Our task was not a simple one: to somehow fill a small, energy efficient taxi with my landforms of suitcases--the various odds and ends and knick-knacks and tchotchkies and treasures and essentials from my two years in Thailand. Four huge suitcases, plus two small ones, plus Peter, plus me. It was like a problem-solving puzzle--shoving different suitcases into different places at different angles, deciding that a given solution wouldn't work, and pulling them back out again while the taxi bobbed under the weight like an exhausted beast of burden. These suitcases seemed to struggle and resist like stubborn livestock, and I found myself doing a guarded dance around them lest one of them decide to make a break for it. After thirty minutes of pushing and pulling and huffing and puffing, all of the suitcases plus two passengers plus a driver piled into the taxi. Its belly let out a rusty shudder before we proceeded out of the parking garage and down the fickle strip of Sukhumvit Road--its neckline jeweled in traffic lights and brake lights--bound for the hotel.
For a few minutes we all caught our breath, and I fashioned my body into a makeshift prop for the suitcase that was shoved against the door and threatening to topple over and crush both Peter and me. Once our collective heart rates had dropped below that of a drunk hummingbird, I began to look out the window and visually consume Sukhumvit road in sips and nibbles in the small blank space of window that was not covered by the monolith of luggage next to me.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the driver fiddling with what I thought was the radio, until I saw the radio regurgitate a surprisingly large screen. The driver gingerly inserted a DVD while keeping divided attention (albeit not fairly divided) on the traffic in front of us. I was expecting Bollywood videos, or an instructional DVD for learning English, or even (this being Bangkok and all) porn. What popped up on the screen instead was a documentary about the birds of Papua, New Guinea. The narrator droned on in a soft, flute-y voice about mating habits and feathers and fruit preferences, and how these birds play a vital role in many of the cultural practices of a particular group in New Guinea.
It was absolutely the last thing in the world that I would have expected to see pop up as traffic entertainment, but the driver was completely (and much to my chagrin) transfixed.
I turned to Peter. "This would never happen anywhere else. Never. HOLY CRAP, it's stuff like this that I'm going to miss." He was apparently equally transfixed, as he shot me a quieting glance as the driver turned up the volume to block out my yapping.
One last gift of complete, total, and surprising randomness. Thailand maintained its mystery, its intrigue, its bottomless well of sights and experiences up until the very end. Nothing was ever boring or mundane. My eyes never suffered from want of fascinating things. Even taxi rides were an adventure. For that, Thailand will always be special to me--a topsy-turvy wonderland of nonsensical chaos coating a warm, creamy core of calm.
My next adventure? Maybe New Guinea......
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Road to Halong Bay
The poetry of this landscape, the unfathomable simplicity, the blinding green of the rice paddies set in front of a backdrop of jagged, misty hills. Conical hats bobbing up and down, punctuating the air with a perfect symmetry. Thin slices of arms bearing stalks of rice, bearing baskets. Bicycles slipping slowly down dirt roads speckled with generous shadows of banana leaves. Cows etching out an emaciated silhouette, jaws contemplating, ribs sanding down the air with their heaving. The people small in the distance, like phantoms, laboring elegantly under my tourist gaze. I don't want to tokenize this scene, to romanticize it, but it is impossible not to. A speck of a conical hat surrounded by the nourishing lake of the rice paddy is art, a somehow classical archetype, a thing so much more intricate and pristine and filled with back-breaking struggle than a mere tourist snapshot. It is life--unfair, uneven, exquisitely whole and simple life, moving and growing and working and also static and traditional and authentic. Buildings reach above fields like nimble fingers, constrained in width by money rather than space, keeping watch over the paddies like candy-coated sentinels. The fields are freckled with gravestones, the dead enriching the soil, bringing blessings as the workers wind their way slowly around them. Never hurrying. The rice won't tolerate hurry. The digestive system won't tolerate a crop that's been plucked by stressed, impatient hands. And the green just washes over everything until the brain no longer has space to contemplate anything else. It is passive and pervasive, fully present, consuming. The hats mark out a means of navigating this visual ocean like buoys bobbing in the struggle against being swallowed by a vast, vast color.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Excerpt from a relationship
Setting: Bangkok, Thailand, on the Chao Phraya River
Me: You see all of that green stuff that's floating on top of the river? One of Rama V's wives had it imported after a visit to Indonesia. It's called water hyacinth. It somehow got into the main river system and is now essentially a gigantic weed. People use its stems to weave rugs and furniture, as you can see that the stems are rather thick.
