So as not to offend Theng, I mooched around for a bit, and seeing that he’d found a pretty young lady to flirt with, (hmm – so is that why we came here . . .?) I wandered off and poked my nose into the doorway of a building round the back of the Wat. Sitting inside was an elderly monk smoking a pipe. Being more interested in living beings than statues, I asked if I could go inside.
“A group of women started pointing at me and then stroking their arms up and down saying “Sữa Khổng Lồ!” and laughing. They kept saying it to me as if repeating it would make it any easier for me to understand and others joined in the hilarity. I looked at my arms to see what they were pointing out but was none the wiser.”
Returning to the Lisu village in N.W Thailand where I had stayed last year, I had a surprise in store for Asur and Asa
Asking to take a stranger’s portrait is a bit like riding a horse. They sense when you’re frightened. As soon as I’d had one good experience, my approach must have subtly changed as I suddenly started to get much more positive responses, and started to get the photos I had wanted
as we waved goodbye to her, and her grandchildren dressed in Western clothes, I came away hoping that in some small way, the photos I’d taken that day had helped more in the preservation of their precious culture than in contributing to its demise.
It seemed an unlikely place to be going for breakfast, as Cho lead us into a little low building with […]
Pinned to the wall of a home stay I’d been at last year in N.W.Thailand, was a torn handwritten map on a scrap of paper marking out where some of the local settlements were. It was a bit like Christopher Robin’s map of Hundred Acre Wood, and on it were little black dots on wiggly lines indicating where the various ethnic minority people lived.
Mooching around with just my camera for company is one of my favourite distractions, and wandering about looking for the […]
It’s not just the ploughing with horses that make you think you’ve stepped back in time, but the refreshing experience of being out in the fresh air, not a screen in sight, with a man who works the soil, relates to his animals, and still makes time to sit on his plough with a twinkle in his eye and tell a good old shaggy dog story.
We have to stay sensitive to our impact both on our subject and the ground we lay for future passing tourists/photographers, and try to keep the interaction a positive one for both. Ultimately I think it will make for a better travel experience and better photos too, and done unthoughtfully we risk ‘killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
Singing In The Lifeboats 