Vivid Sydney 2012, a set on Flickr.
the complete set now is ready! Vivid Sydney Festival 2012
Monday 28 May 2012
Vivid Sydney 2012
Ok let me get it out of my system: MIND NUMBINGLY BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm talking about the projections on the sails of the Opera House.
For those of you who haven't been there yet this year: skip the Opera House and go directly to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)! At least it would be worth the cost of the parking and the half an hour walk (since the train station at Circular Quay was closed yesterday) from the CBD.
Let me just explain in a few words: the projection on the sails of the Opera House this year is of an asian couple, boy and girl (although the boy appears for only a couple of minutes) doing some gymnastics.
Nothing strenuous, just a couple of stretches, one leg raised, an arm rotating and that's it.
YEP, no kidding, THIS IS IT!
Forget about the stunning colours and forms that gave life to one of the most amazing light shows in the past couple of years for the Vivid Sydney festival.
Forget about the choreography behind the scenes, the perfect shape and direction of the lights, the warmth of the shades and the innovative ideas that took place in the months of preparation to make this festival a celebration of this amazing city that is Sydney.
Forget about never getting tired of the ever changing images, some evocative, some out of this world, some so rich in colour that they would make you doubt the possibility to even set your camera on them and try and recreate those fabulous effects through the lens.
This year is all about a couple of healthy exercises, of the kind you do in "soft" gym classes, right after your spinning session or your zumba madness, just to fill in the gap between the main reason why you went to the gym and the moment in which you can finally go back home and take a shower.
Let me tell you how it ACTUALLY went:
We got there early, not really knowing what to expect, I had seen one or two photos of the Opera House with a person on it and I thought to myself, oh this could be cool.... for a while.....
When the lights went on at 6pm we were right below the main sails, noses up and cameras ready.
At the beginning nothing happened, there was just a light on the sails and the shadow of the people passing in front of its source.
Since this went on for a bit I said in what was meant to be a joke :"Not much money this year".
Immediately on my left a woman answered :"It should get better!".
I certainly hope so! I thought, and we resumed the wait.
And then finally.... the gym exercises.....
Ok, for the first couple of minutes we all giggled, ahaha there's a person on the opera house! mmmm I wonder when the good part will start....
After half an hour we were all like:"Is she still there?", "Yep, still there!".....
Some kids next to us were yelling bo-ring bo-ring in chorus, it was actually quite catchy! One of them was doing some sort of improv song with sentences like "This is so bo-ring to-ni-i-ight... this is boooooring toniiiight.... bo bo boooring...."
Photographers were shaking their heads in disbelief, parents were nervously getting rid of their sense of guilt for dragging their kids to this painfully lame gig by buying more and more ice cream cones, couples on their first dates that got there in the hope of scoring a second one thanks to the romance of the past years' events were probably thinking of someplace else to go in order to salvage the night.
And then it happened!!!
No, they did NOT change projections, unfortunately, what happened was that everyone LEFT!
You know the mass migrations seen so many times on tv? All those wildebeests squeezing past each other in the attempt to get as fast and as far as possible from the open jawed crocs waiting for them in the river?
That was us yesterday when we all decided to flee the scene!!! Women and children first!!!! And then the photographers with all our paraphernalia of tripods we didn't even bother to take out of the cover!!! And then the pervs when they finally got tired of hoping to sneak a peak up the girl's shorts!!!
And you know what the saddest part is? That it's all true! I'm not even exaggerating for humour's sake!
We went to check all the other installations to spend some time and keep an eye out in case someone got wise and changed the projections but NO, she was always there...... doing her exercises.
Actually no, that is not the saddest part. Far more sad is the fact that we're not talking about a wall on a random building, this is the Sydney Opera House we're talking about!!!!!!!
By far the most beautiful Opera House in the world, one of the most amazing man made creations ever seen, THE ICON of this city, one of the most recognised building in the planet and the reason why 99% of Europeans believe that Sydney is the capital of Australia.
One wonders if these kind of things shouldn't go through some good thinking before giving it the green light. Is this the way we cherish our city? Is this the way we hope to beat Melbourne as the culture capital of the country?
I'm not saying that's not art, I'm just saying it's BAD art!
SO BAD it's not even edgy! it's not even provocative bad, just plain boring BAD!
And it was just a meagre consolation that the projections on the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) were actually pretty good (very good the scene reminiscing Fritz Lang's Metropolis!) and that a couple of other installations got our full attention.
Anyway for what it's worth, a link to my photos of the even will follow shortly.
I'm talking about the projections on the sails of the Opera House.
For those of you who haven't been there yet this year: skip the Opera House and go directly to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)! At least it would be worth the cost of the parking and the half an hour walk (since the train station at Circular Quay was closed yesterday) from the CBD.
Let me just explain in a few words: the projection on the sails of the Opera House this year is of an asian couple, boy and girl (although the boy appears for only a couple of minutes) doing some gymnastics.
Nothing strenuous, just a couple of stretches, one leg raised, an arm rotating and that's it.
YEP, no kidding, THIS IS IT!
Forget about the stunning colours and forms that gave life to one of the most amazing light shows in the past couple of years for the Vivid Sydney festival.
Forget about the choreography behind the scenes, the perfect shape and direction of the lights, the warmth of the shades and the innovative ideas that took place in the months of preparation to make this festival a celebration of this amazing city that is Sydney.
Forget about never getting tired of the ever changing images, some evocative, some out of this world, some so rich in colour that they would make you doubt the possibility to even set your camera on them and try and recreate those fabulous effects through the lens.
This year is all about a couple of healthy exercises, of the kind you do in "soft" gym classes, right after your spinning session or your zumba madness, just to fill in the gap between the main reason why you went to the gym and the moment in which you can finally go back home and take a shower.
Let me tell you how it ACTUALLY went:
We got there early, not really knowing what to expect, I had seen one or two photos of the Opera House with a person on it and I thought to myself, oh this could be cool.... for a while.....
When the lights went on at 6pm we were right below the main sails, noses up and cameras ready.
At the beginning nothing happened, there was just a light on the sails and the shadow of the people passing in front of its source.
Since this went on for a bit I said in what was meant to be a joke :"Not much money this year".
Immediately on my left a woman answered :"It should get better!".
I certainly hope so! I thought, and we resumed the wait.
And then finally.... the gym exercises.....
Ok, for the first couple of minutes we all giggled, ahaha there's a person on the opera house! mmmm I wonder when the good part will start....
After half an hour we were all like:"Is she still there?", "Yep, still there!".....
Some kids next to us were yelling bo-ring bo-ring in chorus, it was actually quite catchy! One of them was doing some sort of improv song with sentences like "This is so bo-ring to-ni-i-ight... this is boooooring toniiiight.... bo bo boooring...."
Photographers were shaking their heads in disbelief, parents were nervously getting rid of their sense of guilt for dragging their kids to this painfully lame gig by buying more and more ice cream cones, couples on their first dates that got there in the hope of scoring a second one thanks to the romance of the past years' events were probably thinking of someplace else to go in order to salvage the night.
And then it happened!!!
No, they did NOT change projections, unfortunately, what happened was that everyone LEFT!
You know the mass migrations seen so many times on tv? All those wildebeests squeezing past each other in the attempt to get as fast and as far as possible from the open jawed crocs waiting for them in the river?
