Buddhas at Vientiane’s oldest temple, Wat Si Saket ( with a bit of help from Topaz B&W Effects and Photoshop)
This morning I realised that it was just over a year since my retirement, on December 7th to be precise. I remember that many at work said I was too young to retire … I’ll be bored …. I’ll miss work, what are you going to do everyday, etc etc.
Well guys, if any of you are still reading this, I have not missed work, not once. Too young ? well, I feel younger now, as I am not getting sore knees every day from standing on a hard kitchen floor ! Bored ? Not once.
As for what was I going to do ….lets see, how about a 10 month road trip around Australia and then move overseas to a new country ?
Manta Ray
Anyway, I started thinking about this past year and the highlights of it, so here are some of my favourite experiences that I’ve written about.
One of those near the top would be swimming with the Whale Sharks and Manta Rays at Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth .. a simply unforgettable once in a lifetime experience that had been on my wish list for years, now it is ticked off.
Million star accommodation
Also near the top would be simply being in the outback, sleeping under the stars or driving endless kilometres along dirt roads, realising just how small we are in the big scheme of things. I was doing it in an air-conditioned 4WD, but only a few generations ago the shearers and stockmen travelled many of those same roads by horse, bicycle or even on foot.
Driving the Gibb River Road across the top of the Kimberley was another “bucket list’ item ticked off, with unforgettable scenery all the way. Parts 1 and part 2 have more photos of this incredible landscape. Of course it’s not just the travel but also the people you meet along the way, like the living legend of Fred Brophy at Birdsville, or fellow travellers that you meet along the way. Sometimes they are headed your way, and you keep bumping into them, like Mike and Trice ,who are still on the road. Or sometimes it is just an overnight stop with a few beers around the campfire with people heading the other way, such as Rich and Sophie that I met at a beachside camp in WA, en route to England via Africa !
The legendary Birdsville Hotel
Yet another item on the bucket list to be ticked off was to get to outback Birdsville for the legendary races … a great weekend well worth the wait (and the long drive to get there !)
And then came the big move to Thailand a couple of months ago. So far I’m not having any second thoughts about it, I would n’t say that every day is an adventure but I see or experience something different or interesting most of them. Will I still feel the same way in 12 months time ? who knows ..check back then !
At the moment I am in Vientiane, Laos, waiting for my ED Education visa. You would think that this place would be a Xmas free zone, being a Buddhist country, and a Third World one at that, but walking around today I passed a tin shack on the side of a dusty road selling Father Christmas outfits :
And then I sat through several playings of “Jingle Bells” while I had lunch !
Bah, humbug ……….
As you may be aware, there have been anti-government/anti-corruption protests here in Bangkok for some time now and over the last few days they have intensified, to the point where the protesters have taken over several government offices and ministries, are trying to take Government House, and have blockaded the Royal Thai Police Headquarters.
Late on Saturday night I heard many police sirens go past my condo, which is unusual because Thai police never rush anywhere ! It turned out that 4 people had been shot dead at a university about 5 kms from my place, allegedly by “redshirt” supporters of the government (and Thaksin Shinawatra, former Prime Minister, brother of current PM, and convicted criminal on the run from a jail term). The next day things really kicked off when the protesters split into several groups to occupy their targets, with some covered live on local TV, even to the extent of live coverage from their command post ! There was the rather unusual (to me at least) sight of a Buddhist monk giving directions to the protesters from atop their “command vehicle”….all rather surreal.
Most of the places were an easy conquest but at Government House the police were ready with 5 rows of concrete barriers, razor wire, tear gas and water cannons. Last I saw on TV the protesters had got it down to the last 2 rows of concrete before the tear gas and water cannon brought things to a stalemate.
Today I had to go downtown, past the Police HQ, where there was a small but noisy crowd outside, and a large number of riot police behind the fence and razor wire. Normally I would have used the elevated “skywalk’ but it was closed off, probably because it would be too easy to lob something into the police compound from there, so I had to go along the road, through the crowd.
There’s no way I was going to go near any of the real action to get some photos, I’ll leave that to the pro press photographers in their body armour and gas masks, but I did get a few snaps :
Just a slideshow of some more photos from the cosplay last weekend :
Nikon D800 + 85mm f1.8 = this :
Actually, they would n’t really be blue as I’m sure she is wearing coloured contacts because this is a 1:1 crop of a photo taken at a cosplay event in Bangkok, so her eyes would be either brown or dark brown like the rest of Thailand.
And that’s the original….I was just impressed by the detail when I zoomed in to check the focus in Lightroom so I cropped it to 1:1.
Today was the first time I’ve used this combination for portrait photos, in fact I’ve hardly ever done any portrait photos before, but I certainly got some practice at this cosplay event. For those who don’t know, cosplay is where people dress up, often as characters from Japanese or Korean fantasy/anime magazines, and is quite popular in Asia, apparently with an event nearly every weekend here in Bangkok. Photographically speaking it is a “target rich environment” so here are a few more pictures :
Uhmm … perhaps not in the best of taste ?
They all loved posing for the cameras, so it’s not surprising I filled up one and a half memory cards. It’s on again tomorrow but I don’t know if I’ll go again …. I’ve still got another 155 photos in this Lightroom import left to look at !
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Designing and building an Eco House in Thailand
Follow the Blonde Coyote and see more of the world!
Trying to live a creative life
a camping trip of ridiculous proportions
Changes in latitude, changes in attitude 