Thailand...as always a visit to the legendary Jim Thompson's House

(All Photos by Tavarua)

"Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you - it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you… Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

-Anthony Bourdain 

" Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. " -Vladimir Nabokov

"The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone" - Goethe

"Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better." - Henry Rollins 

"Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting." - Haruki Murakami

  "The best you can hope for is to live in a present so full and all-encompassing that you lose any sense of future or past." - Jonathan Carroll

Life of an Elephant...

(Photos by Tavarua)

"For every beauty there is an eye to see it.  For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it.  For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it." 

- Ivan Panin

Island days - Thailand...

(All Photos by Tavarua)

"Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness”

- Kahil Gibran

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

-Albert Einstein

"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” - Kahil Gibran

Thai Silk - "The Legendary American" - Jim Thompson

(All Photos by Tavarua)

"The legendary American", the man who created the still existing Jim Thompson Thai Silk Company. A former OSS intelligence officer and architect.  In 1948 he had established himself as a silk distributor.

He collected  Asian objets d’art at a time when few westerners had the fascination for Asian antiques. His home now a museum located on the bank of the Saen Saeb Canal.

 6 Soi Kasemsan 2, Rama 1 Road, Bangkok.

The first weavers of the Jim Thompson silk brand were the villagers at Ban Krua..

Frank Crowinshield the former editor to Vanity Fair arranged for Thompson to meet Edna Woolman Chase - at the time the editor for Vogue - she was the authority in the world of fashion.  Soon after their meeting Thai Silk was photographed for Vogue.

Jim Thompson House is six traditional Thai teak wood houses which were transported from Ayutthaya and Bangkok’s Ban Krua community.

After his mysterious disappearance in the Malaysian jungle in 1967 - his home with its collections were donated to the people of Thailand by his nephew.

East meets West - Italian marble floors.

East meets West - He had Belgian Chandeliers in the ceilings of his house.