That was us yesterday when we all decided to flee the scene!!! Women and children first!!!! And then the photographers with all our paraphernalia of tripods we didn't even bother to take out of the cover!!! And then the pervs when they finally got tired of hoping to sneak a peak up the girl's shorts!!!
And you know what the saddest part is? That it's all true! I'm not even exaggerating for humour's sake!
We went to check all the other installations to spend some time and keep an eye out in case someone got wise and changed the projections but NO, she was always there...... doing her exercises.
Actually no, that is not the saddest part. Far more sad is the fact that we're not talking about a wall on a random building, this is the Sydney Opera House we're talking about!!!!!!!
By far the most beautiful Opera House in the world, one of the most amazing man made creations ever seen, THE ICON of this city, one of the most recognised building in the planet and the reason why 99% of Europeans believe that Sydney is the capital of Australia.
One wonders if these kind of things shouldn't go through some good thinking before giving it the green light. Is this the way we cherish our city? Is this the way we hope to beat Melbourne as the culture capital of the country?
I'm not saying that's not art, I'm just saying it's BAD art!
SO BAD it's not even edgy! it's not even provocative bad, just plain boring BAD!
And it was just a meagre consolation that the projections on the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) were actually pretty good (very good the scene reminiscing Fritz Lang's Metropolis!) and that a couple of other installations got our full attention.
Anyway for what it's worth, a link to my photos of the even will follow shortly.
Sunday 20 May 2012
The mighty rivers of Asia - part II the Ganges
I can certainly say that among all the rivers I've seen in my life, the one that made the biggest impression on me was the Ganges.
Why? Where do I start... Maybe it's because of the Arati ceremony that I've witnessed in Varanasi, or maybe it's because of the burning ghats or it might be because of the strong emotions one goes through when they see the first body released into the water and floating away. They were all very powerful, no doubt, but the reason why the Ganges has such a big place in my heart is the tee light candles.
I'll explain.
But first let's see how I got to that moment.
It was the end of September 2008 and I was slowly making my way from Europe to Australia via Asia, taking my time and trying to savour every experience I would have come across.
I decided that the first stop had to be India, since I was a little girl reading about Sandokan and his adventures in the jungle of the Sundabarns I've always wanted to go there. When I grew up there were obviously other reasons but the common feeling of exotic mystery remained. I wanted to see something different, something that would have finally given me the possibility to confront myself with another culture.
India was not my first country in Asia, by then I had been already to China (twice), Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and South Korea (twice) and even though I've had plenty of confrontations with different cultures everywhere I went I kept on hearing from fellow travellers these amazing tales about how they got hit real bad by their travels to India, how its poverty and richness crossed your path equally every day, how its beauty was constantly eluding you in your memories of it.
They all agreed that it was the most "difficult" country to go to, although when interrogated about what the difficulties were they could not really say anything that would have pushed me not to go.
So one day I found myself facing excitement and fear in a flight that had been delayed in Schiphol for 4 hours due to a "technical problem" (remember it was September 2008, just a few weeks after the horrible tragedy of that low cost flight to Canarias, where so many people died carbonised in the explosion that followed the take off).
The dreaded technical problem! I was terrified!
And I wasn't the only one, we had all heard stories about how the passengers of the spanish flight had been told that there was a technical problem with the aircraft before they finally got off to their death. So far the sequence had been exactly the same and 4 hours of wait in an aircraft (we had boarded on time, just like them), especially in coach, well, not the best way to convey positive thoughts!!!
I bet everyone was wandering if we were going to die once the plane took off, someone was already asking if they could disembark, many were drinking alcohol as if it were water and I was staring at the wing outside, thinking. I remember asking myself if I thought I was going to die too, and considering that since every time I had taken a plane (and there had been many) and there were some kind of problems with it be it turbolence or bounces or something else I always thought:"I can't die now, I haven't been to India yet!".... ahahaha how ironic eh? Now I was almost sure I was indeed going to die on a flight TO India!
But nothing happened, we took off finally, and we landed safely, although there was nothing safe about the time we landed, at 3am in Delhi.
Ok, so I was at 3am on my own in Delhi with the address of the hotel I was supposed to meet with the other people from the tour. I had been organising a pick up from the airport but since we were so late I thought my contact would have waited a couple of hours and then gone home, I looked for someone holding a sing with my name in the hall but couldn't see anyone.
I think now that it was just a happy coincidence that I decided I needed cash and made my way to the nearest ATM, but before I actually proceeded to go I just turned around one last time, with no conviction whatsoever but with the same instinct that sometimes brings us to do things just one more time....
... And I saw it! The sign! With my name on it!!!
Just the sign though, no one was holding it.
So I went to pick it up and started to walk around the hall hoping to find its owner. After a few metres a strong hand grabbed me by my shoulder and turned me towards the owner of the hand (and obviously of the sign as well), who was looking at me with a very serious frown, not friendly at all, as if he thought I was stealing that bloody thing!
Are you kidding me??? I thought, my first night in India and I'm already accused of theft, good start Silvia good start!
But eventually another younger and much friendlier guy took over and asked me in english if I was the person on the sign, since there couldn't really have been any other explanation (unless I was a blonde cleptomaniac stealing cardboard signs with the name of random people on them) I limited myself to raise my eyebrows and tilt my head to the left.
Luckily the young guy laughed at that and told me to follow him to the car.
I arrived at the hotel exhausted just after 4am and when I switched on my phone I found 6 messages from family and friends asking me what the hell had happened and (on a more caring tone) if I was all right. By the time I had finished answering all of them, took a shower and had a bite of the sandwich I had saved from the plane, I could see the first rays of light and its glorious sunrise.
I vowed then that my first memory of India would have been that sunrise.
A few days later we took a cruise along the Ganges.
It really is a mighty river!
But if anyone has ever done a cruise on the Ganges, they would know that it's pretty uneventful. Mostly relaxing, you leave in the morning, the rowers sweat and take turns, then they stop, you have lunch (a gorgeous one we had! I had never tasted okra before but now I'm a big fan!), then they start rowing again and you talk with your mates, you play cards, you win some you lose some, you talk some more, you take a nap.....
...and then you're woken by the terrible stench provoked by the rotting carcass of a cow floating by!
You talk about it, you cover your nose, you take a couple of photos, you forget about it, you resume your nap....
...and then you're woken by the noise of a rifle being fired!
You jump to your feet and look around you and individuate the source of the shot, a boat with a couple of men shooting a dog that was feasting on a corpse! A human corpse!
First thoughts: WHATTTHEHELLL??? ok, the corpse must have been cremated and taken here by the stream, a dog must have smelled it from the river banks and swam to it and started to eat it, someone must have seen the dog and decided to shoot it. Elementary Watson?
Could this have been one of the reasons why the fellow travellers I've met told me they had been hit hard by culture shock when they went to India?
I have to say, it didn't shock me at all.
I get it! That corpse belonged to a person who was alive until a few hours before that. And that person had been loved by someone who took them to the burning ghats to have a cremation and then released the body of their beloved one in the sacred waters of the Ganges. When the man with the rifle saw the dog on top of the body, eating what remained of its flesh he must have thought of those members of the family who cried and mourned the death of their beloved father, mother, daughter, spouse and they thought to shoot the dog to preserve the body.
Of course I feel sorry for the dog, if it was me I would have probably tried to shoot in the air to scare it off, but I'm very aware that I'm just a visitor in these lands and I have absolutely no rights to judge and even less to do something about it, only because in my golden life I have the time and luxury to consider animals as living creatures.
