TELLURIDE, Colo. _ A couple months ago I was playing with tigers in Thailand, and now I'm on the hunt for a TomKat.
As in Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
The mega stars are at their Telluride home with their famous toddler, and I've been sent here by celeb glossy Us Weekly to cover their every move.
I haven't actually seen either of them yet. Only heard stories from the locals. Apparently I just missed Katie in town. In the window of her favorite coffee shop a local artist had posted a photo of Tom behind a Scientology pulpit with the word "BELIEVE" written on it. Katie popped in to ask what that was all about (this according to the lovely and chatty Steaming Bean employees). By the end of the weekend Tom's people had it taken down. Guess he isn't a believer.
For all those celeb news lovers here's the rundown:
Oprah was in town to film a special with Tom celebrating his 25 years in film. She had a personal chef go to the local grocer before every meal to pick up whatever it was she craved.
TomKat rented out the local BBQ joint one night and brought 30 people with them to dine. Apparently Suri's tush has never touched a high chair. Sources say she was held the entire time. At another restaurant, the waiter emphatically shook his head "no" when asked if Suri had sat anywhere other than her mother's lap at lunch.
Katie is thought as kind of a snob in town. She isn't unpleasant but she doesn't really acknowledge anyone else but her entourage.
I'm hoping I'll cash in big and get a photo of little Suri. Then I can retire at 26, a millionaire.
Monday, April 28
Thursday, December 20
Monk Mystique
LUANG PRABANG, Laos – Despite the tell-tale dress, those orange or red robes draped ever so perfectly, Buddhist monks stop catching your eye the more time you spend in Southeast Asia.
You grow accustom to them on the streets. You see them hailing a cab at a busy Bangkok intersection, checking their e-mail at an Internet cafe or chatting on their cell phones waiting for the bus.
But here in Luang Prabang their presence once again captivates. There’s mystique in this grand old village of a city that feels stopped in time. Gleaming gold-roofed wats pop up behind white walls on every street, and the light here bounces delicately without anytime of day lending harshness or glare.
Early each morning, just before the sun wakes up and as the city is basked in a silver glow, processions of monks leave their wats and walk the streets. They're greeted by locals sitting on blankets, waiting for them with rice and other goodies. It’s the collection of alms.
Seemingly endless orange robes slowly swish by and gold buckets clink with each offering. The smell of baking baguettes warms the air as they walk down main street. The monks appear to be lined up from tallest to shortest or oldest to youngest, but it’s the amount of time spent in monkhood that determines the order. The young novices at the back seem a little shy about the reverence offered along with the rice.
One morning I followed one procession from the main drag to the smaller streets on their route. I was silent save for the distinctive click of my Nikon. So I was startled when I heard “Good morning, Megan.” I had meet one of the monks the other afternoon. The 20-year-old had entreated me to come into his wat as he saw me walk by, and we spent the afternoon chatting. He and others like to practice their English with a native speaker, and I imagine, break up the typical afternoon with new entertainment. He peppered me with questions and told me about his life. The monks are up at 4 a.m. Many of them are from over the border in China and only go home once a year or so. Some chose this life and some were instructed by their family.
That morning as I followed along and watched the alms offering, he asked me asked me how much longer I was going to be in Luang Prabang. Sadly only another day or two, I replied. He said that I should stay and be their English teacher. I wish I had.
Saturday, December 1
Tigers!
KANCHANABURI, Thailand - What a rush.
What an incredible rush, sitting with a tiger's head in my lap and then playing with a four-month-old cub. And I mean really playing with him. No bars, no restrictions. Just running around with this tiger like he was a labrador retriever.
These tigers are raised tame by monks at a large temple compound about two hours outside Bangkok (near the Bridge over River Kwai). For a reasonable donation, you can spend the afternoon with the majestic cats.
First you visit a canyon where the tigers, after a morning of play and a very large lunch, go to laze and snooze in the afternoon sun. Handlers lead you around to each cat and take photos of you petting them. It's very controlled and a bit touristy. But it's tigers! Huge, 440-lb. tigers!
