mangosteen

0x4…b5e

ERC1155

Mangosteen is Thailand’s national fruit, a fruit that exudes the essence of Thai roots. About 10 years ago, I stumbled upon it in a famous department store in London - beautifully packed, expensively priced. But most importantly, it had a label on it “Made in Thailand”. Digging into my deep love and pride for everything Thai, I decided upon the Mangosteen as my company logo. Inspired by the Kumamon bear: くまモン Romachi: Kuma-mon, the bear mascot, created by the government of Kumamoto to promote tourism in the region which eventually became world famous creating a steady income for communities in small towns , I imagined a mascot of Nong Mangosteen could prove to be as successful a symbol of Thai tourism as well. A little about how Nong Mangosteen came about; Back in 2014 when I first ventured into AirBNB, most of you know me from the page Hostmaker Thailand. It was a time when the world travel industry changed by leaps and bounds. We could take an empty house, furnish it with the basics, a bed and an air conditioner, and our house would be ready for strangers and tourists to get comfortable in and even make money out of it. Just like operating a small scale hotel business from our very own homes. In fact, I was the first person in Thailand to rent out my own house. With the emergence of airbnb, every street in Thailand was playing host to tourists resulting in the smallest and most mundane of communities making rooms and homes available to travellers and also earning a steady income while at it. I started offering my home on airbnb for fun, but then my followers started growing by thousands. The concept was catching interest and so I started teaching the ways by organizing a small course at home. The numbers of those learning grew to thousands. That is when the idea struck - to help small communities earn a steady income. That is when I seriously put thought into and designed Nong Mangosteen, to make it imitate the mascot concept of the Kumamon bear. When Nong Mangosteen -the mascot - was physically created and ready, I set out with it on a journey to teach and share to different communities about the concept of AirBNB and how they could make income from giving on rent a room or house to potential tourists. Currently, Thailand has 60,000 houses ready to welcome tourists from all over the world. In the end though .... Covid-19 dampened all hopes and our spirits. Tourism is now at a halt. Nong Mangosteen is just another mascot stuffed in a big bag lying in a house where no tourists visit. Today, I decided to take 100 photos of Nong Mangosteen and burn the physical mascot to be put on a Zen block in the form of NFTs as a souvenir instead. Hopefully it will communicate something with foreigners to understand Thai tourism in a new perspective in the world of the Sharing Economy era through stories in Nong Mangosteen's NFTs. Even though it isn’t doing its job the way it was originally intended, this way it will stay on in the Blockchain forever. Nong Mangosteen's NFTs artwork is a die cut mangosteen photograph, with a retro looking background color and black borders to enhance the shape and give it a kind of vintage old cartoon character vibe but more lively. Nong Mangosteen's character is that of a silly cartoon, funny, social but sadly suffering from depression. It is a fun loving character, yet, has its moments of sadness, silence and feeling lonely.