Some would say that my first impact with the Ganges was not the most desirable one, but I say that whatever represents culture in a country that knows the word "culture" since well before anyone else in this planet is more than welcome, if I don't have the guts to face it it's my problem and I have to deal with it.
The last part of our cruise took us jus a few km away from our destination, Varanasi.
Adjectives for this place: colourful, beautiful, alive, vivid, warm, crowded, vibrant, busy, sacred, dirty, smelly, wealthy, poor, organised, chaotic.
I know that some of them are opposites, but each and every one of them fits perfectly a place that sees life and death every single day and many times per day being treated as lucrative business on the one hand and the highest form of religious expression on the other.
The few days I've spent there were very intense and physically exhausting, with next to no sleep and lots and lots of lights, incense and smoke so that my eyes were constantly sore.
But I couldn't keep them shut, I had to see, observe, take everything in, every single colour, every single face, every meaningful gesture made by the sadhus in the morning when they read oracles for the people, every prayer said by the mourners next to the burning ghats, every smell of curry coming out of restaurants, every reflection of the gorgeous bangles worn by women of all ages.
The tee light candles.
It's a ceremony to be held in the morning at sunrise. We woke up early, made our way to one of the piers, boarded a boat and sailed into the Ganges for the second time.
Our guide gave us hundreds of tee light candles to light up, put on the top of a coloured piece of paper shaped like a lotus flower, and then release on the water, letting the river take care of them and gently floating down stream.
I remember that to each and every candle I was giving to the Ganges I assigned a hope, I hope I will be safe in my travels, I hope I made the right choice, I hope I will be happy, I hope no harm would come to the persons I love, I hope my candles will stay afloat forever and reach the ocean and still go on and land on the shores of the faraway land that was my ultimate destination, Australia.
Why? Where do I start... Maybe it's because of the Arati ceremony that I've witnessed in Varanasi, or maybe it's because of the burning ghats or it might be because of the strong emotions one goes through when they see the first body released into the water and floating away. They were all very powerful, no doubt, but the reason why the Ganges has such a big place in my heart is the tee light candles.
I'll explain.
But first let's see how I got to that moment.
It was the end of September 2008 and I was slowly making my way from Europe to Australia via Asia, taking my time and trying to savour every experience I would have come across.
I decided that the first stop had to be India, since I was a little girl reading about Sandokan and his adventures in the jungle of the Sundabarns I've always wanted to go there. When I grew up there were obviously other reasons but the common feeling of exotic mystery remained. I wanted to see something different, something that would have finally given me the possibility to confront myself with another culture.
India was not my first country in Asia, by then I had been already to China (twice), Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and South Korea (twice) and even though I've had plenty of confrontations with different cultures everywhere I went I kept on hearing from fellow travellers these amazing tales about how they got hit real bad by their travels to India, how its poverty and richness crossed your path equally every day, how its beauty was constantly eluding you in your memories of it.
They all agreed that it was the most "difficult" country to go to, although when interrogated about what the difficulties were they could not really say anything that would have pushed me not to go.
So one day I found myself facing excitement and fear in a flight that had been delayed in Schiphol for 4 hours due to a "technical problem" (remember it was September 2008, just a few weeks after the horrible tragedy of that low cost flight to Canarias, where so many people died carbonised in the explosion that followed the take off).
The dreaded technical problem! I was terrified!
And I wasn't the only one, we had all heard stories about how the passengers of the spanish flight had been told that there was a technical problem with the aircraft before they finally got off to their death. So far the sequence had been exactly the same and 4 hours of wait in an aircraft (we had boarded on time, just like them), especially in coach, well, not the best way to convey positive thoughts!!!
I bet everyone was wandering if we were going to die once the plane took off, someone was already asking if they could disembark, many were drinking alcohol as if it were water and I was staring at the wing outside, thinking. I remember asking myself if I thought I was going to die too, and considering that since every time I had taken a plane (and there had been many) and there were some kind of problems with it be it turbolence or bounces or something else I always thought:"I can't die now, I haven't been to India yet!".... ahahaha how ironic eh? Now I was almost sure I was indeed going to die on a flight TO India!
But nothing happened, we took off finally, and we landed safely, although there was nothing safe about the time we landed, at 3am in Delhi.
Ok, so I was at 3am on my own in Delhi with the address of the hotel I was supposed to meet with the other people from the tour. I had been organising a pick up from the airport but since we were so late I thought my contact would have waited a couple of hours and then gone home, I looked for someone holding a sing with my name in the hall but couldn't see anyone.
I think now that it was just a happy coincidence that I decided I needed cash and made my way to the nearest ATM, but before I actually proceeded to go I just turned around one last time, with no conviction whatsoever but with the same instinct that sometimes brings us to do things just one more time....
... And I saw it! The sign! With my name on it!!!
Just the sign though, no one was holding it.
So I went to pick it up and started to walk around the hall hoping to find its owner. After a few metres a strong hand grabbed me by my shoulder and turned me towards the owner of the hand (and obviously of the sign as well), who was looking at me with a very serious frown, not friendly at all, as if he thought I was stealing that bloody thing!
Are you kidding me??? I thought, my first night in India and I'm already accused of theft, good start Silvia good start!
But eventually another younger and much friendlier guy took over and asked me in english if I was the person on the sign, since there couldn't really have been any other explanation (unless I was a blonde cleptomaniac stealing cardboard signs with the name of random people on them) I limited myself to raise my eyebrows and tilt my head to the left.
Luckily the young guy laughed at that and told me to follow him to the car.
I arrived at the hotel exhausted just after 4am and when I switched on my phone I found 6 messages from family and friends asking me what the hell had happened and (on a more caring tone) if I was all right. By the time I had finished answering all of them, took a shower and had a bite of the sandwich I had saved from the plane, I could see the first rays of light and its glorious sunrise.
I vowed then that my first memory of India would have been that sunrise.
A few days later we took a cruise along the Ganges.
It really is a mighty river!
But if anyone has ever done a cruise on the Ganges, they would know that it's pretty uneventful. Mostly relaxing, you leave in the morning, the rowers sweat and take turns, then they stop, you have lunch (a gorgeous one we had! I had never tasted okra before but now I'm a big fan!), then they start rowing again and you talk with your mates, you play cards, you win some you lose some, you talk some more, you take a nap.....
...and then you're woken by the terrible stench provoked by the rotting carcass of a cow floating by!
You talk about it, you cover your nose, you take a couple of photos, you forget about it, you resume your nap....
...and then you're woken by the noise of a rifle being fired!
You jump to your feet and look around you and individuate the source of the shot, a boat with a couple of men shooting a dog that was feasting on a corpse! A human corpse!
First thoughts: WHATTTHEHELLL??? ok, the corpse must have been cremated and taken here by the stream, a dog must have smelled it from the river banks and swam to it and started to eat it, someone must have seen the dog and decided to shoot it. Elementary Watson?
Could this have been one of the reasons why the fellow travellers I've met told me they had been hit hard by culture shock when they went to India?
I have to say, it didn't shock me at all.
I get it! That corpse belonged to a person who was alive until a few hours before that. And that person had been loved by someone who took them to the burning ghats to have a cremation and then released the body of their beloved one in the sacred waters of the Ganges. When the man with the rifle saw the dog on top of the body, eating what remained of its flesh he must have thought of those members of the family who cried and mourned the death of their beloved father, mother, daughter, spouse and they thought to shoot the dog to preserve the body.
Of course I feel sorry for the dog, if it was me I would have probably tried to shoot in the air to scare it off, but I'm very aware that I'm just a visitor in these lands and I have absolutely no rights to judge and even less to do something about it, only because in my golden life I have the time and luxury to consider animals as living creatures.
Some would say that my first impact with the Ganges was not the most desirable one, but I say that whatever represents culture in a country that knows the word "culture" since well before anyone else in this planet is more than welcome, if I don't have the guts to face it it's my problem and I have to deal with it.
The last part of our cruise took us jus a few km away from our destination, Varanasi.
Adjectives for this place: colourful, beautiful, alive, vivid, warm, crowded, vibrant, busy, sacred, dirty, smelly, wealthy, poor, organised, chaotic.
I know that some of them are opposites, but each and every one of them fits perfectly a place that sees life and death every single day and many times per day being treated as lucrative business on the one hand and the highest form of religious expression on the other.
The few days I've spent there were very intense and physically exhausting, with next to no sleep and lots and lots of lights, incense and smoke so that my eyes were constantly sore.
But I couldn't keep them shut, I had to see, observe, take everything in, every single colour, every single face, every meaningful gesture made by the sadhus in the morning when they read oracles for the people, every prayer said by the mourners next to the burning ghats, every smell of curry coming out of restaurants, every reflection of the gorgeous bangles worn by women of all ages.
The tee light candles.
It's a ceremony to be held in the morning at sunrise. We woke up early, made our way to one of the piers, boarded a boat and sailed into the Ganges for the second time.
Our guide gave us hundreds of tee light candles to light up, put on the top of a coloured piece of paper shaped like a lotus flower, and then release on the water, letting the river take care of them and gently floating down stream.
I remember that to each and every candle I was giving to the Ganges I assigned a hope, I hope I will be safe in my travels, I hope I made the right choice, I hope I will be happy, I hope no harm would come to the persons I love, I hope my candles will stay afloat forever and reach the ocean and still go on and land on the shores of the faraway land that was my ultimate destination, Australia.
Friday 18 May 2012
The mighty rivers of Asia - part I the Chao Praya
One of my dreams in the last seven years has always been to be able one day to publish a book with my best photos from Asia. I love photography, but above all I love travel photography and undeniably the centre of my travels in the last years has been this wonderfully vast and variegated continent.
At first I thought I wanted to visit all the countries in the continent before proceeding with a screening for the photos that would go on the book but at a certain point I had to admit that it might take me ages for that! I mean not only does Asia have 48 or 50 or 52 or 55 countries, depending on which wikipedia website you check (apparently there seem to be a dispute whether you can count Russia and Turkey as Asia, since they're counted in Europe as well, this is the explanation for the 48 or 50, I found no explanation about the other differences but I'm sure it's something similar)...anyway... A LOT, but they're also slightly more difficult to go to than others, for almost every country you need a visa and for some of them it's a long and costly process, not to talk about the fact that most visas are valid from the release date, not from the date in which you enter the country, therefore you must always keep an eye for expiring dates in case you visit more than one country in a prolonged period of time.
And that's why I've decided to start sorting out the photos before I got to even 50% of the continent.
I've been to 13 countries in Asia, in 7 years. To some of them I've been more than once, China, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, to some of them I've been numerous times, Thailand.
Some of them I really liked, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, some of them I fell in love with, Nepal, Japan, India, in one of them I actually fell in love with my husband, Vietnam, in one of them I was mugged, China, in many of them I've been a little bit sick, Japan, China, India, in one of them I've been scarily sick, Myanmar, in all of them I've had the time of my life.
When it comes to choosing a theme for the photobook I've been oscillating between 2 main choices, people portraits (I certainly have a lots of those!) and portraits of live along the rivers.
I was born in a city that has a miserably small river (you can't really call it a river, it's called Bacchiglione, in Padova, Italy), but when I was little it obviously looked gigantic to me, even though sometimes there was no water at all in it, especially during the hot summers we used to have. I was going to school for 5 years of my life right in front of one of the most beautiful bridges on that river and that gave me the possibility to stop by and admire it at least twice a day cause we were driving on it to go to the other side of the city and the guardrail was quite low not to mention with lots of gaping holes therefore you could have a good peak from the car.
It was always full of ducks, beautiful fat ducks, sometimes with the ducklings following them, and swans and some other bird that I cannot now recall.
It was full of life.
It was right in the middle of a city that was founded in the 10th century BCE (also found it in the internet, even though we were taught in school that it had been founded a couple of centuries after that, but certainly before Rome!), in any case, an OLD city. Some of the roman buildings are still visible, the roads are the same they were using during the roman empire (I mean the same routing obviously, not the actual roads, the viability in Italy is not THAT bad!).
If you lived in the city centre like I did, the river was your companion, him following you rather than you following him, through all your chores and stops. It was there when you were going to the supermarket, there close to the gym and right in front of the school and it stayed with you for a while even when you were going away on holiday, until you were definitely leaving the region.
This is one of the reasons why I like rivers and the bustling life that grows from them and around them.
I've never been to Egypt but I reckon the only reason why I would want to go one day it would be to have a good look at the Nile and not for the pyramids.
Rivers in Asia are majestic! The are full of power and very large especially during monsoon seasons and even thought these sudden downpours can represent a bit of a nuisance for the occasional tourist, they are a constant source of fun and occasions for good photos for me.
I remember once I was in Bangkok on my own and I had a couple of hours to kill before boarding the plane to Dubai and since I had been there before probably a dozen times I didn't really want to stand in line to go visit the Royal Palace again (or any other sight).
I just decided to walk down to the river and sit there with my book.
When I reached it there was a guy standing on a boat gesturing and yelling something at me.
I was curious so I got closer and I understood that he was asking me if I wanted to have a tour on his boat. Why not? I thought, and off we went. His english wasn't good so we couldn't really agree on a route but I told him to go towards the inner canals on the western part of the Chao Praya.
I had never been there before and this was really outside of the beaten track since there ware no tourists at all but there were a lot of longtail boats used for fluvial transportation.
It was amazing!
We were supposed to navigate for only half an hour but after a while the monsoon came and we had to stop under a bridge to let it pass, therefore when I was back at the starting point it was time to take the train to the airport.
In a couple of hours I saw a huge (and I mean HUGE) komodo dragon (not the famous one you can only spot in Indonesia, the "normal" one 2 m long with a very colourful blue tongue) making its way out of the water and slowly inside a garden, numerous kids diving into the water, playing under the rain, screaming and laughing and generally having lots of fun, monks feeding fishes with breadcrumbs, other boats stopping temporarily under the brides for shelter, blacksmiths with their "bottega" right on the river using the water to smother the hot iron, families gathering on a small terrace and play cards, people watching tv, numerous shrines and really odd post boxes, disposed almost in the middle of the river in such a way that the postman coming via boat wouldn't have to go too much out of his way to deliver. It was then that I knew why I'm so fascinated by rivers. It's like you're in a different planet. Its life is powerfully evolving around it, taking in its moods and joyfully adapting to them. The City in the city. Anywhere in Asia where there's moving water it's the same world apart. And it's always fascinating.