Their fur is stiffer than a housecat's, but they're still soft and like to be nuzzled in the same places. For an extra donation, which I happily paid, you can sit with a tiger snuggled with his gigantic, heavy head in your lap. I stroked his chin and traced his stripes down his long body. The tigers are pretty sound sleepers. Had he not opened one eye and peered up at me, I would have sworn he was drugged. But he was just a fat, happy cat enjoying his siesta. Another cat slept not too far away with her four huge paws in the air.
Sitting on the cool canyon floor with the tigers is amazing but a little stilted as the handlers are pretty hands on. The real fun came with the cubs. Basically, the young ones were allowed to just run around as they pleased - as long as they left the compound's roaming boars and peacocks alone.I was free to interact with the cubs however and how much as I liked. They have this low, purr-like growl and their powerful paws can easily knock you over if you're sitting a little off balance. The feel of a tiger's muzzle in your hand is amazing. I fed the cubs milk tablets, which they happily lapped up from my palm.
My favorite cub had the naughty sensibilities of Curious George. The colorful colors of the peacocks and roosters arrogantly stalking around were too much for this tiger to bear. It was facinating to watch him sneak away from his babysitter monk and steathily stalk the birds. When the monk would notice what the cub was up to, he'd run over and grab him by the tail. Then the monk would jokingly jump around the tiger, teasing him in the lovable way one does a toddler. At one point, the monk picked up the cub and threatened to toss him over a wall into the enclosure with the big cats. The cub scrambled up the monk's torso, over his head and down the other side, leaving the monk with a pretty good scratch.
The tigers seem so domestic, but instincts don't disappear just because some peaceful, saffron-robed men raised them. As the tigers were being led back to their enclosures after the afternoon tourist visits were over, one male decided to do a little grocery shopping on his way home. He took after a boar. About four handlers had to scramble to hold him back. The tiger relented, but he paused for a good while and looked hard at that boar, as if to say, "you would be dinner if I really wanted."
Wednesday, November 21
Tastes Like Chicken
DA LAT, Vietnam - The famous food writer James Beard said "Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
Well, maybe. But I never before considered silk worms a part of a balanced diet. It never crossed my mind to roast a few and pop them like peanuts. That's what a roasted silk worm tastes like, a peanut.
There's all manner of weird food out here in Asia, and I've sampled quite a bit of it - including some unidentifiable meat that makes me shudder to contemplate. Though I do admit in Cambodia I declined to taste barbecued chicken feet. I did sit there and watch them - and smell them - cook for a few minutes, and trust me, that's close enough.
I felt a little braver in the hills of southern Vietnam when an eager ambassador of all things Vietnamese shoved a roasted silk worm in my face, imploring me not to miss out. The little critters are a common afternoon snack for the female workers at a silk factory I was visiting. In the morning, they put some of the worms on one of the factory's hot pipes and let them roast. Then they pull the yellow, centipede-like bodies out of their cocoons and munch away.
Mmmmm. Like a handful of warm peanuts.
Monday, November 12
Hey McCain, you've got a friend
MY THO, Vietnam – In a farming village off the Mekong Delta – a 20-minute motorcycle drive away from the Internet – there’s an informal fan club of one for Sen. John McCain.
Kan** is a groupie, really.
The 30-year-old math teacher, who just broke into the tour guide biz, has quite a political crush on the Republican presidential hopeful. He proudly displays photos of the senator on his wall that he downloaded off the Internet. Given a willing ear, he will rattle off McCain’s life milestones like a fantasy baseball junkie spouting stats on the latest prospect.
And he’s following the build up to the United States’ 2008 election closely, rooting for his boy to take the White House.
“Every Vietnamese hope he will be next American president,” he says earnestly and a little brashly after quickly steering the conversation with his American guests to politics.
From the nearest city, Kan’s village is a series of right turns onto increasingly narrow roads, the last of which isn’t paved and can best be described as a path. The grass gets taller and the buildings squatter as motos speed along playing chicken with those trying to go the other direction. Then the path ends and the rest of the way must be traversed by foot over a series of rickety log footbridges.