Peter: Cool!
*********************************
THE NEXT DAY
Peter: Hey, what's that green stuff floating on top of the river?
Me: It's called water hyacinth. It was imported by one of Rama V's wives. It's basically a gigantic weed, but people use it to make rugs and furniture, as its stems are thick and sturdy.
Peter: Neat!
*********************************
THE NEXT DAY
Me: When I was walking back to the hotel from the temple I passed a store selling water hyacinth furniture. It looked really cool--kinda like wicker!
Peter: Wait.....people make FURNITURE out of water hyacinth?
Me: .........
..............
...........
I'm pretty much gonna have to kick your ass now.
*******************************
Silly misunderstandings aside, we are having a phenomenal time in Vietnam, doing things like buying silk runners for our bed (OUR bed!!!) and absorbing so much natural beauty. We return to Thailand tomorrow, and neither of us wants to leave Vietnam. It is truly like nowhere else.
I am incredibly exhausted. More later!!!
Me: You see all of that green stuff that's floating on top of the river? One of Rama V's wives had it imported after a visit to Indonesia. It's called water hyacinth. It somehow got into the main river system and is now essentially a gigantic weed. People use its stems to weave rugs and furniture, as you can see that the stems are rather thick.
Peter: Cool!
*********************************
THE NEXT DAY
Peter: Hey, what's that green stuff floating on top of the river?
Me: It's called water hyacinth. It was imported by one of Rama V's wives. It's basically a gigantic weed, but people use it to make rugs and furniture, as its stems are thick and sturdy.
Peter: Neat!
*********************************
THE NEXT DAY
Me: When I was walking back to the hotel from the temple I passed a store selling water hyacinth furniture. It looked really cool--kinda like wicker!
Peter: Wait.....people make FURNITURE out of water hyacinth?
Me: .........
..............
...........
I'm pretty much gonna have to kick your ass now.
*******************************
Silly misunderstandings aside, we are having a phenomenal time in Vietnam, doing things like buying silk runners for our bed (OUR bed!!!) and absorbing so much natural beauty. We return to Thailand tomorrow, and neither of us wants to leave Vietnam. It is truly like nowhere else.
I am incredibly exhausted. More later!!!
Monday, July 20, 2009
Temple of the Golden Buddha
Well, I did it, I'm done, I completed my two year contract in Thailand. My last day of work did not exactly go as I had hoped--namely, it entailed my boss screaming at me for not a terribly good or logical reason (I mean, really, is there ever a terribly good reason to scream?) and me bursting into tears when my calming breaths ceased working--but then the next day we hugged and mended fences, so no bridges were burned (a mixed metaphor, that).
I'm really excited about the various programs that I built from scratch, and I am very happy with the work that I'm leaving behind. There were many moments where the job was pure bliss, and I really feel like I did something productive and worthwhile. But as a whole, it was a gut-wrenching experience that took several years off of my life, and I would never voluntarily put myself through something that emotionally trying again. That said, I will never throw the baby out with the bathwater. I learned a lot, more than I would have if my work experience had been smooth from start to finish, and I'm so grateful for that.
I'm currently writing this from Vietnam. Peter and I arrived in Hanoi last night and we are headed to Halong Bay in about an hour. I'm so excited--I've had many dreams about Halong Bay, and I'm really looking forward to finally seeing it. I've spent the past four days in a hotel in Bangkok, being a tourist in the city where I've lived and worked for the past two years. I've loved exploring without having to worry about time limits, and I've absorbed every fascinating detail of this city.