At first I thought I wanted to visit all the countries in the continent before proceeding with a screening for the photos that would go on the book but at a certain point I had to admit that it might take me ages for that! I mean not only does Asia have 48 or 50 or 52 or 55 countries, depending on which wikipedia website you check (apparently there seem to be a dispute whether you can count Russia and Turkey as Asia, since they're counted in Europe as well, this is the explanation for the 48 or 50, I found no explanation about the other differences but I'm sure it's something similar)...anyway... A LOT, but they're also slightly more difficult to go to than others, for almost every country you need a visa and for some of them it's a long and costly process, not to talk about the fact that most visas are valid from the release date, not from the date in which you enter the country, therefore you must always keep an eye for expiring dates in case you visit more than one country in a prolonged period of time.
And that's why I've decided to start sorting out the photos before I got to even 50% of the continent.
I've been to 13 countries in Asia, in 7 years. To some of them I've been more than once, China, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, to some of them I've been numerous times, Thailand.
Some of them I really liked, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, some of them I fell in love with, Nepal, Japan, India, in one of them I actually fell in love with my husband, Vietnam, in one of them I was mugged, China, in many of them I've been a little bit sick, Japan, China, India, in one of them I've been scarily sick, Myanmar, in all of them I've had the time of my life.
When it comes to choosing a theme for the photobook I've been oscillating between 2 main choices, people portraits (I certainly have a lots of those!) and portraits of live along the rivers.
I was born in a city that has a miserably small river (you can't really call it a river, it's called Bacchiglione, in Padova, Italy), but when I was little it obviously looked gigantic to me, even though sometimes there was no water at all in it, especially during the hot summers we used to have. I was going to school for 5 years of my life right in front of one of the most beautiful bridges on that river and that gave me the possibility to stop by and admire it at least twice a day cause we were driving on it to go to the other side of the city and the guardrail was quite low not to mention with lots of gaping holes therefore you could have a good peak from the car.
It was always full of ducks, beautiful fat ducks, sometimes with the ducklings following them, and swans and some other bird that I cannot now recall.
It was full of life.
It was right in the middle of a city that was founded in the 10th century BCE (also found it in the internet, even though we were taught in school that it had been founded a couple of centuries after that, but certainly before Rome!), in any case, an OLD city. Some of the roman buildings are still visible, the roads are the same they were using during the roman empire (I mean the same routing obviously, not the actual roads, the viability in Italy is not THAT bad!).
If you lived in the city centre like I did, the river was your companion, him following you rather than you following him, through all your chores and stops. It was there when you were going to the supermarket, there close to the gym and right in front of the school and it stayed with you for a while even when you were going away on holiday, until you were definitely leaving the region.
This is one of the reasons why I like rivers and the bustling life that grows from them and around them.
I've never been to Egypt but I reckon the only reason why I would want to go one day it would be to have a good look at the Nile and not for the pyramids.
Rivers in Asia are majestic! The are full of power and very large especially during monsoon seasons and even thought these sudden downpours can represent a bit of a nuisance for the occasional tourist, they are a constant source of fun and occasions for good photos for me.
I remember once I was in Bangkok on my own and I had a couple of hours to kill before boarding the plane to Dubai and since I had been there before probably a dozen times I didn't really want to stand in line to go visit the Royal Palace again (or any other sight).
I just decided to walk down to the river and sit there with my book.
When I reached it there was a guy standing on a boat gesturing and yelling something at me.
I was curious so I got closer and I understood that he was asking me if I wanted to have a tour on his boat. Why not? I thought, and off we went. His english wasn't good so we couldn't really agree on a route but I told him to go towards the inner canals on the western part of the Chao Praya.
I had never been there before and this was really outside of the beaten track since there ware no tourists at all but there were a lot of longtail boats used for fluvial transportation.
It was amazing!
We were supposed to navigate for only half an hour but after a while the monsoon came and we had to stop under a bridge to let it pass, therefore when I was back at the starting point it was time to take the train to the airport.
In a couple of hours I saw a huge (and I mean HUGE) komodo dragon (not the famous one you can only spot in Indonesia, the "normal" one 2 m long with a very colourful blue tongue) making its way out of the water and slowly inside a garden, numerous kids diving into the water, playing under the rain, screaming and laughing and generally having lots of fun, monks feeding fishes with breadcrumbs, other boats stopping temporarily under the brides for shelter, blacksmiths with their "bottega" right on the river using the water to smother the hot iron, families gathering on a small terrace and play cards, people watching tv, numerous shrines and really odd post boxes, disposed almost in the middle of the river in such a way that the postman coming via boat wouldn't have to go too much out of his way to deliver. It was then that I knew why I'm so fascinated by rivers. It's like you're in a different planet. Its life is powerfully evolving around it, taking in its moods and joyfully adapting to them. The City in the city. Anywhere in Asia where there's moving water it's the same world apart. And it's always fascinating.
Thursday 17 May 2012
Tamarind flakes and other culinary addictions
Steve and I are always very cautious when it comes to restaurants. We do our homework, we read more than one guide (usually Lonely Planet and DK), if the place is mentioned in Trip advisor we read the feed backs, we check out where that place is on the map and if it's far in relation to the hotel where we're staying, we try to stick to local cuisine as much as possible and never NEVER go to a fast food!
What usually happens is that we find a very nice place where the meals are safe and good and the atmosphere is decent and the price is ok and then we go there a few more times depending on how many nights we spend in that place.
This is a necessity, especially when traveling in Asia, where you can end up so much in love with the toilet that you don't want to leave it for hours and hours.....
And then there's always the favourite dish: a dish of the local cuisine that is so good that you wish you had known all along and ordered THAT one instead of all the other stuff you've tried before finding it.
It usually happens at the beginning of the holiday, when you still haven't been to many places and it's a combination of a nice restaurant, a fast wi-fi and prices that you can't compare to the same kind of restaurant in your hometown (the rule is: if it's not less than half the price then it's too expensive, f.e. the price of a decent Pho Bo in a restaurant in Sydney is average $14, if you are in a restaurant in Saigon and the price of Pho Bo is more than $7 get out! It's a tourist trap! You're probably in a "gaijin only" place and they're going to charge you a lot of money not because the food you're eating is expensive but because they know that you are a tourist and of course all tourists are extremely wealthy!).
Sometimes that dish becomes a legend, something your children and the children of your children and their children after that (assuming you'll still be alive) will hear about so many times that in the end they will refer to you as "phobo granma" or they will simply look at you with commiseration and roll their eyes when you will ask them "Did I tell you about that Pho Bo I had in Saigon? It was SO good!".
I'm not going to lie to you, when you finally find THAT dish you're doomed!
You will start craving it in the early hours of the morning when you have to wake up before sunrise to go visit YET another temple, or in the hot and humid mid afternoon post-lunch just after you've already chosen to eat "just a snack not to ruin my appetite for tonight", you'll have visions of your favourite dish when standing in line to go to the same restaurant you went to when you found it for the first time, you'll feel like you're already chewing on it even before you've had a chance to order it and then of course when you do ask for it and the waiter will tell you:"Very popular today, no more, finished" you will feel like you're living your worst nightmare! A sudden thought will come to you "what if I can't find it... anymore!". That night you will settle for any other dish cause of course you have to eat, but the day after that you will start thinking that maybe that perfect dish didn't exist, maybe it was just a product of your mind intoxicated by the many bottles of beer, maybe it was just something a famous chef coming from a remote province of the country made that night and that night only because he was in town visiting his cousin and now the only way to taste it again would be to embark on a quest to find that chef and the remote village where he lives and works. But you know you can't do that, you have an itinerary to follow! It would be silly, wouldn't it? And then hope kicks in, maybe if I come tomorrow I will find it again, maybe if I change restaurant, maybe in another place they call it in a different way, maybe if I bribe them, maybe if I put more chilli.....
