Camera Camera

CAMERA, CAMERA - Trailer from malcolm murray on Vimeo.

From the press release,

CAMERA, CAMERA is a stunning new documentary that shows Laos through the fascination and confusion of a traveler's lens. The directorial debut of award-winning cinematographer Malcolm Murray, the film was written and features interviews by journalist and author Michael Meyer, and was produced by New York Times staff photographer Josh Haner. Throughout CAMERA, CAMERA, Murray and Meyer recreate the experience of traveling in Laos, a fragile yet deceptively brutal world. From ancient temples to mountain villages, in jungles and on rivers, we see what travelers see and discover what they don’t as the plot moves deftly from the comical to the taboo, reveling in the experience of Laos and lingering on things left unsaid. CAMERA, CAMERA is a documentary for anyone who has traveled to or taken a photograph in a foreign country. The film quietly calls upon viewers to ponder the multifaceted and often ambiguous impacts of travel and photography on citizens of two worlds.

My Short Career as a Professional Writer

                                           Abandoned Mansion on Mekong 2001


A couple of months ago I was contacted by an online media specializing in news and info on East Asia. They wanted me to write somthing, AND THEY WERE WILLING TO PAY ME!!!!!!!

Ok, it wasn't much. $50 for around five or six hundred words. The idea is what grabbed me, Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, and VS Naipaul, Somchai, writers.

They said they'd actually read my stuff! I should have known better. They did tactfully mention that they were prepared to edit for spelling and what not. They were starting a new website and needed someone to write about Laos. That should have been another tell. I, ahem, am hardly a very knowledgeable person about Laos, I just blog about it, one after all hardly needs to know about something to blog about it, the internet is replete with examples of clueless bloviaters.


I responded.


They wanted a few hundred words about Vientiane, like what are "must do" things, and sights to see during a typical one day stay, a short tour guide to the town. Might as well ask me to write about nightlife, I went to a nightclub for one drink fifteen years ago. Transportation, eating, tourist junk. Ok ok I'm a tourist too, and I freely admit it, postcards in pocket, camera, bermuda shorts and flowery shirt, but good grief I'm about the last person to ask where to go in Vientiane, took me ten years before I stopped by Tat Luang, and most people go there first day. I've stayed in a guest house which closed a dozen years ago and a hotel that most say is slightly dingy, otherwise know nothing about lodging. Have never eaten at any of the places mentioned in guides that I'm aware of.


So I wrote it. Not great, not horrid, but typical. You know, about how Vientiane is half about expats NGO workers and the other half is doing the obligatory one day in the capital city to tick the sights on the way to the plane. And I also mentioned the visa runners. If you've been to Vientiane since the changed rules in Thailand or driven past the Thai embassy you have to realize that 200 people a day cycle through Vientiane to renew visas. I did give a general layout of the town, old part near river, little China town, markets, and so on.


Spell checked it, made sure most sentences had a noun and at least the suggestion of a verb and pushed send.


My best line, "Vientiane, a town that rises late, sleeps early, and is lethargic in between". I made that up, really. They kept that line but I'm not sure how much else. They asked for a photo so I sent that one from years ago when I was like 50 years younger and ok looking, with a bolo tie no less, doesn't get much more western than that.


It took a long long time for someone to completely rewrite it. Starts out with something about the "mighty Mekong", ewh!. My mind immediately leaps to never ending dry sand stretching out away from those riverside restaurants. Photos of monks, description of Bhuda park where I've never been. I've done the same for a Chinese Government Tour company only without having someone else's writing as a beginning point. Just crack open a guidebook, read it, then write down all you can remember so it's in your own words of a place you haven't been.


Worst thing is it's posted under my real name. What if an old girlfriend googles my name or the alumni association from that boarding school I've tried to hide from for 35 some odd years reads it! I'm a bad enough writer, I certainly don't need someone adding cliches or describing places I'd never be caught dead in. I didn't save the original so I've no idea how much to blame on some poor fellow who re wrote.


I wrote a short, not snarky at all, email saying we probably weren't meant to be. Never did open a paypall account for them to send money too. I'm keeping my day job.

Sabai Dee Pi Mai from Hillary

The photo was snapped when she was shouting the word Sabai, of Sabai Dee Pi Mai


Lao New Year
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of StateWashington, DC

April 11, 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On behalf of President Obama and the American people, it is my great pleasure to wish the people of Laos a peaceful and prosperous Lao New Year. This is an opportunity to honor Lao culture and heritage, and to come together to welcome new beginnings and new possibilities.
As we commemorate the 55th anniversary of bilateral relations between the United States and Laos, I look forward to working together to broaden the partnership between our governments and deepen the friendship between our people.
I offer my warmest wishes for a happy and safe holiday.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/04/139973.htm

Là-haut (Yonder) - Outside the tourist bubble in Northern Laos

Yonder

Above the blogger Marine Richard, a French woman who travels through Laos alone. The  name of her blog la-haut translates into Yonder when I enter it into Google translater,  who knows if this is correct. I'd urge you to go to either language and take a look, read for a while. Better to just go and  read for yourself than to read what I think of it.

