Ok, it’s really not that hard to grock.

i had seen this abandoned building near my apt from the bts train many times and thought it was actually rather pretty …i t’s not really even a building any more just some ruins and lots of graffiti … i went out with joo on two occasions to shot pics. the first batch we shot on kodak professional ektrachrome transparency film e100vs cross-processed. the sun pretty much disappeared when we got there so those are the darker images. most didn’t come out tho, even with a flash. we went back the next day and shot two more rolls using fuji film provia 100f and cross-processed and then a roll of kodak pro 160 which was processed normally. things went better the second day, the sun was out and we were lucky enough to find a bunch of kids playing, all of whom were eager models.

all of this was shot with my holga.

images are here

from katmandu, we flew on buddha air to gautamu buddha airport in lumpini which is the birthplace of the buddha. he was born about 2500 years ago as a hindu prince, before he left it all behind to get enlightened. there are four main buddhist pilgrimage sites in the world, all of them in the nepal / india area. lumpini is his birthplace, bodhgaya is where he was enlightened, his first teaching was at sarnath and he died at kusinara.

lumpini is down near the border with india, which means it is hot and dusty (well it’s dusty everywhere), our noses kept filling up with this black dirt which we would try to get out or keep out with surgical masks but it was pretty much a losing battle.

we arranged for a car in advance to pick us up at the airport, take us to lumpini and the take us to the bus terminal after. aside from being the buddha’s birthplace, there isn’t much to see or do. we flew in around 10 in the morning and left on a bus about 5 that night. the flight in was really nice, the air was clear and we had beautiful views of the himalayan mountains. on the way out, we rode a 12 hour overnight bus with no air conditioning. they sold every seat and then when those were full, they put cushions down the aisle and had people sit there. someone must of felt lonely tho because they decided to use the luggage space under the bus to put five (kicking and screaming) live goats.

the actual lumpini compound is still being developed, most of it is done but a lot is still under construction. buddhist countries from around the world have built temples on the site and also send monks and nuns from their countries to live and study. the thai temple was huge and totally white, really pretty. at the actual birthplace of the buddha, there are remains of stupas built in the 2nd century bce to honor him, there is the body of water he was washed in after being born and a stone marker to indicate the actual place of his birth. one of the best things about it tho was that there were very few people there. we were able to sit and meditate, walk around in a quiet environment and generally relax. i think we needed all of that calm too to prepare us for that bus ride into pokhara. inside the park cars are banned, so people either walk or hire a bike rickshaw to get around … we opted for the rickshaws.

pictures are here

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before and after my trip to nepal, lots of people asked me if it was safe there. last year there were still lots of problems with maoist rebels, even reports of tourists getting stopped for money. apparently the problems have mostly stopped, primarily because the maoists have been included in the newly formed democratic government, although it’s not clear how long things will stay calm for.

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in other news, my practice finally seems to be back to normal this week. my first few days back, i was a little sore and felt that my shoulders were tight. this all went away pretty quick, but it was at least 10 days before i felt like i could practice and keep moola bundha strong. i think this is somewhat related to gaining a little weight over there, but also just being out of practice. when i’m eating properly and doing my full practice, i have a tendency to get kinda skinny … i feel lighter, more open and more in touch with my bundhas this way, but i’m not sure how good it looks. my face especially can look kinda gaunt when this happens. i guess it’s an excuse to eat as much popcorn covered in ghee and ice cream as i want ….

the flight from bkk to katmandu is only three hours and the time difference is only one hour and fifteen minutes, but it’s a totally different world. it’s interesting how much geography and distance changes places, here it is more visually obvious but even in usa, changing a state or two can bring a radical cultural shift. back when i lived in san francisco, we were all convinced that going over the bridge to oakland was a whole new world (come to think of it, it is).

when i first flew into bangalore two years ago after being in a plane for 36+ hours, the heat and mass of people was beyond unsettling. they bum-rush you once you leave the airport, trying to get you into a taxi, often grabbing and pulling at your clothes to make it happen. katmandu is kinda like a slimmed down version of all of this, made much more bearable because the flight is shorter.

we only spent two days in katmandu at the start of our trip, did some touristy stuff and had a meeting with a pashmina manufacturer. the meeting was rather interesting, the guy showed us around, let us look at samples and the manufacturing process and kept evading questions about price. every time we asked he would just say “ohh, don’t worry about price it will be cheap”. when he finally gave us a price sheat, it was actually rather expensive. zak is still over there and has had some more meetings which i guess went well.

the streets of katmandu sort of meander around and are filled with shops that all sell the same thing so getting anywhere can be rather tricky. our first night out, zak and i found this really chill jazz bar but when we left at 12:30 we had no idea how to get home. first we gave a rickshaw driver a map to our hotel and spend 45 minutes driving around in circles with him while he promised he knew exactly where he was going. finally we got out, found a taxi who called our hotel and then had the hotel manager come meet the taxi and take us home. i think it took about an hour to go 10 blocks.

