ACCOMMODATION IN KOH PHANGAN

.Casa Monica has been totally rebuilt and is a wonderful place to stay..if you can swing it...some of the best food in town also..There are wonderfuls shops to the street side on the left..with an art gallery in the building along with a nice coffee shop...It is right on the town square (to the left out of sight), right in front of the Flagler Museum (to the right.) Shops are within walking distance along with the nearby historical district...Built in the Spanish Renaissance style...Saint Augustine is the oldest city in the United States.

When Florida was being populated, this used to be the last stop of the railroads and this hotel along with another (across the street, which was bought and is now Flagler College) were very exotic places for the rich and famous of the day for wintering. Flagler eventually extended the railroad down through Florida to the Miami area.

I have taken some shots of these beautiful buildings at night without using HDR, and they are good, but WITH HDR it is a lot easier to control the lights and contrast..and therefore get a better picture. I can do some of the same things in Shadows/Highlights, but it is nice to have another tool (which I know can only be as good as the toolee!) As long as I take sharp pictures and don't move between shots, the HDRs are staying sharp..which was my main concern along with not creating halos, etc. You pretty much still have to go through your PPing routine with them though, after they have been blended.

A Generation on Eve of Election
(Politics Never Were the Answer) (James Watkins)

This generation is stuck on the bulwark,
Frozen in headlights gathering stones-
Indiscriminate sons of the morning,
Atrophied assets with merits unknown.

Set in the light of internal combustion,
Self deprivation, contiguous bones-
Crushed in the conflict
Of rising occasion,
Lost in the moment
The monument grows.

Dancing with moonlight,
Moonbeams in starlight,
Ridiculed remnants that rattle and roll-
Quixotically quoted in
Careless convention,
National parlance
Of future payrolls.

Pay for the privilege,
Pose for the prattle,
Pause for refreshment,
That causes the cure.
Simple deliverance in
Smokescreen obedience,
Rationale railways
That run on the ruins.

Come to the purpose in patriot persuasion,
Stand in the gap with righteous reward,
Fly in the face of cupcake convention,
Pulses of power that pull
At the thorns.

Hold fast in fear; don’t fall at the junction,
Waste away weather maps
Conjugal forms-
Failing at formats with frogs in the foyer,
Padded with passive, political porn.

Packed into parlors with pigs of persuasion,
Multiplied monsters fixed to the floor-
Pass on to poundings of crux congregations,
Critical mass for the petrified poor.

Crept in concealment configured in catacombs,
Built on the fragments of families forlorn-
Terrified teamsters with tales of their talisman,
Tickled and tortured, then swamped by the storm.

Fancy faced forecasts with fabricate filters,
Lies at the bottom where captives are shorn-
Files of the caveat castaway cheviots,
Horns of the altar now cut to the stone.

Sanctified delegates step to floor-
Out on the borders, go right for the snore.
Sniping at mystical magical merchandise,
Mopping up munchkins with heroes galore.

Gift of gab purposeful prophets in paradise,
Parabolic poetry prose-
Deft and defiant in damaged delusion,
Filled up with ideas but stuck in the door.

Pamplified pollsters perched on the pedestal,
Pale prognosticates barren and bored-
Doubters and doers and leaders and lovers,
Catch me the top of the hour has flown.

Dudley dead do-rights don’t come down a crashin’
Cackling crackers conducive to scorn,
Capped out and crapped out
In Wall Street enduros,
Boiled down to futures and factual whores.

Just enough knowledge to keep them from happiness,
Just enough money to keep them enthroned,
Just enough polish to keep each one sparkling,
Just enough selfishness keeps them alone.


James Watkins 09-02-08

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"The hotel was built as a premier resort for the wealthy. It is one of the oldest and largest all-wooden buildings in California and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

Notable guests have included Thomas Edison, L. Frank Baum, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Veronica Covance, and Charles Lindbergh.

The following presidents have stayed at the hotel: Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

The hotel has appeared in several films, including Some Like it Hot (which starred Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis), The Stunt Man, and My Blue Heaven.

The unique design of the Hotel served as the basis for Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida."