…

Your digital photos (and mine) are not worth squat in today’s market. Everyone and their kids has a digital camera and are capable of turning out remarkable photos. Gone are the days when I worked in New York City as a photographer and spent hours prepping a scene or a model to take photos that were worth something more than $3 at Dreamstime. Those days are WAY gone.

Apparently someone is still telling the world they can make money with their digital photos. It’s a novice way to enter into online sales of some sort. Something everyone can do to have a business online. Everyone wants the easy money online.

There isn’t any easy money in digital photos. Not even if you put together 100 photos that make people fall down semi-comatose and suck wind for 10 minutes because they can’t wrap their minds around what they just saw.

I have 700+ photos online at stock photo agencies. I know how to shoot a photo. I have some good photos. I was a professional at one time. I make about a dollar a sale on my photos – high resolution shot with amazing care and precision.

A dollar.

The best photographers in the entire world are putting billions of photos online at stock agencies because that’s where the buyers are. Not NYC, not Chicago and L.A. They are online and they want a photo for about 3 dollars.

The best chance anyone has for making money on digital photography these days is to make all of your photos “Creative Commons” licensed (see flickr’s CC info) and put your credit in the form of a URL directly on your photos so that some people will come back to your site.

That’s about it. There’s too many calendars. There’s too many coffee mugs with photos. You’re aren’t anything special unless they’re naked people doing weird stuff. Even then, there is such a glut of por—-n online that those photos too are dropping down to the couple dollars a shot rate.

Digital video is another story. Creating something unique digitally is another story. Writing stories – is another story.

Digital image money making is dead.

If someone writes you to say they are writing an article about your town and they are mentioning your business in the article – favorably, and with a link back to your site from the article, and the writer would like to use one of YOUR photos in the article WITH a link back to your site. Count them – that’s 2 links.

You should: (multiple choice)

A.) Tell the writer your photos are not free and you will charge him for them.

B.) Understand that you are getting free advertising and offer the writer 25 more photos you have that you haven’t posted online yet.

C.) Tell the writer you have enough people coming to your small business, but thanks for the thought.

D.) Write back as fast as you can, “YES, USE MY PHOTOS, THANK YOU FOR THE LINK AND MENTION!” and quickly invite the writer to use your service gratis for a 2-day stay if he’ll write 2 more articles about your business over the next couple weeks.

E.) Go back to watching Thai soap operas and thinking about how to make your skin whiter.

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