Posted on 05/19/2005 12:50:54 PM PDT by Selkie
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Miss Universe organizers scrambled on Thursday to calm a furor over photos of bikini-clad contestants posing near an ancient Buddhist temple in pageant host Thailand after the images infuriated religious leaders.
The photos, which showed beauty queens on a Bangkok river cruise with the famed Wat Arun, or "Temple of Dawn," in the background, were swiftly removed from the pageant Web site.
But religious leaders and culture watchdogs are still upset, saying the episode violated traditional values and morality just days before a key Buddhist holiday.
"This is the time of Visakha Bucha when we are reminded of Lord Buddha's teachings. But we have allowed this thing which will mark the country with sin for a long time," Phra Thep Dilok, head of the National Center for Buddhism Promotion, told Reuters.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Thailand gets huge boost to their crippled Tourism since the Tsunami and they whine instead.
Funny, I saw lots of Thais wearing bikinis when I went to the beach in thailand.
Most of them were actual women.
Proper use of pictures in a thread
...LOL...
funny how their pagants always turn up a unich or two...
Hard to say. Those guys are pros over there.
Pray that this does not end up with murderous Buddhist rioting in the streets!
(opps...that only happens with the 'RELIGION of PEACE'...sorry for the mix up!)
"Four layers good,
Two-piece bad."
-- apologies to Orwell.
Actually Im a chick, but I know you guys like visual frames of reference ;-)
Okay, I'll drop a placeholder ping, but there better be more pictures when I get back!
Using a temple as a background for cheesecake shots is is gross poor taste.
Two-piece bad."
Sounds more like dialog out of "Thunderdome."
The only offensive things I saw out of 165 pictures was that there were not more photos of Ms. Greece and M.s Ethiopia. Yowsa!
It's the pseudo-women that frighten me.
From Bangkok post
Pageant beauties named tourism ambassadors
ACHADTAYA CHUENNIRAN
Phuket _ Reigning Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins and all 81 Miss Universe 2005 contestants have been made ambassadors to promote tourism here, especially in the six tsunami-ravaged southern provinces.
Tourism and Sports Minister Somsak Thepsuthin announced the appointments yesterday after taking Ms Hawkins and contestants from Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Finland, India, China and Switzerland to visit Patong Hospital and a danger warning tower on Patong beach in Kathu district.
Mr Somsak said Thai authorities had awarded the beauty queens with certificates making them tourism ambassadors, and told the Tourism Authority of Thailand to provide decent accommodation, food and services for them whenever they visited Thailand after the contest.
Footage to be aired worldwide during the final of the pageant would show people that Phuket and other Andaman provinces had returned to normal since the tsunami disaster, he said.
The minister took the contestants to the danger warning tower on Patong beach to show them that Thailand was a safe tourist destination with warning systems in place.
``Most of the beauty queens were interested in the early warning systems and promised to tell people about Thailand's readiness to issue danger warnings,'' Mr Somsak said.
Funny the Thai government should make such a statement considering all the stories about pictures of Thai boys being all over the net...and the sick, demented, tours charted within the country....seems like the pageant is a step up.
Please Thailand the land of message parlors and "happy endings" get over it...
I read in a Soldier of Fortune a couple years ago about one child abuser who was busted by Thai officials when he dropped off a roll of film with images of a 6 year old being raped with an object. The proprietor of the photo-development store was incensed - it was really outrageous - that the object used was a Buddha statue.
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