Heh, I made up a proverb.

Describe the Clouds is a new blog I’m keeping for all the travel-related stuff I want to share that isn’t a result of our own travels. It’ll feature pieces that convey a strong sense of place – the majority will be links to other people’s blogs and what not, but there will also be media and some personal stuff cross-posted from Quarter Year.

Please head over there and check it out!

by Mike

Even a year later this man’s look strips my facade to its frame. Can you feel it too? His worker, a young man, made room in the shop for our flat-tired motorbike, and he went to work silently.

I wanted a picture of the old guy, I had to have a picture of those nails, but I made myself a rule to only take pictures of people I talk to. Damn principle. He didn’t speak English, so with my (very) limited Indonesian, I attempted to have a heart-to-heart with the old man, to get to know him, to have a meaningful, cross-cultural exchange.

“You work here?” I asked.
“Yes.”

“How many years?”
“27.”

Ah, the clumsy conversational dance where all you can reliably understand is “yes,” “no,” whole numbers and “chicken.”

“How old boy?”
“16″

“Your son?”
“No.”

“How many years you Bali?”
“[Unintelligible, but he didn't say chicken].”

Someone else paid and he used his nails to flip though a wad of cash. I salivated for a photo. Enough chit-chat, time to go for the kill, but subtly of course.

“How many years?” I pointed to his hand.
“One.”

Hold up, only a one year commitment for those things? This is doable! We can do this!

“I photo you?”
“Yes.”

I love travel, don’t you? You can never predict what you’ll come across when you leave the beaten path. There are interesting old dudes out there, around the world, willing to take a second to chit chat with a foreigner.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

by Mike

To accompany this photo I searched my journal for a piece of writing that might radiate a sense of place in Bogota, but in the two weeks we spent there I only filled ten pages and little of it describes the texture of the city. Some say, “Put away the camera and enjoy the place!” but the two acts aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, if measuring by regret (which is the only way to measure anything ever), I rarely regret taking the time to capture something but more often regret losing the first-person insight during a unique experience. With this in mind, sometimes I’ll simply list everything I’m noticing at a particular moment – sounds, smells, physical feelings, words, etc.

At the beginning of my first trip in 2001 I had to ask (our friend) Amy, “So, why does a person keep a journal?” I was on my way to Europe for the summer and had gotten a gorgeous hand-made journal from my then-girlfriend (I still count it as one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve received). Amy thought it was hilarious that I was asking for advice on what to write about in my own personal journal, but she ended up giving a pretty good rule of thumb: Write about stuff you don’t want to forget. It’s amazing, ten years later, to read back and say, “Oh yeah! I’d completely forgotten about that!” It makes me wonder what else I’ve experienced that might interest me, but I guess that can’t be easily mined.

Anyway, this picture is from a scenic little neighborhood in Bogota called The Candelaria. I think the photo captures the sense of place, even if my writing didn’t.

In the train station’s high yellow light a young American, new to India, looked at his book but thought about suffocation; each breath filled his mouth like tea.

He smelled food prepared by an Indian family camped in a circle on the station’s floor. An old woman ate there, resting in anticipation. She would have to shove through crowds to secure a seat for the night-long ride where she, herself, was more likely to suffocate than this fit young man. She would sleep against a stranger on the aisle floor. She would be carried to another part of India, another humid part of India, where the traveler might see orange glowing light he could not now imagine if only he were brave enough to step down from the car and breathe deeply through his nose.

(Read More)

by Mike

Have been scraping through early Bali photos and pulled out this series.

More Photos

by Mike

Wandering around the dusty roads of Bagan, we took a turn toward the river and discovered a thriving little shoreline where women washed clothes, kids splashed and others bathed modestly. As we strolled past gardens that hugged the sandy bank, we met a little boat pulling to shore, letting passengers off. Three kids paddled people across the river to what must have been a small village on the other side (though, as you can see in some of the pictures, it doesn’t look like there’s anything there. I suspect the town was far back from the shore, out of the way of floodwater).

We waved the kids over and asked if they’d take us on a little tour down to the gold-covered pagoda that commands the river’s bend.

Read More

by Mike

What’s intriguing about this picture is the question, “Where is that plane going to and coming from?” If you look at a world map you’ll see there’s almost no other cities on that longitude, from pole to pole in that hemisphere. The only possibility I can see for a direct north-south flight might be Lhasa to Yangon. If it’s actually going at a more southwestly trajectory, then the origin might be Kathmandu or New Delhi with destinations like Yangon, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.

by Mike

Sometimes a city feels so different that you don’t even know what to take a picture of, so you snap shots of the biggest things around: buildings.

Many buildings in Yangon were decaying, rotting or defiantly holding their ground against the heat and humidity.

(More Pictures Inside)

by Mike

My dad got hold of an enormous king salmon, the largest he’s ever caught. They fought for 20 minutes as the salmon repeatedly ran for its life, but the hook was well-set. It was a monster, weighing almost 50 pounds (42)!

(Here are a bunch of pictures of my dad in his heaven)

by Mike

Early morning in the back streets is quiet. It smelled like smoke and fried foods – for breakfast I had a little doughnut thing that was cooked by a lady on the street with a small crowd around her. It was greasy-good.