....Maybe if I enrol in a cooking class they will teach me how to do it and I will make hundreds and hundreds of them until I will master the art and I will never have to worry about finding it ever again!...
Yep, I even thought to do that, it was in Orchha, India and I was looking for the perfect butter chicken....
Suffice it to say that I rarely eat butter chicken nowadays... so sad....
In Thailand it was Tom Yum, in China it was duck bread, in Japan it was any kind of sushi (!!), in Vietnam it was beloved Pho Bo, in Cambodia it was fish amok, in Laos it was Beer Lao (I know, it's not food but it was the perfect beer!), in Korea it was the bbq, in Bali it was gado gado, in India butter chicken, in Nepal dhal makani, in Melacca it was Baba nonya pineapple cookies (BEST cookies in the world, NEVER found them again, I'm seriously thinking about going back to that village to buy tons of them), in Singapore.... nothing, I didn't have a great time in Singapore, I was kind of sickish, in Burma it was TAMARIND FLAKES!!!
I know it sounds a bit odd, but oh my goodness they are so delicious, seriously I'm salivating right now just by thinking about them!
We found them the first time in a restaurant in Bagan and since then we adopted a strategy: when deciding on where to eat we would quickly and furtively inspect the other tables where other customers had already finished their meals to check if they had been offered tamarind flakes.
If we could find no tamarind flakes on their tables we changed restaurant!
Sometimes we had to resign ourselves and hope to find them again the day after, but when we did find them we gorged on them!
They are sweet but that kind of sweet that fills your mouth with saliva because its also a bit citrusy.
Needless to say we're now trying to find them in Sydney. Good luck! We did find some tamarind lollies though... a pale memory of the real thing.....so sad....
What usually happens is that we find a very nice place where the meals are safe and good and the atmosphere is decent and the price is ok and then we go there a few more times depending on how many nights we spend in that place.
This is a necessity, especially when traveling in Asia, where you can end up so much in love with the toilet that you don't want to leave it for hours and hours.....
And then there's always the favourite dish: a dish of the local cuisine that is so good that you wish you had known all along and ordered THAT one instead of all the other stuff you've tried before finding it.
It usually happens at the beginning of the holiday, when you still haven't been to many places and it's a combination of a nice restaurant, a fast wi-fi and prices that you can't compare to the same kind of restaurant in your hometown (the rule is: if it's not less than half the price then it's too expensive, f.e. the price of a decent Pho Bo in a restaurant in Sydney is average $14, if you are in a restaurant in Saigon and the price of Pho Bo is more than $7 get out! It's a tourist trap! You're probably in a "gaijin only" place and they're going to charge you a lot of money not because the food you're eating is expensive but because they know that you are a tourist and of course all tourists are extremely wealthy!).
Sometimes that dish becomes a legend, something your children and the children of your children and their children after that (assuming you'll still be alive) will hear about so many times that in the end they will refer to you as "phobo granma" or they will simply look at you with commiseration and roll their eyes when you will ask them "Did I tell you about that Pho Bo I had in Saigon? It was SO good!".
I'm not going to lie to you, when you finally find THAT dish you're doomed!
You will start craving it in the early hours of the morning when you have to wake up before sunrise to go visit YET another temple, or in the hot and humid mid afternoon post-lunch just after you've already chosen to eat "just a snack not to ruin my appetite for tonight", you'll have visions of your favourite dish when standing in line to go to the same restaurant you went to when you found it for the first time, you'll feel like you're already chewing on it even before you've had a chance to order it and then of course when you do ask for it and the waiter will tell you:"Very popular today, no more, finished" you will feel like you're living your worst nightmare! A sudden thought will come to you "what if I can't find it... anymore!". That night you will settle for any other dish cause of course you have to eat, but the day after that you will start thinking that maybe that perfect dish didn't exist, maybe it was just a product of your mind intoxicated by the many bottles of beer, maybe it was just something a famous chef coming from a remote province of the country made that night and that night only because he was in town visiting his cousin and now the only way to taste it again would be to embark on a quest to find that chef and the remote village where he lives and works. But you know you can't do that, you have an itinerary to follow! It would be silly, wouldn't it? And then hope kicks in, maybe if I come tomorrow I will find it again, maybe if I change restaurant, maybe in another place they call it in a different way, maybe if I bribe them, maybe if I put more chilli.....
....Maybe if I enrol in a cooking class they will teach me how to do it and I will make hundreds and hundreds of them until I will master the art and I will never have to worry about finding it ever again!...
Yep, I even thought to do that, it was in Orchha, India and I was looking for the perfect butter chicken....
Suffice it to say that I rarely eat butter chicken nowadays... so sad....
In Thailand it was Tom Yum, in China it was duck bread, in Japan it was any kind of sushi (!!), in Vietnam it was beloved Pho Bo, in Cambodia it was fish amok, in Laos it was Beer Lao (I know, it's not food but it was the perfect beer!), in Korea it was the bbq, in Bali it was gado gado, in India butter chicken, in Nepal dhal makani, in Melacca it was Baba nonya pineapple cookies (BEST cookies in the world, NEVER found them again, I'm seriously thinking about going back to that village to buy tons of them), in Singapore.... nothing, I didn't have a great time in Singapore, I was kind of sickish, in Burma it was TAMARIND FLAKES!!!
I know it sounds a bit odd, but oh my goodness they are so delicious, seriously I'm salivating right now just by thinking about them!
We found them the first time in a restaurant in Bagan and since then we adopted a strategy: when deciding on where to eat we would quickly and furtively inspect the other tables where other customers had already finished their meals to check if they had been offered tamarind flakes.
If we could find no tamarind flakes on their tables we changed restaurant!
Sometimes we had to resign ourselves and hope to find them again the day after, but when we did find them we gorged on them!
They are sweet but that kind of sweet that fills your mouth with saliva because its also a bit citrusy.
Needless to say we're now trying to find them in Sydney. Good luck! We did find some tamarind lollies though... a pale memory of the real thing.....so sad....
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Biking in Bagan
If anyone knows me they know that I don't bike.
It's not a mater of being lazy or not liking the sport.
I don't bike because I had a terrible accident when I was 18 and I was run over by a car, well actually my bike was run over (poor thing, it didn't look like a bike anymore..., more like a black and green metal sandwich), I was hit and propelled into the air and landed on my right shoulder and head into the concrete.
One month in the hospital, luckily I had excellent grades at school and the professor decided to promote me anyway otherwise to add shame to the injury I would have had to repeat the year.
Anyway, that's the reason why, since when I was 18, I don't ride bikes.
There's always exceptions to the rule, obviously, I didn't get THAT traumatised, I rode once in a camping spot in Muggia, close to Trieste, north east Italy, almost on the border, with a couple of friends of mines.
Particularly, the friend that gave me the bike (it was her sister's), was very embarrassed by the way I was riding (very erratic and really really NOT stable, quite disturbing since I was a grown up 21 year old girl that looked like she needed those miniature side wheels they give to trainees, in the middle of a group of 5 or 6 year olds that were already riding mountain bikes and doing tricks like standing on the back wheel) and she kept apologising by explaining between her teeth that I hadn't been on a bike for a long time.
The second time I rode a bike was much later than that.
