We were rambling through a temple in Ubud when we came across a platoon of Balinese making complicated constructions out of flowers. The queen had died back in the spring and her funeral was going...

As autumn closes in, temples throughout Bhutan celebrate with festivals. Monks blow horns. Or drum drums. Or gong gongs. Men dance. Women dance and sing. Old folks sit on mats. Children run around. Dogs bark, and people dressed up like demons and heroes and gods whack each other with dildos.   [caption id="attachment_688" align="aligncenter" width="255"] A god and a demon brandish dildos before doing battle with one another[/caption]   Dildos are everywhere: dangling from rooftops, swinging from front desks in hotels and from counters arrayed with buffet lunches. They’re worn as amulets around the necks of children and wielded as weapons in mock combat at the festivals. Most are deep red but some, in what may be an attempt to be more female friendly, come in soft pink. In at least one festival, they aren’t dildos at all. They’re the real thing. That one takes place at midnight in late October in the Bumthang Valley, and is the most sacred festival on the calendar. Dozens of men with flour sacks over their heads and nothing over anything else, dance and frolic around a bonfire and, sometimes, line dance through the crowd of onlookers. I would have a picture of this except, if you show up with a camera they not only confiscate your camera they turn into a mob of naked men and try to kill you, which happened to a fellow a few yards from us. This being the middle of the night, late October being late October, and the Bumthang Valley being in the middle reaches of the Himalayas, the air is not warm and the real things on display are displayed at their most minimal. Except for one guy. This one guy either had his own source of heat, or was predestined to be very popular with the ladies. The men were from nearby villages and were young, and athletic and – Bhutan not having a single MacDonald’s or Ben & Jerry’s – fit and trim and, in the dark with bags on their heads, difficult to tell apart. All except for the one guy. Which suggests the flour sacks were an act of loving compassion. At the very least they afforded the other guys plausible believability when confiding within earshot of young ladies that, “I don’t want to make too big a thing out of this . . . but . . . you know that one guy? I’m the one.” Dildo-wise, the ball was set in motion 500 years ago by a celebrity sex toy known as The Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom: ten inches of bone and wood and ivory carried down from Tibet on the back of a flying female tiger by a defrocked monk named Drupka Kunley who, if Buddhists are right about the past-lives thing, could only have been the preincarnation of L Ron Hubbard. Not one to let a trivial matter like being cast out of a monastery discourage him from his godly calling, Kunley stepped to the edge of the Himalayan Plateau, nocked an arrow to his bow, and let fly. Then, Thunderbolt in hand, hopped aboard the tigress and flew hundreds of miles through the air until he found his arrow lodged in the wooden steps of a farmhouse.  

I’d always imagined our embassies were stately affairs, welcoming, yet dignified. Tastefully appointed with paneled offices, carpeted floors and elegantly dressed diplomats discussing matters of state in precise, measured tones. Our best face forward. A...

Christmas comes to Southern Africa the same way it comes to every other place with shopkeepers. Stores fill with blinking lights. Shelves groan under the weight of gaily-colored boxes filled with plastic icicles. Glitter and pink, magic wands and unicorns and princess-dresses are laid out for girls; micro-cephalic dolls with Viking horns and Pancho Villa ammo belts for boys. Bing Crosby fills the air. Pictures of sleds, barns weighted down with snow, and happy families bringing home newly-cut fir trees populate card racks. Christmas bells and Christmas balls and Christmas stars hover over mangers. Outside, it’s a hundred-and-ten degrees, the asphalt on the street melts, animals huddle in whatever shade they can find, summer settles in with all its antipodal glory, and garbage men expect Christmas presents.                                                     Seeking shade beneath a leafless thorn tree