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July 16, 2006

Phi Houses

Click on image to play video (high speed connection advised).

LOCATION: Khon Kaen, Thailand
SEE WHERE WE ARE!
Longitude: N: 16.43°
Latitude: E: 102.83°
Miles from Singapore: 1800

Tomorrow we ride out of Khon Kaen together north towards Udon Thani, 120kms away.

On the ride up here from Pak Chong I took some footage of 'spirit houses' that you'll see in the video. Although most Thais are Buddhists, they are deeply superstitious and still very much tied to their animist roots as most people seem to be in SE Asia. So every place, including physical features in the landscape like rock formations, rivers and even trees, are inhabited by spirits or 'Phi' as they are known. When a house or some other structure is built it is imperative that a separate residence is built somewhere nearby for the evicted spirit to live, otherwise the Phi can wreak all kinds of havoc!

These Phi-residences are not very big - normally the size of a doll's house - and are mass produced in uniform style and sold by the road side in large scale Phi-lots. Even the sky scrapers in Bangkok have spirit houses located prominently out front. And the bigger the building, the bigger the spirit house has to be. So as you can imagine some of them get to be mini Taj Mahal's in their own right.

Check out Melissa's blog

jason

Posted on July 16, 2006 3:37 PM

Comments

Keep going guys! good to hear that mel's recovering. cheerS!

Posted by: nudibranch [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 17, 2006 7:34 PM

was reading mellisa blog, concerning bread and potatos as cultural fare, good or bad depending on your culture....well, I am currently obsessed with the "blood type" diet. As blood type "B", i am to avoid wheat (most breads), corn (and corn based sweetners) and chicken (which has a protient i can not degest),,,but turkey is ok.

Posted by: ROBERT [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 16, 2006 11:40 PM