It was in 2008, in China, on the countryside close to Yangshuo, we were going for an excursion and everyone was riding so I would have felt lonely by staying at the hotel on my own.
Besides Steve was there too and we were just dating back then and I really wanted to show him how charming and absolutely fabulous I am, so I bit the bullet and pretended I was a pro on the saddle.
It didn't go TOO bad, I didn't fall, or I rather say I wasn't the one who actually FELL so I felt pretty good about myself, I was no Cadel, don't get me wrong but for someone who has been biking only once since she was 18.... it could have been much worse!
Ironically that surprisingly good performance pushed me to experiment with bikes again, later that same year, this time in Nepal, in the Royal Chitawan National Park, amongst rhinos and tigers.
Ah? Not bad hey?
Ok, now the truth, it WAS the same exotic location but obviously rhinos and tigers knew better than to stay close to this strange woman on a bike showing off her newly re-acquired ability to brake and land without falling!
All right, so that was 4 years ago, between then and now, no more bike rides, at least none that I recall, and since I would have gone through a whole soul searching thing before allowing myself on a bike again I think I would remember!
Therefore when I was reading the Lonely Planet guide to Myanmar (Burma) and I learnt that the best way to visit the temples in Bagan is either by horse cart or by bike I thought "Horse cart! Here I come!".
However, as I suspected, horse carts pose a huge problem, an actual deal breaker for photographers: they bounce, oh boy do they bounce ALL THE TIME! Try taking a tack sharp photo from a horse cart, unless you crank up the shutter speed dial to 1/500 (or more, especially if the roads are full of holes and since we were in countryside Burma.... well do I need to explain?), it's mission impossible!
In short, there were no alternatives, it was the bike or nothing.
Bike! Here I come!
And so it was that Steve and I rented a couple of push bikes from the hotel where we were staying and pedalled our way to the many temples in Bagan.
The first day was amazingly easy, the bikes they gave us were excellent, light weight, perfect brakes, a basket on the front to put our heavy camera gears, a very loud and cheerful bell, it was so much fun that I didn't think twice about getting back on the saddle the following day.
But here's where we made our first mistake, we wanted to explore the local market in the morning so that we could take photos of the amazing variety of fresh produces, meat, fish, housewares, and general paraphernalia that is proper to just about any market in Asia.
Not to talk about the possibility to buy souvenirs, this time unfulfilled since the local market in Nyaung U doesn't cater for tourists, so unless we were to come back to our family and friends with a pan or a couple of toilet rolls called "JOY" (no kidding!) as a souvenir from Burma, we would have had to go souvenir hunting somewhere else.
Anyway, the market was so interesting that it took us the better part of the morning to explore its many stalls and meanderings.
When we got back to the hotel to rent the bikes for our further tour of the temples we found out that the only ones left were not as good as the ones we had the day before.
And that's an overstatement.
They were so heavy that even the alternative of having to PUSH them all the way to and from the temples was more appealing than riding them!!!
Grunting and muttering like a grumpy old woman I pedalled my way to the first temple.
You have to understand that those bikes were so bad that every time there was a bit of sand on the road they were completely useless.
Now, since as I explained before, we were in countryside Burma, sand was what the roads were MADE OF!
You know when you go riding on the beach at sunset with the gentle breeze against your skin and the flocks of gulls elegantly flying in the pink sky?
All right, leave the sand, put the sun back up in the sky, substitute the breeze with 40 degrees temperature, avoid a collision with the creepy crows and forget about the pink sky, cause grey is all you'll see, if you don't count the occasional mirage of an oasis in the desert.
Well, needless to say our recommendation when renting a bike in Bagan: get there early and get the best ones!!!
It's not a mater of being lazy or not liking the sport.
I don't bike because I had a terrible accident when I was 18 and I was run over by a car, well actually my bike was run over (poor thing, it didn't look like a bike anymore..., more like a black and green metal sandwich), I was hit and propelled into the air and landed on my right shoulder and head into the concrete.
One month in the hospital, luckily I had excellent grades at school and the professor decided to promote me anyway otherwise to add shame to the injury I would have had to repeat the year.
Anyway, that's the reason why, since when I was 18, I don't ride bikes.
There's always exceptions to the rule, obviously, I didn't get THAT traumatised, I rode once in a camping spot in Muggia, close to Trieste, north east Italy, almost on the border, with a couple of friends of mines.
Particularly, the friend that gave me the bike (it was her sister's), was very embarrassed by the way I was riding (very erratic and really really NOT stable, quite disturbing since I was a grown up 21 year old girl that looked like she needed those miniature side wheels they give to trainees, in the middle of a group of 5 or 6 year olds that were already riding mountain bikes and doing tricks like standing on the back wheel) and she kept apologising by explaining between her teeth that I hadn't been on a bike for a long time.
The second time I rode a bike was much later than that.
It was in 2008, in China, on the countryside close to Yangshuo, we were going for an excursion and everyone was riding so I would have felt lonely by staying at the hotel on my own.
Besides Steve was there too and we were just dating back then and I really wanted to show him how charming and absolutely fabulous I am, so I bit the bullet and pretended I was a pro on the saddle.
It didn't go TOO bad, I didn't fall, or I rather say I wasn't the one who actually FELL so I felt pretty good about myself, I was no Cadel, don't get me wrong but for someone who has been biking only once since she was 18.... it could have been much worse!
Ironically that surprisingly good performance pushed me to experiment with bikes again, later that same year, this time in Nepal, in the Royal Chitawan National Park, amongst rhinos and tigers.
Ah? Not bad hey?
Ok, now the truth, it WAS the same exotic location but obviously rhinos and tigers knew better than to stay close to this strange woman on a bike showing off her newly re-acquired ability to brake and land without falling!
All right, so that was 4 years ago, between then and now, no more bike rides, at least none that I recall, and since I would have gone through a whole soul searching thing before allowing myself on a bike again I think I would remember!
Therefore when I was reading the Lonely Planet guide to Myanmar (Burma) and I learnt that the best way to visit the temples in Bagan is either by horse cart or by bike I thought "Horse cart! Here I come!".
However, as I suspected, horse carts pose a huge problem, an actual deal breaker for photographers: they bounce, oh boy do they bounce ALL THE TIME! Try taking a tack sharp photo from a horse cart, unless you crank up the shutter speed dial to 1/500 (or more, especially if the roads are full of holes and since we were in countryside Burma.... well do I need to explain?), it's mission impossible!
In short, there were no alternatives, it was the bike or nothing.
Bike! Here I come!
And so it was that Steve and I rented a couple of push bikes from the hotel where we were staying and pedalled our way to the many temples in Bagan.
The first day was amazingly easy, the bikes they gave us were excellent, light weight, perfect brakes, a basket on the front to put our heavy camera gears, a very loud and cheerful bell, it was so much fun that I didn't think twice about getting back on the saddle the following day.
But here's where we made our first mistake, we wanted to explore the local market in the morning so that we could take photos of the amazing variety of fresh produces, meat, fish, housewares, and general paraphernalia that is proper to just about any market in Asia.
Not to talk about the possibility to buy souvenirs, this time unfulfilled since the local market in Nyaung U doesn't cater for tourists, so unless we were to come back to our family and friends with a pan or a couple of toilet rolls called "JOY" (no kidding!) as a souvenir from Burma, we would have had to go souvenir hunting somewhere else.
Anyway, the market was so interesting that it took us the better part of the morning to explore its many stalls and meanderings.