I found this blog by happenstance as I do many things on the net, I followed an incoming hit to my blog to see where it came from. I scrolled through the blog looking for a link, on the way I saw many intriguing photos. Intriguing in that they showed a keen eye for what is Lao, especially rural upland northern Lao. The blog was also in french. I have my eye out now for blogs in French showing very off the track type things.

A while ago I read an interesting account of a couple of French guys heading down by boat from Muang Khua to Luang Prabang, complete with capsizing, near drownings, and all kinds of other adventures.

And then there was that google translation I posted about xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-trek-in-phongsali where the guy walks the length and breadth of Phongsali off road.

I was beginning to think maybe the French have some sort of monopoly on remote travel in northern Laos. Imagine my consternation when I plugged the whole thing into Google Translator and found out this blog was by a woman. Not only a woman but a youngish woman, in Lao they'd say sao.

Ms. Richard carries with her the basic tools with which to take an in depth sojourn through the north.

1. A very basic familiarity with the language, not fluency, but a definite ability to speak some Lao.

2. A familiarity with the peoples and cultures. Enough to know the ethicities of those she sees and to eat sticky rice. Enough familiarity, to inform her observations which brings us to number three.

3. The ability to observe. So often we are caught up in our own desire to say or be seen that we fail to listen and watch. Ms. Richard can do both and she also thinks about what she has seen.

4. Lastly Ms Richard is not naive.

I'm almost done with my second reading. The blog isn't really a blog in the sense that it's not an updated entity, the story starts at the beginning and goes to the end. I'd urge anyone who can read French to go to the original web site and read. I suspect that it is much better that way. The address is http://www.la-haut.blogspot.com/

Below is another photo from Ms. Richard's blog. The photos she has posted on the left side somehow don't fit in the space provided, and so when I looked at the picture I could only see the left half of the picture. But it seemed familiar. In my mind I started ticking off the possibilities and eliminating them as soon as they crossed my mind. It came to me later while I was reading. Do you know where the photo is from? You should.

Lahu night out.

The Lahu are comfortable in the Forest

See the radio the little guy is carrying? I bought the same radio down at the market for eighty thousand kip. AM/FM and a whole lota short wave. They were tuned to Thai pop, happy and walking along.


We passed them earlier at the place they slept and now they were passing us at our break. We were to pass them again but still they made it to Nambo that same day, saw them rolling in around sunset. Not a bad walk for such a little guy.


They slept in what you see in the photo. They'd propped some sticks up and covered them with banana leaves and also the sides, the front open to the fire. The leaves overhead served two purposes, to reduce the radiant heat loss to the sky and to reflect some of the heat of the fire back down onto their bodies. The husband and wife slept on the outside curled around the children who slept sound and warm in the middle. The husband slept in a T-shirt only, his back must have been cold.


The nights at that elevation are chilly, the dew heavy.


Rice had been cooked the night before by putting it and some water inside a green section of bamboo and cooking it on the fire. They were eating left overs for breakfast. They drank from the spring.


They were coming from town, a shopping trip. They brought with them a knife and some rice.

ສມົຊາຍ

Stimson Center Video

Mekong Tipping Point from Henry L. Stimson Center on Vimeo.

Staff Trip to Sihanoukville

Last time we had a frizz staff trip was already a long time ago. I think it was in 2005 when we went to Kirirom National Park. So, it was time for another trip and a bit longer as well. I asked the staff whether they preferred to go to their families over the Khmer New Year or have a staff trip to Sihanoukville. Well, to my surprise they all liked the idea of going to the beach.

And there we went, on Tuesday April 14th in a hired bus with driver from Lyna Car Rental (highly recommended by the way, very friendy and good driver, good service, reasonable price). Unfortunately, without our manager Kear who was suffering from a migraine attack. Quite sad, as he was most looking forward to the trip and I really wanted him to come along.

The highlight of the trip was our boat tour to Koh Ta Kiev, a larger but much quieter island then Koh Russei (Bamboo Island) which is next to it. We had a very good lunch at the only small restaurant and we had the beach pretty much to ourselves. As I'm not too much of a beach and sea person, I mostly enjoyed the swimming pool at Orchidee Guesthouse back in Sihanoukville. And... the breakfast there! The fresh, crispy whole-meal bread! Wow!

At night we attended the concert on Ochheuteal Beach. Well, what can I say. Ummm, let's just say the Khmers fully enjoyed it, which it what counts...

Next day it was back to the capital and when we arrived in Phnom Penh it was raining cats and dogs. The rainy season has definitely started with a very welcome, refreshing shower every afternoon.

From left to right on the picture: Koshal (cleaner and kitchen help, she's very talkative and funny), Phalla (cleaner and help at the cooking school, bit shy but nice and friendly), Mau (new cook at frizz and I suspect a bit of a 'wild girl'), Somaly (kitchen help, although I think she by now is a full cook, she herself thinks differently), Mom (quite shy, but she developed from kitchen help to first chef), Sopheak (our youngest waiter who was very shy in the beginning but has evolved as a funny, good waiter), and Yoni (brought in by manager Kear, they call each other 'brother' as they grew up in a pagoda together). Not on the picture: Sophi, our chef (she just delivered a baby), and Kear, our manager (who was sick).

What I most like about my staff is that all of them get along really well. That had been different before with some staff that are no longer with us.