Morality Mosaics

Yes, it’s true, we lied to you.  Here we are luxuriating in the City of Kali, having wiped the dust of SE Asia from our sandals, turning our longing gazes west along the Grand Trunk Road and then to magical Rajasthan and beyond and we gave you to believe that we had done with the Orient.   P’shaw !  Fie !  G’arn ! Yeah, right !

Two tales still have to be told.  One, the morality mosaics, and secondly, the greatest breakfast ever ate.  But first things first.

On the walls of an insanely lovely Wat in Luang Prabang an incredible series of mirror glass mosaics spell out a simple, but terrifying morality tale which appears to go like this ….

In the beginning all was peace and harmony, people tended the fields,

Rode here and there on horsies,

Walked about under umbrellas,

Held hands,

Prayed,

And singly and collectively danced the jigaboo.

Monkeys hung in the trees and tigers hung out in the jungle.

But a strange disturbance was in the air and, as usual, the animals felt it first.  The tigers developed a bad case of worms,

Men began drinking and beating up on women and priests,

And all hell broke loose.  People began losing their heads,

The whole animal Kingdom went stark raving bonkers and began going at each other tooth, feather, claw and tusk.

They also went the people, and the people went them, it was an all out fracas.

Then, just when you would think enough was enough, things got really weird.  Giant fucking rabbits appeared and began menacing the animals both two and four legged.

Understandably, everyone freaked out and a stampede began.

Then, with excitement at a fever pitch you wander into the next Wat and discover what becomes of all of this drinking, fighting, decapitating, women bashing and hanging around with giant rabbits.  That’s right, you go to Hell and meet this guy and the fun really begins.