I visited Wat Traimit--a.k.a. Temple of the Golden Buddha--and I wrote this while I was in there:
There is something about sitting in a temple in Asia that is unlike any other space. The aesthetics of prayer, and the thick, tactile nature of the wishes and desires are different from those uttered within the angled walls of churches. Devotees sit on the ground, waiing, prostrating, feet pointed away from the kind eyes of the Buddha--the Buddha, this gigantic screen, absorbing projections and bearing secrets, smirking in its joyful knowledge. I often find churches to be like secret clubhouses, where only the anointed, the repentant, the devoted, the judgmental can access the deep wells of calm and quiet and knowing within the jeweled glass of its speech, its dogma, its bearded truths. But temples--temples have aromatic breezes, fluid gasps of incense, and it houses an organic flow of pray-ers and visitors and beliefs, its chambers pumping in welcome like an open human heart. Monks and devotees look at me strangely as they watch me wai three times--once for the Buddha, once for the dharma, once for the monks--my blond head bobbing up and down, and then they smile, offer blessings, ask the standard question: "Where you come from?" Peaceful eyes, peaceful hearts. Bells twinkling blessings in a white hot breeze, candles carrying prayers skyward, eyebrows furrowed in fervent hope, lips mouthing questions and gratitude and requests. I received a blessing from a monk today--water sprinkled from a bundle of straw, a simple white string around my wrist, and two simple words: Good luck. This is where I come to feel empty, free, devoid of worry and self-congratulations and criticism and judgment and even passion. This is the color of bliss, of knowing without computing and analyzing, this is having a heart like a breeze, a mind like a bell, a soul within a soul within a soul, a simple white string connecting the purple throbbing veins of humanity's fibrous mosaic. Incense induces tears and garlands thicken the air with offerings. There is the flavor of silence in the back of my throat and my chest fills with presence. I don't want to leave.
I'm really excited about the various programs that I built from scratch, and I am very happy with the work that I'm leaving behind. There were many moments where the job was pure bliss, and I really feel like I did something productive and worthwhile. But as a whole, it was a gut-wrenching experience that took several years off of my life, and I would never voluntarily put myself through something that emotionally trying again. That said, I will never throw the baby out with the bathwater. I learned a lot, more than I would have if my work experience had been smooth from start to finish, and I'm so grateful for that.
I'm currently writing this from Vietnam. Peter and I arrived in Hanoi last night and we are headed to Halong Bay in about an hour. I'm so excited--I've had many dreams about Halong Bay, and I'm really looking forward to finally seeing it. I've spent the past four days in a hotel in Bangkok, being a tourist in the city where I've lived and worked for the past two years. I've loved exploring without having to worry about time limits, and I've absorbed every fascinating detail of this city.
I visited Wat Traimit--a.k.a. Temple of the Golden Buddha--and I wrote this while I was in there:
There is something about sitting in a temple in Asia that is unlike any other space. The aesthetics of prayer, and the thick, tactile nature of the wishes and desires are different from those uttered within the angled walls of churches. Devotees sit on the ground, waiing, prostrating, feet pointed away from the kind eyes of the Buddha--the Buddha, this gigantic screen, absorbing projections and bearing secrets, smirking in its joyful knowledge. I often find churches to be like secret clubhouses, where only the anointed, the repentant, the devoted, the judgmental can access the deep wells of calm and quiet and knowing within the jeweled glass of its speech, its dogma, its bearded truths. But temples--temples have aromatic breezes, fluid gasps of incense, and it houses an organic flow of pray-ers and visitors and beliefs, its chambers pumping in welcome like an open human heart. Monks and devotees look at me strangely as they watch me wai three times--once for the Buddha, once for the dharma, once for the monks--my blond head bobbing up and down, and then they smile, offer blessings, ask the standard question: "Where you come from?" Peaceful eyes, peaceful hearts. Bells twinkling blessings in a white hot breeze, candles carrying prayers skyward, eyebrows furrowed in fervent hope, lips mouthing questions and gratitude and requests. I received a blessing from a monk today--water sprinkled from a bundle of straw, a simple white string around my wrist, and two simple words: Good luck. This is where I come to feel empty, free, devoid of worry and self-congratulations and criticism and judgment and even passion. This is the color of bliss, of knowing without computing and analyzing, this is having a heart like a breeze, a mind like a bell, a soul within a soul within a soul, a simple white string connecting the purple throbbing veins of humanity's fibrous mosaic. Incense induces tears and garlands thicken the air with offerings. There is the flavor of silence in the back of my throat and my chest fills with presence. I don't want to leave.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Ice Queen
It's pretty rare that I randomly run into people I know when I'm out and about running errands here in Bangkok, but today I ran into a friend of mine while at the pharmacy. It is always amazing to me that I never seem to run into people I know when I'm there to buy face cream or nail polish. It's always when I've got the anti-fungal cream, stool softener, and a turkey baster* that I hear the familiar voice behind me and see that person's eyes glance down at the contents in my hand.