Despite the apparent isolation, Kan is a news buff. Once a week he heads for the nearest Internet café to read about the latest world happenings. He says Voice of America is his first choice because he can read the news in his own language, but he also does his best to digest English news sources like the BBC.
“I read all the Websites my government would like to block,” he says.
Kan is a dedicated student of English. He obsessively writes down all the words he learns in a little white notebook, halting conversations to ask for the spelling and look it up in his English-to-Vietnamese dictionary and then his Vietnamese-to-English one.
As if to perform as well as practice with native speakers, he’ll pronounce a recently acquired word and then use it in a sentence.
“Dem-on-strate,” he enunciates. “In Vietnam we cannot demonstrate because the police will come and get you.”
Since achieving his goal of becoming a tour guide this summer he gets to interact with more Westerners. He leads tourists around the Cu Chi tunnels, the Mekong Delta and a city that for him, like many other Southern Vietnamese, has two names. Only when working does he refer to it as Ho Chi Minh City. In his personal life it’s Saigon.
Kan’s father fought for the Republic of Vietnam and was re-educated for nine months when the South surrendered in April 1975. In the same fashion Saigon was renamed, he went from a telephone technician to a farmer.
“After reeducation he was unhappy with this life,” Kan says, gesturing at the rice paddies and banana trees of his family’s farm.
His father slowly became an alcoholic.
“He was always drinking rice wine,” Kan says with some judgment but not scorn. “So now I don’t drink.”
But the bottle didn’t diminish his staunch anti-communist attitudes that he was vocal about until he died.
“I always follow my father’s political opinion,” Kan says.
He attributes that to why he and his three brothers didn’t have to fulfill the normally obligatory military service.
“My family background is not good for them. They’re afraid we’re CIA,” he says laughing.
His father, Kan says, hoped that by the time his children were grown “America would come back.”
Kan seems to have transferred that hope to McCain.
He talks with reverence about how even though McCain “suffered in the prison, after the war (he) came back to our country many times and shook hands with the communists who were the enemies in the war.”
McCain in the White House could only be good for Vietnam, Kan reasons. His country would have a better shot bolstering its economy and status in the world, as he envisions McCain as an ally, an American president who would pay attention to Vietnam and improve relations between the two nations.
As if to prove his theory, Kan lists all the times McCain has met with Vietnamese leaders and said the war should be in the past. His shining example of McCain’s commitment to the Vietnamese people is how McCain worked to get them special refugee status in the United States.
Kan insists he isn't alone in his adoration of McCain. It's fair to say that the Republican is one of the most well known US politicians in Vietnam. He's oft quoted in news stories as the rational voice of America. Not to say that he's universally liked, but ever since Vietnam broke away from its isolationist policies in the 1990s, McCain has earned wide respect and generous press for his advocacy on the country's behalf. He's often represented as an important architect of change in U.S. policy towards Vietnam.
Like in 1995 when President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations and McCain defended the move to the largely outraged Republican Congress. And more recently, McCain was lauded for getting permanent normal trade relations established in 2006, a vital part of Vietnam's long yearned for accession into the World Trade Organization this year.
“In Vietnam, everybody like Mr. John McCain,” Kan says. “As for me, I hope Mr. McCain will be the next American president and the vice president will be a woman.”
** This story was written for an official news agency, but during the editing process we decided the Vietnamese man's candor and pro-West sentiment could get his name on a list somewhere and cause him trouble. So the story wasn't published. Since this blog has no anonymous source policy, I'm posting the story using an alias for my friend to protect him from commie harrasment.
Kan** is a groupie, really.
The 30-year-old math teacher, who just broke into the tour guide biz, has quite a political crush on the Republican presidential hopeful. He proudly displays photos of the senator on his wall that he downloaded off the Internet. Given a willing ear, he will rattle off McCain’s life milestones like a fantasy baseball junkie spouting stats on the latest prospect.