When we got back to the hotel to rent the bikes for our further tour of the temples we found out that the only ones left were not as good as the ones we had the day before.
And that's an overstatement.
They were so heavy that even the alternative of having to PUSH them all the way to and from the temples was more appealing than riding them!!!
Grunting and muttering like a grumpy old woman I pedalled my way to the first temple.
You have to understand that those bikes were so bad that every time there was a bit of sand on the road they were completely useless.
Now, since as I explained before, we were in countryside Burma, sand was what the roads were MADE OF!
You know when you go riding on the beach at sunset with the gentle breeze against your skin and the flocks of gulls elegantly flying in the pink sky?
All right, leave the sand, put the sun back up in the sky, substitute the breeze with 40 degrees temperature, avoid a collision with the creepy crows and forget about the pink sky, cause grey is all you'll see, if you don't count the occasional mirage of an oasis in the desert.
Well, needless to say our recommendation when renting a bike in Bagan: get there early and get the best ones!!!
Sunday 13 May 2012
the link to my photos from Burma
http://www.flickr.com/photos/picsie74/sets/72157629768807995/My photos from Burma
...and who would have thought!
I was reading the last posts about Burma, not that there's that many of them, just 2 to be exact.
I realised that it looks a bit "bloggus interruptus", since we started blogging from the airport in Sydney just before boarding the plane to Bangkok and then we blogged a couple of days later when I magically had a very good and fast internet connection in Bagan.
Now, since what happened was that Bagan was only our second stop after only one day in Yangon, where I could see that wi-fi was not absolutely impossible to find, I rushed to sum up the two recurrences and I thought to myself, well what do you know, they have internet in Burma! all right then, I can blog anywhere I want.... WRONG! they do NOT have internet everywhere in Burma, it is NOT that easy to find it even in the biggest cities, and when you eventually DO find a place that claims they have internet do NOT believe them until you actually see someone using it. And the fact that many kids are playing on the computer does NOT mean that they have internet access, they might just be playing the computer games but NOT online!
I know that it sounds a bit redundant, but I was hoping to express the deep frustration that took over me just about all the time as soon as we left Bagan.
I mean, Bagan has free wi-fi even at the airport for goodness sake! Literally at the airport, you walk to your bag, or rather your bag walks to you, suspended by the arms of one of the airport employees that first checks your tag and then gives you the bag, good service ain't it, and you can send an email, publish a blog post, update your status in facebook and upload a photo at the same time! Granted,a it takes a while, it's not so fast, but ti works! And maybe I should explain that the aforementioned Bagan Airport is one of the smallest airports I've ever seen! And I've travelled domestically in 13 countries in Asia, seriously, not even Pokhara in Nepal! In Bagan you land with your plane, not many airlines there, just a couple and make sure you take "Yangon Airways", it has the highest safety rating, you exit the aircraft by climbing down the stairs, you walk 20 metres to your right, then take a left and walk for another 20 metres and you're at the arrivals......
When you realise that you look back to make sure that the aircraft hasn't knocked down some of the structure while parking...
If you wait a bit before entering the hall you will see another aircraft landing, turning and parking, the sound is amazing! It reverberates so much that it makes your stomach go whooooo!
And this airport has free wi fi, was I wrong to assume that if such a small place has free wi fi the possibility to find other connections later on in the trip would have been slightly higher than close to zero?
Well, too late fro blaming me now, that's how it went.
Besides I did take advantage of the wi fi in Bagan, if not for blogging I did upload a lot of photos on facebook where I created the project "Burma, stories through a lens", and I chose the John S lens of the Hipstamatic app for all the photos I took with my mobile.
Of course I was also taking photos with my usual camera and those ones have finally been edited and uploaded in Flickr (the next post will have the link to that).
Anyway to cut a long story short, we didn't blog from Burma because we almost never found a working internet connection.
It might be different now, while we were there places were being built, structures and facilities prepared for the seemingly huge flow of tourists expected this year, thanks to the fact that Burma has been appointed as one of the 10 top destinations in the world by the Lonely Planet (one of the main reasons Steve and I wanted to go there before the chaos will begin and transform this magnificent country in yet another goldcoast-fiji-phuket-bali).
But now it seems like a good time to publish a couple of posts about how it went, how we got extremely frustrated at times and how we got to see amazing landscapes and meet wonderful people... now, I mean, AFTER we recovered from it!!!
I realised that it looks a bit "bloggus interruptus", since we started blogging from the airport in Sydney just before boarding the plane to Bangkok and then we blogged a couple of days later when I magically had a very good and fast internet connection in Bagan.
Now, since what happened was that Bagan was only our second stop after only one day in Yangon, where I could see that wi-fi was not absolutely impossible to find, I rushed to sum up the two recurrences and I thought to myself, well what do you know, they have internet in Burma! all right then, I can blog anywhere I want.... WRONG! they do NOT have internet everywhere in Burma, it is NOT that easy to find it even in the biggest cities, and when you eventually DO find a place that claims they have internet do NOT believe them until you actually see someone using it. And the fact that many kids are playing on the computer does NOT mean that they have internet access, they might just be playing the computer games but NOT online!
I know that it sounds a bit redundant, but I was hoping to express the deep frustration that took over me just about all the time as soon as we left Bagan.
I mean, Bagan has free wi-fi even at the airport for goodness sake! Literally at the airport, you walk to your bag, or rather your bag walks to you, suspended by the arms of one of the airport employees that first checks your tag and then gives you the bag, good service ain't it, and you can send an email, publish a blog post, update your status in facebook and upload a photo at the same time! Granted,a it takes a while, it's not so fast, but ti works! And maybe I should explain that the aforementioned Bagan Airport is one of the smallest airports I've ever seen! And I've travelled domestically in 13 countries in Asia, seriously, not even Pokhara in Nepal! In Bagan you land with your plane, not many airlines there, just a couple and make sure you take "Yangon Airways", it has the highest safety rating, you exit the aircraft by climbing down the stairs, you walk 20 metres to your right, then take a left and walk for another 20 metres and you're at the arrivals......
When you realise that you look back to make sure that the aircraft hasn't knocked down some of the structure while parking...
If you wait a bit before entering the hall you will see another aircraft landing, turning and parking, the sound is amazing! It reverberates so much that it makes your stomach go whooooo!
And this airport has free wi fi, was I wrong to assume that if such a small place has free wi fi the possibility to find other connections later on in the trip would have been slightly higher than close to zero?
Well, too late fro blaming me now, that's how it went.
Besides I did take advantage of the wi fi in Bagan, if not for blogging I did upload a lot of photos on facebook where I created the project "Burma, stories through a lens", and I chose the John S lens of the Hipstamatic app for all the photos I took with my mobile.
Of course I was also taking photos with my usual camera and those ones have finally been edited and uploaded in Flickr (the next post will have the link to that).
Anyway to cut a long story short, we didn't blog from Burma because we almost never found a working internet connection.
It might be different now, while we were there places were being built, structures and facilities prepared for the seemingly huge flow of tourists expected this year, thanks to the fact that Burma has been appointed as one of the 10 top destinations in the world by the Lonely Planet (one of the main reasons Steve and I wanted to go there before the chaos will begin and transform this magnificent country in yet another goldcoast-fiji-phuket-bali).
But now it seems like a good time to publish a couple of posts about how it went, how we got extremely frustrated at times and how we got to see amazing landscapes and meet wonderful people... now, I mean, AFTER we recovered from it!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)