The saffron colored flowers are absolutely gorgeous. Notice the Buddha head statue in the background? There is a tree growing around it. According to StrudelMonkey who snapped this shot at Ayutthaya, Thailand, the only reason the statue is still in existence is because of that tree. Ayutthaya was once the capital of Siam from 1350 to 1767.
If you’ve a stupendous photo you want to share, post it at Gadling’s Flickr pool. We’re waiting.
As another sign of the plummeting dollar, officials in India have turned up their noses at the greenback and have started charging tourists a fixed rupee rate instead of the traditional dollar based entrance fee for the country’s main sights.
According to a recent Reuters article, the Ministry of Culture used to charge $5 to enter the Taj Mahal. This price was set when one dollar was worth 50 rupees. Today, the dollar has slunk to a low of 39 rupees. This means that the $5 entrance fee is now shortchanging the state coffers by 55 rupees per tourist.
To stem this loss of revenue, the Ministry of Culture is now making tourists pay a fixed rate of 250 rupees, approximately $6.50.
Man, will it ever end? When India becomes an expensive place to visit due to the plummeting dollar, things are really bad.
It used to be the trademark of the popular Spanish sherry company “Osborne”. A random marketing whim 50-years ago made the company erect about 90 14-meter high metallic silhouettes of a bull on all major highways across Spain; now they resemble the country. What a lucky fluke for Osborne, I doubt their marketing prowess foresaw that.
Around 1988, Spain introduced a law where there couldn’t be any publicity on the highways. Osborne got rid of their branding on the bull so they could still stand. Obviously, campaigners protested, but apparently public demand to keep the silhouette is what saved Osborne’s metallic structures, and it is still referred to as the “El Toro De Osborne” (The Osborne Bull).
Other than pointing it out to grandchildren on road-trips, the Spaniards I spoke to about this bull had neutral sentiments. “They chose a bull to represent their brand, then blew it up and put it all around the country,” is what they said; far from an ingenious plan I suppose.
In Catalunya, groups have protested: “we don’t want Spanish symbols in our territory”, and post many attempts to knock down the bulls; now there are none in that region.
Other than Catalunya, Cantabria and Murcia are the other two provinces without the bull; Alicante and Cádiz have the most. It’s the same bull you see on T-shirts, key-chains, stickers, posters and Spanish flags that you can buy in souvenir shops.
In celebration of the bull’s 50-years of existence, an art competition has been launched in the country where you can submit your artistic representations of the bull to win theme park tickets valid for 2008 (yaay?), Sony PlayStation 3, or a 100cc Motorcycle.
In honor of Thanksgiving coming up, here’s an ode to Plymouth Rock–the famous bit of boulder where William Bradford stepped off the Mayflower with the other Pilgrims following close behind, all ready to start their oppression free lives. That’s worked, kind of, although not perfect yet, (just ask the people who comment on Gadling about TSA regulations)–what is perfect is the meal eaten in their honor. But, back to the rock and this charming video.
This You Tube post by Stephanie Chaisson, a project she did for The Patriot Ledger, is a series of quick interviews with people of various ages asking them: “So what do you think of Plymouth Rock anyway?” I was actually surprised by how many kids seemed to like the rock, although there was a “kinda boring” type response. I can imagine a series where you could go up to people at various tourist attractions and ask them, “So what do you think of (fill in the blank) type questions.
Let he who has never chuckled at a statue’s “happy angle” throw the first stone.
The rest of us can jump on over to this short gallery of similarly themed photos from Russia, most of which feature the president-erect of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin.
Frankly it surprises me that the statue designers never considered the silliness of their creation when viewed from a specific angle. Or, perhaps they were simply being rebellious against the Soviet regime in their own special way. Nonetheless, such design flaws are the cause of constant amusement for the more prurient tourists who pass by. And yes, I sadly admit I’m one of the more juvenile-minded ones who will dangerously stand in the middle of the street for that perfect angle.
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