And he’s following the build up to the United States’ 2008 election closely, rooting for his boy to take the White House.
“Every Vietnamese hope he will be next American president,” he says earnestly and a little brashly after quickly steering the conversation with his American guests to politics.
From the nearest city, Kan’s village is a series of right turns onto increasingly narrow roads, the last of which isn’t paved and can best be described as a path. The grass gets taller and the buildings squatter as motos speed along playing chicken with those trying to go the other direction. Then the path ends and the rest of the way must be traversed by foot over a series of rickety log footbridges.
Despite the apparent isolation, Kan is a news buff. Once a week he heads for the nearest Internet café to read about the latest world happenings. He says Voice of America is his first choice because he can read the news in his own language, but he also does his best to digest English news sources like the BBC.
“I read all the Websites my government would like to block,” he says.
Kan is a dedicated student of English. He obsessively writes down all the words he learns in a little white notebook, halting conversations to ask for the spelling and look it up in his English-to-Vietnamese dictionary and then his Vietnamese-to-English one.
As if to perform as well as practice with native speakers, he’ll pronounce a recently acquired word and then use it in a sentence.
“Dem-on-strate,” he enunciates. “In Vietnam we cannot demonstrate because the police will come and get you.”
Since achieving his goal of becoming a tour guide this summer he gets to interact with more Westerners. He leads tourists around the Cu Chi tunnels, the Mekong Delta and a city that for him, like many other Southern Vietnamese, has two names. Only when working does he refer to it as Ho Chi Minh City. In his personal life it’s Saigon.
Kan’s father fought for the Republic of Vietnam and was re-educated for nine months when the South surrendered in April 1975. In the same fashion Saigon was renamed, he went from a telephone technician to a farmer.
“After reeducation he was unhappy with this life,” Kan says, gesturing at the rice paddies and banana trees of his family’s farm.
His father slowly became an alcoholic.
“He was always drinking rice wine,” Kan says with some judgment but not scorn. “So now I don’t drink.”
But the bottle didn’t diminish his staunch anti-communist attitudes that he was vocal about until he died.
“I always follow my father’s political opinion,” Kan says.
He attributes that to why he and his three brothers didn’t have to fulfill the normally obligatory military service.
“My family background is not good for them. They’re afraid we’re CIA,” he says laughing.
His father, Kan says, hoped that by the time his children were grown “America would come back.”
Kan seems to have transferred that hope to McCain.
He talks with reverence about how even though McCain “suffered in the prison, after the war (he) came back to our country many times and shook hands with the communists who were the enemies in the war.”
McCain in the White House could only be good for Vietnam, Kan reasons. His country would have a better shot bolstering its economy and status in the world, as he envisions McCain as an ally, an American president who would pay attention to Vietnam and improve relations between the two nations.
As if to prove his theory, Kan lists all the times McCain has met with Vietnamese leaders and said the war should be in the past. His shining example of McCain’s commitment to the Vietnamese people is how McCain worked to get them special refugee status in the United States.
Kan insists he isn't alone in his adoration of McCain. It's fair to say that the Republican is one of the most well known US politicians in Vietnam. He's oft quoted in news stories as the rational voice of America. Not to say that he's universally liked, but ever since Vietnam broke away from its isolationist policies in the 1990s, McCain has earned wide respect and generous press for his advocacy on the country's behalf. He's often represented as an important architect of change in U.S. policy towards Vietnam.
Like in 1995 when President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations and McCain defended the move to the largely outraged Republican Congress. And more recently, McCain was lauded for getting permanent normal trade relations established in 2006, a vital part of Vietnam's long yearned for accession into the World Trade Organization this year.
“In Vietnam, everybody like Mr. John McCain,” Kan says. “As for me, I hope Mr. McCain will be the next American president and the vice president will be a woman.”
** This story was written for an official news agency, but during the editing process we decided the Vietnamese man's candor and pro-West sentiment could get his name on a list somewhere and cause him trouble. So the story wasn't published. Since this blog has no anonymous source policy, I'm posting the story using an alias for my friend to protect him from commie harrasment.
