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Posts tagged ‘portrait’

Back in Kratie

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When I first visited Kratie, in January last year, the place looked very different. A fire had recently destroyed the town’s market so the traders had had to set up temporary stalls along the riverfront. Now, the market has been rebuilt and is thriving again, and the view of the Mekong from the town is happily unobscured. I had good memories of Kratie from my first visit – I kept recalling meals I’d eaten there, pictures I’d taken, the book I was reading – so I was pleased to see that the town had been revived. On top of that, it was also good to be somewhere familiar again, for the first time since leaving Vientiane a few weeks earlier.

My previous visit was part of a trip I took during the Tet holiday 2012, when I travelled from Saigon, through the Mekong delta, and into eastern Cambodia: my Mini Mekong Trip, as I now think of it. At the time, I wrote about how one day I wanted to go on a longer Mekong journey, following the river from southern China to the delta in Vietnam. And this is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months: my Big Mekong Trip, now sadly nearer its end than its beginning.

I’ve mostly been using my standard zoom lens on this trip, but in Kratie’s streets, I brought out my 50mm. I wanted to get some simple portraits and detail shots. I love taking people pictures with my 50mm lens; it makes you get close to people but still allows your subjects some room to breathe.

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Bride

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Cycling through the Cambodian countryside near Kratie, along the east bank of the Mekong river, I stopped in a little village to have lunch and take some pictures. This lady, who I first noticed sitting at the top of the steps to her stilt house, happily sat for a couple of photographs before disappearing inside. I thought that the moment had passed, but she soon reappeared holding her wedding photo from, I’m guessing, about twenty years ago. We had no language in common, but she was clearly keen for me to see the picture, and to photograph her holding it. There was no sign of her husband apart from the picture – I’m hoping that he was just out running an errand somewhere and would soon return.

Blue skies and green fields

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At the southernmost point of Laos, the Mekong river widens and splits into countless channels and streams as it encounters thousands of small islands in its path. It’s like a dress rehearsal for the Mekong delta to the south. The exact number of islands varies with the seasons, as the water level rises and falls, but the area is known as Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand Islands.

There are several little tourist enclaves dotted around the waterfront areas of the islands, particularly on Don Det, while inland there are tiny villages, and acres of rice paddies. I spent my days reading and relaxing, sheltering from the sun, before venturing out for some late afternoon cycle rides. It was the perfect way to say goodbye to Laos before heading on into Cambodia.

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Becalmed

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I ran out of steam a little in Pakse. Having spent the previous seven weeks travelling from Yunnan province in China down to southern Laos, I found that I had lost my momentum. The weather – alternating between exhausting heat and apocalyptic thunderstorms – didn’t help, and Pakse isn’t the most enticing of towns, but I can’t really blame these things for my lack of energy. I know from experience that when these listless moods come along, I just have to wait them out. After a few days of feeling tired and heavy even before breakfast, I woke up one day suddenly feeling clearer and brighter. I left town the next day.

Pakse looks a little like Savannakhet, my previous stop, with plenty of that faded colonial thing going on, but feels more neglected than charming. Although I wasn’t that happy with my pictures at the time, with distance – in terms of days passed and miles travelled – I’ve come to like some of them and am happy to post them here.

Since leaving Pakse, incidentally, I’ve been getting up early in the morning and cycling in the afternoons, England have been doing well in the cricket, and the world seems a brighter place.

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Monks’ faces and Buddhist places

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Pictures of temples and monks in Laos are something of a cliche, but to avoid photographing them would be pointlessly contrary. So here are a few more monk portraits and wat details, taken in Savannakhet and Pakse in southern Laos.

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That faded colonial look

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It’s hard to write about Savannakhet without using phrases like faded colonial charm and elegantly crumbling. It’s a quiet, sleepy riverside town, and I spent an enjoyable few days there doing not very much.

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Temple

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I nearly missed this temple altogether. I was wandering the streets of Nakhon Phanom in northern Thailand with no clear plan in mind, with one eye on the threatening clouds overhead and half a mind to stop walking and take shelter somewhere with a cold beer. Instead, I walked on for another block, and came across Wat Srithep. An hour or so later, I left with some of my favourite pictures from this trip so far. 130628-153-edited 130628-171-edited 130628-186-edited 130628-192-edited 130628-216-edited 130628-088-edited

I was only in Thailand for three days. After leaving Vientiane, I continued south, spending an uneventful couple of days in Tha Khaek (that rain again), before crossing the Mekong into Thailand and the border town of Nakhon Phanom. My Lao visa was about to expire, and although I could have had it extended without leaving the country, it seemed like a good opportunity to see the other side of the river for a couple of days. I’m now back in Laos, in Savannakhet, which is lovely, and this blog, which has been lagging behind my movements for weeks, is now almost up-to-date.

Capital

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I knew that travelling in south-east Asia in the wet season would be awkward at times, and that was certainly the case for the few days I spent in and around Vientiane. The capital city of Laos, not the most picturesque place to begin with, wasn’t done any favours by the rain. It wasn’t even dramatic-tropical-downpour rain, but persistent-drizzle-under-grey-skies rain, the kind of rain I left England to get away from.

Vientiane looks and feels very different to other places in northern Laos. The French influence is much more apparent, in the street names, food, architecture and general ambience. It hardly rivals Paris or London as one of the great capitals of the world, but it’s still a city, albeit a small, low-key one, and that makes it distinctly different to Luang Prabang or Luang Namtha.

Above and below are views of and from Patuxai, Vientiane’s Arc de Triomphe.

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Wat Sisaket is home to hundreds of buddhas, big and small.

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Khou Din market seems to have escaped the mallification, if that’s a word, which has made nearby Talat Sao market not very interesting.

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Nong Khiaw

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Nong Khiaw, in Luang Prabang province in northern Laos, is the kind of place that adjectives like breathtaking and stunning were invented for. A bumpy three hour bus ride from Luang Prabang town, the village is on the banks of the River Ou, surrounded by towering (there’s another one) limestone karsts. My landscape pictures don’t begin to do it justice, as I wasn’t organised enough to be in the right place at the right time, but that gives me the perfect excuse to go back another time.

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Eleven monks

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I don’t know what exactly makes Buddhist monks such compelling subjects for portrait photographs. I think maybe it’s something to do with how their shaved heads seem like an attempt to deny them their individuality, but their orange robes demand that you look at them.

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