Anyway......
Yesterday I went to my favorite temple here in Bangkok. It's a temple made completely out of marble with absolutely beautiful detailing (I wrote about it once before here). It's like an ice castle. It has fountains that make quiet trickling sounds, and monks wandering around everywhere, and a graceful Buddha, and the ashes of Rama V. I thought that it would make a nice mini-retreat so that I could do some prayer and meditation.
Getting there is an adventure in and of itself, as it requires taking a motosai to the SkyTrain, changing lines on the SkyTrain, and then getting off at the river pier. It then requires taking a river taxi 15 stops, and once you get off you must amble through a flower market in order to find a tuk tuk that will take you the rest of the way. Planes, trains, and automobiles. It is a wonderful journey, perfect for a Sunday afternoon when I SHOULD be finishing my final project for my 45 clock hours of SEI training (which, um, I should be doing right now instead of blogging....). When I got to the temple, instead of the peace and quiet and fountain sounds I was expecting, I was greeted with swarms of people, and tents, and television monitors capturing what was happening inside. The people at the ticket counter said that it was a ceremony for initiating new monks, but that I was more than welcome to go inside and observe it from the back.
I took off my shoes and tucked myself away in a corner of the temple and watched. The monks had their BRIGHT orange ceremonial robes, bright yellow belts, and they were carrying their alms bowls in silk sacks that were slung diagonally across their bodies. I realized after looking through my Luang Prabang photos that I have taken an insane amount of monk photos over the years. I have also purchased many monk photos and monk candle holders and monk teak figurines, and it is pretty safe to say that I have a complete obsession with monks. I think they are absolute works of art--their robes and bowls and chanting and slow, flowing movements. This was the first time that I was ever able to witness, close up, a monk ceremony. The chanting was so beautiful, and the routine of it all was done with a choreographed reverence, and I just closed my eyes and listened. The inner temple is like a candy chamber--stained glass windows and gold dharma wheels and floral offerings--and it was an hour of pure and total peace where I just shut off my mind and absorbed everything in that room. The fluttering hearts and the growling chants and the two-part harmonies and the deep prostrations.
After leaving the inner temple I wandered around and looked at the Buddha images in the courtyard area, and photographed the red Chinese-style footbridges that arch over a small canal that flows between the temple and the monastery, and sat on a bench taking more photos of monks. I truly did not want to leave, but the sky was looking ominous and I had made plans to meet a friend for dinner.
I climbed back into a tuk tuk that took me to the river pier. I bought a green Fanta (omg....green Fanta is CRACK IN A BOTTLE, and apparently not available in the U.S.!!) and sipped it while watching the catfish in the river right below the pier literally climb over one another to catch the breadcrumbs that vendors were selling to passersby. Their bellies were flashing and gleaming like tongues, and the water was churning in a muddy sludge, and the entire mass of fish bodies was peppered with plastic pieces of trash, and they made a fleshy slapping sound as they struggled against one another, and really the whole thing was just terribly unappetizing.
I watched the sun struggle to set through the thick billows of clouds between the emaciated ribs of the Rama 8 Bridge. Once the river taxi came I sat behind an older foreigner with a tidy bun in her hair and a Nancy Chandler map across her lap and the two of us took pictures of river slums and fine hotels and fishermen and tugboats.