Saturday, October 27
Cambodian Heartache
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia rips your heart out. And just when it's laying there quivering on the pavement thinking nothing more could more happen some corrupt official runs it over with a brand new Caddy.
It's been almost 30 years, but the Khmers haven't been able to escape their past. The effects of the Khmer Rouge's 1.7-million-person genocide are felt in the struggling economy and the blast of a land mine. The Khmer Rouge wiped out all the people who were able to make a contribution. Even anyone who had glasses was considered a threat to Pol Pot's whacked idea of a perfect society. Cambodia is left with a poor, uneducated population and a government interested only in lining it's own pockets.
In the country's capital, the S-21 prison still looks like the school it originally was before it became the infamous headquarters of the Khmer Rouge torture operation. With the yellow and white checkered floors of the classrooms it's easy to imagine little chairs and desks and eager students running along the outside corridor, giggling in their crisp white shirts. But instead, a solitary metal bed stands in for the desks and the shouts of joy are replaced with echoes of screams. Lashings with electrical wire was a favorite of Pol Pot's men.
As I stood in one of the "interrogation" rooms, I suddenly realized the dark spot on the tile under foot is from blood. This place is literally stained with horror. (After WWII we swore - the world swore - never again. And yet we let it happen many times again. We're letting it happen right now. Somehow genocide isn't enough to propel those who can to act. Identifying it, wagging a finger and saying it's wrong seems to be enough to placate the world's outrage. Too bad Darfur lacks resources other than humanity).
The mug shots of the dead - only a dozen of the 14,000 prisoners survived S-21 - and the one-legged men pedaling down country roads and the countless kids living on the streets is hard to take. In Kampot, this little provincial town near the coast, a little street girl timidly approached me. She was hungry. I took her across the street to a fruit stand a bought her a sliced mango. Every time I saw her thereafter she would skip over to me, smiling and chanting "Thank you! Thank you!" I was crushed.
Despite having one of the largest concentrations of NGOs and significant contributions of international aid, no progress is being made in Cambodia. None of the money coming into the country gets past the officials. I sat and watched a government building the other day. Three officials came out. Two got into Lexuses. The other a bright red Cadillac.
*****
Three of the masterminds of the Khmer Rouge brutality will be tried soon for their crimes against humanity. The NY Times ran an interesting article a few days ago about the man who took the mug shots of those to be killed: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/asia/27cambo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
It's been almost 30 years, but the Khmers haven't been able to escape their past. The effects of the Khmer Rouge's 1.7-million-person genocide are felt in the struggling economy and the blast of a land mine. The Khmer Rouge wiped out all the people who were able to make a contribution. Even anyone who had glasses was considered a threat to Pol Pot's whacked idea of a perfect society. Cambodia is left with a poor, uneducated population and a government interested only in lining it's own pockets.
In the country's capital, the S-21 prison still looks like the school it originally was before it became the infamous headquarters of the Khmer Rouge torture operation. With the yellow and white checkered floors of the classrooms it's easy to imagine little chairs and desks and eager students running along the outside corridor, giggling in their crisp white shirts. But instead, a solitary metal bed stands in for the desks and the shouts of joy are replaced with echoes of screams. Lashings with electrical wire was a favorite of Pol Pot's men.
As I stood in one of the "interrogation" rooms, I suddenly realized the dark spot on the tile under foot is from blood. This place is literally stained with horror. (After WWII we swore - the world swore - never again. And yet we let it happen many times again. We're letting it happen right now. Somehow genocide isn't enough to propel those who can to act. Identifying it, wagging a finger and saying it's wrong seems to be enough to placate the world's outrage. Too bad Darfur lacks resources other than humanity).
