Cameras away

Me ... addicted to technology? Possibly, but last week I realised just how much I do rely on some types of technology. We were sightseeing in Bangkok and after our first stop, Grand Palace, we moved on to the Teak Palace. The first thing you had to do was surrender your electronic items - camera, mobile phone, anything with image-capturing capability - water (well, they were two of the four things with a big cross through them on the wall behind the security guard) - and it was being enforced, although I didn't realise how much until after I had surrendered the phone, the PDA, the keyboard, the camera, the camera (I was carrying Chaim and Five) and ... okay, I really just handed over my backpack and bumbag rather than handing over every item individually. And then moved to the security checkpoint where, uncharacteristically, I was the first of our group through, so they were then warned that there would be a pat down and touch up (there really was no need for them to touch my bottom ... I know there's a bit of it but I think it's obvious that it's me!) and a walk through metal detectors. I'm not sure what would have happened if any of us had not relinquished our electronics and other valuables (hold on to your ticket) when asked.
So, one more stop (shoes off), a short wait for our English-speaking tour guide (or guides as it turned out) and we started the tour proper. And not a camera in sight. No way to record the five differently coloured areas in the building; no way to get a photograph of the wheelchair the King of Siam (not to be confused in any way with the man/men that Deborah Kerr and/or Jody Foster came to love and cherish - because that's the movies!) used back in the early 1900s. The tour was kept to the corridors but there was plenty to see - typewriters - a collection of older-style ones (reminded me of my early thoughts of being a journalist - more for the ability to be perched in front of and pecking on the keys of a typewriter, and, in the days when it was still socially-acceptable yet incredibly bad for one's health - a cigarette. Ahhh, those were the days.)
Ivory, formal reception rooms, four-poster beds, fire extinguishers in glass cases, exquisite chandeliers, coloured venetian blown glass - some 4ft tall - imagine transporting that half-way across the world in an old clipper ship - crocodile skulls, a WW2 machine gun and helmet, a model replica of the Bridge over the River Kwai - and the photographs dating back over 100 years, and the filigree carving, and the removable yet quite secure (and zipped) carpet protectors, the spiral staircase, different styles of hinges .. the list goes on but, unfortunately, most of this will be lost to me because I don't have the photographic memory that others do. I guess that's why I take photographs - to be able to remember it and evoke feelings of time and place.
And I would have made notes as we went through - except my phone (where I am writing this now) and my PDA were securely under wraps in Locker 101.