other than that we just ate lots of rice and dal, saw this temple filled with monkeys, got dust up our noses and planned the rest of the trip. pics are in image galleries.

i had this strange dream the other night. it was a twist on the traditional dream of realizing that you were somewhere in public and not wearing any pants. in my dream, i got invited to a clothing optional pool party. all of a sudden i realized that even though the party was packed full of people, there were only a few of us totally naked.

this week has been full of all sorts of strange dreams. when i’m tired, out of it or eat too late, i often have really strange dreams. even though the time difference between nepal and bkk is only 1h15min, i felt like it took me days to get back on my normal schedule here. part of it was probably not doing my asana practice for 10 days and then jumping right into it when i got back. it’s also been really hot here, so many that’s part of it too. hopefully tomorrow i’ll get more pictures and notes online from my trip, here is the first bunch tho. shot with the lomographics fisheye and holga cameras. i’m totally in-love with these cameras btw, they take amazing pictures.

i got back a few hours ago from 10 days in nepal. been relaxing and catching up on email and some work, getting ready to go to bed soon …. am so looking forward to getting back to my yoga practice tomorrow. i didn’t do any asana practice at all over there (more on that later), and really feel like my body is missing it. i don’t feel stiff as much as i feel like the energy is just stalled, not moving properly.

i did have an amazing time tho, i grew up around the mountains of vermont but the beauty and size of the himalayan mountains is something totally different. lots of notes and pictures to follow this week …

the thai government has banned youtube, because of one short video clip that insluted the king. for the most part there is freedom of the press in thailand and freedom of speech also, but it is often limited. a swiss expat was recently sentenced to a 7-70 years in jail after he got all drunk and vandalized a bunch of pictures of the king. it’s not just limited to the king, when our deposed prime minister (taksin) gave a post-coup interview from singapore, the print version was allowed to be run in english in the wall street journal but televised versions were banned. this may be due to the fact that among intellectuals the prime minster was generally disliked but he had strong support among rural people.

when taksin was still in power, he suspended all freedom of the press to report on issues related to violence in the southern-most three provinces. he did this under a state-of-emergency declaration where he as lo said that deaths of militants by police officers wouldn’t really be investigated. this is a similar tactic he used to “deal with” drug smugglers, pretty much allowing the police to be judge and jury.

we also have movie censorship (instead of the american-style rating system). it’s generally limited to covering breasts during sex scenes, when i saw 300 recently many of the sex scenes were censored. what i found really interesting tho was the way that censorship was used to protect religious values in the movie music and lyrics (ummm, i am reluctantly admitting that i saw this to make a interesting point). in scenes where buddhist images were displayed along one of the character’s hoochie dancing and skimpy dress, the buddhist images were blurred out. in one of the final scenes, this character has a big concert and the concert set was likely a very large buddha. she wears next to nothing and dances very sexy in front of it, so the image was blurred out.

thailand (unlike japan, hong kong, china and korea) exports very few movies (even tho we make lots) and i’ve often wondered if this artistic censorship ends up decreasing creativity.

of course bill maher has been thrown off the air for speaking out against the us government too.

so i’m going to the kingdom of nepal on friday the 6th and back on the 16th. zak, pank, p’santi and p’beaux are all going with, flying a TG flight and hopefully sitting on the right side so we can see everest on the way in. i’m sure it goes without saying, but i’m really excited to see everest. i’ve wanted to for a long time now. we’re not going to do the base-camp trek which takes at least 3 weeks, but should still get a good view of the mountain. i’m taking with me a cannon digital camera, a lomographics compact fish eye and the famous lomographics holga camera. i’m still learning how to use the last two cameras, but hopefully i’ll get some cool images with them. i’m starting to get into taking pics with film cameras, and these non-SLR things are really fun to play with. you lose the instant-gratification of being able to see images right away, but i think that’s part of the fun.

we’re going to fly into katmandu, spend about 2 days there, then take a plane to lumbini to visit the birthplace of the buddha, then a bus to pokara where some of us will spend 4-5 days trekking, then finally back to katmandu for a few days. i don’t really know how much internet access i’ll have over there, but hopefully i’ll be able to post things. i’m guessing i probably will not get pics up, but i think i can get trip updates out. i think i may start trying to post in thai too, but if you’re getting these by email you’ll have to click through and read as there are problems with the email sending using other alphabets.

some other random updates … i’ve been adding photo galleries to the site, adding some old things i’ve had sitting around the computer and even scanning in some non-digital stuff. on the right of this page are a few random pics, click through on any of them to see a bigger version.

and most interesting is zak’s new blog, he’s been writing about his near-death experiences sailing from hawai’i to california. as soon as he gets back from 5 days in the chiang mai jungle where he has been eating rat, snake, bee larvae and frog all hunted with a bamboo gun there should be some more exciting stuff.