The mug shots of the dead - only a dozen of the 14,000 prisoners survived S-21 - and the one-legged men pedaling down country roads and the countless kids living on the streets is hard to take. In Kampot, this little provincial town near the coast, a little street girl timidly approached me. She was hungry. I took her across the street to a fruit stand a bought her a sliced mango. Every time I saw her thereafter she would skip over to me, smiling and chanting "Thank you! Thank you!" I was crushed.
Despite having one of the largest concentrations of NGOs and significant contributions of international aid, no progress is being made in Cambodia. None of the money coming into the country gets past the officials. I sat and watched a government building the other day. Three officials came out. Two got into Lexuses. The other a bright red Cadillac.
*****
Three of the masterminds of the Khmer Rouge brutality will be tried soon for their crimes against humanity. The NY Times ran an interesting article a few days ago about the man who took the mug shots of those to be killed: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/asia/27cambo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Saturday, October 13
Say Cheese!
SIEM REAP, Cambodia - What is it with all the tourists who want their photo taken in front of everything?
Everywhere I go it seems I have to politely hang back while some idiot tries to look cool posing for the camera. And oh man, if you get caught behind a Japanese tour group - you wait hours while everyone takes their turn playing model.
What do people do with these photos?
I pity the poor folks back home who are subjected to the boring slideshow. Here's me giving the peace sign in front the Emerald Buddha. Here's me raising my glass of beer outside the Heart of Darkness bar. Here's me pointing at the big carving in the Anchor Wat temple. Look how big it is compared to me! He he.
OK, some I get. Like sitting on the toe of the largest Buddha in Thailand or petting a monk's pet tiger. Even the repetitive photos of arms around the tuk-tuk driver or guest house owner. Those I understand.
But I just don't get the motivation behind the others. So many times they pose in front of something stationary and inanimate. It's never an interaction with the place (same way as they travel, I suppose, but that's a whole other rant). Do tourists feel a need to prove they were some place? How does it capture what they saw and felt and experienced while traveling? And do they put those photos in frames around their house? No, probably just on Facebook or MySpace.
I simply don't feel the need for any of that. At the Taj Mahal one of the greeters followed me for five minutes trying to get me to stand in front of the magnificent building while he took a photo of me with my camera. Everyone else obliged happily, clearly oblivious to the fact that they would be tiny little dots in the massive landscape.
I take photos of the people around me. I try to find the moments that say something about the culture. My smiling face is mostly irrelevant. Maybe I'm just a photography snob. Maybe when I get home and show my family and friends the photos I took, they'll nod politely but wonder why there aren't any of me pretending to hold up a falling temple.
Everywhere I go it seems I have to politely hang back while some idiot tries to look cool posing for the camera. And oh man, if you get caught behind a Japanese tour group - you wait hours while everyone takes their turn playing model.
What do people do with these photos?
I pity the poor folks back home who are subjected to the boring slideshow. Here's me giving the peace sign in front the Emerald Buddha. Here's me raising my glass of beer outside the Heart of Darkness bar. Here's me pointing at the big carving in the Anchor Wat temple. Look how big it is compared to me! He he.
OK, some I get. Like sitting on the toe of the largest Buddha in Thailand or petting a monk's pet tiger. Even the repetitive photos of arms around the tuk-tuk driver or guest house owner. Those I understand.
But I just don't get the motivation behind the others. So many times they pose in front of something stationary and inanimate. It's never an interaction with the place (same way as they travel, I suppose, but that's a whole other rant). Do tourists feel a need to prove they were some place? How does it capture what they saw and felt and experienced while traveling? And do they put those photos in frames around their house? No, probably just on Facebook or MySpace.
I simply don't feel the need for any of that. At the Taj Mahal one of the greeters followed me for five minutes trying to get me to stand in front of the magnificent building while he took a photo of me with my camera. Everyone else obliged happily, clearly oblivious to the fact that they would be tiny little dots in the massive landscape.
I take photos of the people around me. I try to find the moments that say something about the culture. My smiling face is mostly irrelevant. Maybe I'm just a photography snob. Maybe when I get home and show my family and friends the photos I took, they'll nod politely but wonder why there aren't any of me pretending to hold up a falling temple.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)