Les Anglo-saxons ont parfois du mal à prononcer l'anglais

We went to the land of the trick-eye. (Also, Barry's love of donkeys may be fading, now that he's seen them up close).

In this land, the doors are short.

There is delicious food.

And creepy child hands are used as door knockers.

It's near the end of Ball Game Street.

The wildlife is rampant.

The botanicals, creepy as usual.

But we learnt what you can do with the botanicals: here is the secret recipe!

It turns out, if you accidentally let your wine fester in the sun in crappy old barrels, all is not lost!

With the right bright shiny vat, vermouth can be made!

We like vermouth.

We even like it enough for a 3-person photogenic picture!

Finally, in this land they think that "Anglo-saxons" use tongue twisters to help us to practice pronouncing English better.

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Unicorn Tears and Bushels of Marigolds

Great news! Unicorn tears are now available to help keep your skin young and sad!

But if that doesn't work, there's Smooth Blur Ctrl-pore serum, called "Cathy Doll", (but I didn't get the full picture of the bus!) Also, snail cream now has a baby mascot and Aloeverd, so that's gotta help.

But enough of that, let's transition to orange sightings.

Whoah, careful not to spill!

I always thought that marigolds were used in temple offerings because Buddhists like orange.

But the interwebs tell me it comes from Hinduism where, as far as I can tell, they like lotsa colours.

In any case, the Bangkok flower market, which I originally discovered with Adrian, is a great place to visit, and if you like, to buy lots of flowers, cheap. 30 cents per bag, stems not included.

I prefer them by the bushel.

Orchids. A tad cheaper than in the west.

Explosive-looking temple candles? Only 16 cents!

But then it gets crafty. You make your flowers into elaborately symmetric temple offerings.

I'm a big fan of elaborate symmetry, so my favourites are the biguns.

Jasmine is a handy choice, as it's beautiful and aromatic, to cover your un-temply stenches.

I don't understand the "ugly fake flowers on sticks with money" option.

The pumpkins with plastic leaves is also well beyond my level of flower market expertise.

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Feel yourself Russian

Here's Barry feeling Russian through his vodka tasting. Verdict: Barry likes vodka.

Barry also liked his melty axe sauce dish.

We had some delicious food in Saint Petersburg, even though it was instaglamable.

But then we suffered consequences.

This poster, ahead of its time, imagines if trees had the capacity to punish! This could solve many of the world's problems, no?

Barry and I were, strangely, the only visitors at the Saint Petersburg Museum of Hygiene.

Weird, because who doesn't love a Hygiene museum? Here is a close-up of a leach.

There wasn't much English, but we understood tooth decay anyway. I like the front-most decay dude.

Of course, we saw the more traditional sites like the Hermitage museum, which is terrifyingly large and I'm not sure anyone could like art that much.

We were equally interested in the boat pillars. If you ram your donkey boat into the pole, does it come out the other side?

Turns out Fabergé and his eggs come from Saint Petersburg, and also that they added the accent to the name later to be cooler.

I'm thinking of doing that too, and changing my name to Tannée, which is sometimes descriptive.

Since the Easter egg business is seasonal, the Faberge did other items, such as ornate cigarette cases.

Including this decidedly rapey one. The captions did not elaborate.

Perhaps I could have learnt more in this book. I was mainly concerned about how chilly their pale décoletages must have been.

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Churchy Churching

The Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg is amazing even with its top temple currently under wraps.

Some of the sub-temples look like original Mario Bros monsters. I found that pictures from all angles were needed.

There was some bling on the inside. Hey, Vlad, do you think this door needs more carving?

And a whole lot of mosaics.

Mostly of haloed dudes. Not a lot of women. I would suggest more representative marketing.

But be careful, the scary face is watching you from far above!

Like haloed men, children in non-traditional activities seem over-represented in church and other medieval decor. (In contrast, in my house, I have no small boys with fig branches).

Here we found a woman, but creepy facelessness!

So I was interested to see these modern, multi-coloured stain glass folk in a Stockholm church.

Also in consideration for my home decor is this statue of Saint George and his under-heralded horse slaying an elk-antler-breathing dragon.

Elk is just the posh European way of saying moose. But a scary dragon nonetheless.

Then we get to the weirdest chuchly decor: The Riddarholm church houses Coats of arms of the Royal order of the Seraphim which is, you know, a Swedish category of angels.

I'm not sure I found all of these angels to be, um, unoffensive?

I had a lot of questions. What is in the headless chicken-man's hands? Would these feet be useful? (Barry wasn't so interested, so: fewer questions).

We did agree: This Thai Seraphim situation is what was happening to our bellies on vacation.

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