I made it home right before the torrential downpour began, and had a lovely dinner with a lovely friend (though the Fanta gave me gut rot and I could FEEL my teeth decaying).
I will miss weekends like this.
*Purely hypothetical :)
Anyway......
Yesterday I went to my favorite temple here in Bangkok. It's a temple made completely out of marble with absolutely beautiful detailing (I wrote about it once before here). It's like an ice castle. It has fountains that make quiet trickling sounds, and monks wandering around everywhere, and a graceful Buddha, and the ashes of Rama V. I thought that it would make a nice mini-retreat so that I could do some prayer and meditation.
Getting there is an adventure in and of itself, as it requires taking a motosai to the SkyTrain, changing lines on the SkyTrain, and then getting off at the river pier. It then requires taking a river taxi 15 stops, and once you get off you must amble through a flower market in order to find a tuk tuk that will take you the rest of the way. Planes, trains, and automobiles. It is a wonderful journey, perfect for a Sunday afternoon when I SHOULD be finishing my final project for my 45 clock hours of SEI training (which, um, I should be doing right now instead of blogging....). When I got to the temple, instead of the peace and quiet and fountain sounds I was expecting, I was greeted with swarms of people, and tents, and television monitors capturing what was happening inside. The people at the ticket counter said that it was a ceremony for initiating new monks, but that I was more than welcome to go inside and observe it from the back.
I took off my shoes and tucked myself away in a corner of the temple and watched. The monks had their BRIGHT orange ceremonial robes, bright yellow belts, and they were carrying their alms bowls in silk sacks that were slung diagonally across their bodies. I realized after looking through my Luang Prabang photos that I have taken an insane amount of monk photos over the years. I have also purchased many monk photos and monk candle holders and monk teak figurines, and it is pretty safe to say that I have a complete obsession with monks. I think they are absolute works of art--their robes and bowls and chanting and slow, flowing movements. This was the first time that I was ever able to witness, close up, a monk ceremony. The chanting was so beautiful, and the routine of it all was done with a choreographed reverence, and I just closed my eyes and listened. The inner temple is like a candy chamber--stained glass windows and gold dharma wheels and floral offerings--and it was an hour of pure and total peace where I just shut off my mind and absorbed everything in that room. The fluttering hearts and the growling chants and the two-part harmonies and the deep prostrations.
After leaving the inner temple I wandered around and looked at the Buddha images in the courtyard area, and photographed the red Chinese-style footbridges that arch over a small canal that flows between the temple and the monastery, and sat on a bench taking more photos of monks. I truly did not want to leave, but the sky was looking ominous and I had made plans to meet a friend for dinner.
I climbed back into a tuk tuk that took me to the river pier. I bought a green Fanta (omg....green Fanta is CRACK IN A BOTTLE, and apparently not available in the U.S.!!) and sipped it while watching the catfish in the river right below the pier literally climb over one another to catch the breadcrumbs that vendors were selling to passersby. Their bellies were flashing and gleaming like tongues, and the water was churning in a muddy sludge, and the entire mass of fish bodies was peppered with plastic pieces of trash, and they made a fleshy slapping sound as they struggled against one another, and really the whole thing was just terribly unappetizing.
I watched the sun struggle to set through the thick billows of clouds between the emaciated ribs of the Rama 8 Bridge. Once the river taxi came I sat behind an older foreigner with a tidy bun in her hair and a Nancy Chandler map across her lap and the two of us took pictures of river slums and fine hotels and fishermen and tugboats.
I made it home right before the torrential downpour began, and had a lovely dinner with a lovely friend (though the Fanta gave me gut rot and I could FEEL my teeth decaying).
I will miss weekends like this.
*Purely hypothetical :)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Click
Sheesh....lately this blog has been feeling like that relative that you know you should contact more often than you do, but then the more time that passes that you don't contact him or her, the harder it is to get back into contact because you feel like such a douche for not getting in touch earlier so you just end up not doing anything at all and then that person passes away and you feel like an even bigger douche.
Lesson of the day: Get in touch with that relative. I started writing to my grandfather again several months before he passed away, and I'm glad that I did.
Alrighty......
Luang Prabang reminded me quite a bit of Ubud in Bali. Both places have a ton of hippie backpacking tourists with really intense BO who are all about the local beer and have massive collections of stringy bracelets. Both places have incredibly charming spas, restaurants, and quaint-but-overpriced shops that charge five times as much for an item that you can get at a market for a song. Both places are rich in history and cultural offerings and amazing textiles, and, in spite of being a haven for tourists, both places maintain their absolute authenticity, their unique footprints in the world. They are unequivocally themselves, and in both places I found myself feeling breezy and blissful and like life could just not possibly get any better.
Luang Prabang is great in that you can really see the whole thing in about a day/day and a half, so you don't need to be running around with your nose in your guidebook, checking things off of your packed itinerary while also learning about the history and culture and language and current events in order to make the most of your time. And believe me--I loooove to travel that way as well. However, since I had three days in Luang Prabang and could easily check off all items on my itinerary, it left time for some unexpected little treats.
I talked to a lot of people--from novice monks to ancient hilltribe women to fascinating expats--and one of the most fascinating was an older Dutch gentleman who is married to and has a baby with a Lao woman, and I happened to meet him by pure chance. I didn't pack any books for this trip, as I didn't want anything to distract me from writing in my journal, but as I headed back from the night market that first night I found myself wanting to read something mindless. I hopped into a little restaurant/gallery that has a book exchange (Luang Prabang has a ton of places where you can exchange books, which is awesome and much appreciated by the hippie backpacker crowd), picked up a book about ghost stories, and turned my attention to the photos on the walls. I have always been a fan of photography, but for some reason have become even moreso since living in Asia. There are just so many opportunities for incredible pictures, and the pictures on the wall were an absolute work of genius. There were pictures of hilltribe women in their full regalia, pictures of fishermen casting their nets on the Mekong in the hazy early morning hours, pictures of an opium addict indulging his habit with a boyish oops-I've-been-naughty look on his face. These were like pictures out of National Geographic, except even more raw and human and beautiful. The owner of the gallery--the Dutch man--approached me (wiggly baby in tow) and said that he had taken the pictures. I then spent the next thirty minutes picking his brain about each of the pictures, each of his subjects, and how he was able to do all of this amazing work.
The pictures completely haunted me all day the next day, and then I went back the following day--the day I left--to buy a bunch of postcards of the pictures (and though the postcards are lovely, they simply do not do justice to the work). The Dutch man made me a cappuccino and we sat and chatted for awhile. He talked about the fact that he does commercial and high fashion photography in order to support his family, as his artistic work does not bring in the money, which is just so unfortunate (but a familiar tale of woe for many talented artists). He also talked about photography as an agent of social change, and he has taught photography to impoverished youth in big cities and rural areas as a way of helping them to truly LOOK at the world around them and observe their own transformational power within it. He was interested in starting a sort of photography "school," and told me about some of the other exciting projects that expats and locals were doing in Luang Prabang to help increase the life chances of children. I just sipped my cappuccino and looked at the faces on the wall and just felt like the world is pretty freakin' amazing.
I have to go to work now, and there is a TON that must be done before my contract ends in just over two weeks. I am stressed and frazzled, and the fact that I lost a bunch of important files the other day due to a virus on my USB drive really didn't help matters. I know that everything will get done, and I've mapped out a nifty (if packed) little road map for it all, but I can't help but wish I could be back in Luang Prabang, ambling along the muddy vein of the Mekong, taking pictures of flowers, and feeling completely and utterly at ease.
Lesson of the day: Get in touch with that relative. I started writing to my grandfather again several months before he passed away, and I'm glad that I did.
Alrighty......
Luang Prabang reminded me quite a bit of Ubud in Bali. Both places have a ton of hippie backpacking tourists with really intense BO who are all about the local beer and have massive collections of stringy bracelets. Both places have incredibly charming spas, restaurants, and quaint-but-overpriced shops that charge five times as much for an item that you can get at a market for a song. Both places are rich in history and cultural offerings and amazing textiles, and, in spite of being a haven for tourists, both places maintain their absolute authenticity, their unique footprints in the world. They are unequivocally themselves, and in both places I found myself feeling breezy and blissful and like life could just not possibly get any better.
Luang Prabang is great in that you can really see the whole thing in about a day/day and a half, so you don't need to be running around with your nose in your guidebook, checking things off of your packed itinerary while also learning about the history and culture and language and current events in order to make the most of your time. And believe me--I loooove to travel that way as well. However, since I had three days in Luang Prabang and could easily check off all items on my itinerary, it left time for some unexpected little treats.
I talked to a lot of people--from novice monks to ancient hilltribe women to fascinating expats--and one of the most fascinating was an older Dutch gentleman who is married to and has a baby with a Lao woman, and I happened to meet him by pure chance. I didn't pack any books for this trip, as I didn't want anything to distract me from writing in my journal, but as I headed back from the night market that first night I found myself wanting to read something mindless. I hopped into a little restaurant/gallery that has a book exchange (Luang Prabang has a ton of places where you can exchange books, which is awesome and much appreciated by the hippie backpacker crowd), picked up a book about ghost stories, and turned my attention to the photos on the walls. I have always been a fan of photography, but for some reason have become even moreso since living in Asia. There are just so many opportunities for incredible pictures, and the pictures on the wall were an absolute work of genius. There were pictures of hilltribe women in their full regalia, pictures of fishermen casting their nets on the Mekong in the hazy early morning hours, pictures of an opium addict indulging his habit with a boyish oops-I've-been-naughty look on his face. These were like pictures out of National Geographic, except even more raw and human and beautiful. The owner of the gallery--the Dutch man--approached me (wiggly baby in tow) and said that he had taken the pictures. I then spent the next thirty minutes picking his brain about each of the pictures, each of his subjects, and how he was able to do all of this amazing work.
The pictures completely haunted me all day the next day, and then I went back the following day--the day I left--to buy a bunch of postcards of the pictures (and though the postcards are lovely, they simply do not do justice to the work). The Dutch man made me a cappuccino and we sat and chatted for awhile. He talked about the fact that he does commercial and high fashion photography in order to support his family, as his artistic work does not bring in the money, which is just so unfortunate (but a familiar tale of woe for many talented artists). He also talked about photography as an agent of social change, and he has taught photography to impoverished youth in big cities and rural areas as a way of helping them to truly LOOK at the world around them and observe their own transformational power within it. He was interested in starting a sort of photography "school," and told me about some of the other exciting projects that expats and locals were doing in Luang Prabang to help increase the life chances of children. I just sipped my cappuccino and looked at the faces on the wall and just felt like the world is pretty freakin' amazing.
I have to go to work now, and there is a TON that must be done before my contract ends in just over two weeks. I am stressed and frazzled, and the fact that I lost a bunch of important files the other day due to a virus on my USB drive really didn't help matters. I know that everything will get done, and I've mapped out a nifty (if packed) little road map for it all, but I can't help but wish I could be back in Luang Prabang, ambling along the muddy vein of the Mekong, taking pictures of flowers, and feeling completely and utterly at ease.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Heaven on Earth
You know those moments of pure, unfiltered happiness and awe when you're like, "Holy crap, is this really my life?" That's kinda what Luang Prabang has been like. It has been perfection, perfection, perfection. This place is heaven on earth. I have exactly zero desire to leave tomorrow.
I'm in a crowded internet cafe filled with unshowered travelers (um, myself included), and it is starting to smell like feet. I am therefore going to keep this short.
I will post more upon my return (though the next two weeks are gonna be hell on earth with everything that needs to be accomplished), but I just wanted to go on record as saying that this has been a truly delicious trip, and I want to remember this feeling and these images forever.
I'm in a crowded internet cafe filled with unshowered travelers (um, myself included), and it is starting to smell like feet. I am therefore going to keep this short.
I will post more upon my return (though the next two weeks are gonna be hell on earth with everything that needs to be accomplished), but I just wanted to go on record as saying that this has been a truly delicious trip, and I want to remember this feeling and these images forever.
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