Terrifying Old Dragon Man
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.
Tags: bali, fingernails, Grantourismo, HomeAway Holiday-Rentals, language
Posted in Indonesia and Photography and Retrospect and Southeast Asia and Stories and Travel
at 1:58 pm.
11 comments
I like how his eyes sort of captures his character very well, before one sees the nails. I can only imagine what it’d be like to speak to him in Balinese. I like to believe he would make a good storyteller :) Kudos for discovering this gem!
Yeah, this guy has something about him that was far out of reach of my language skills. I suppose part of the fun of traveling is building stories around the people you meet – a traveler has to be a pretty quick judge of character in the first place.
Yet another reason to learn more languages :) Thanks for stopping by.
Your photography (this one and throughout your blog) is stunning! Really impressive; beautiful work. Good luck in the comp!
Thank you Ashley!
Hi Mike, I can’t believe I am only just leaving a message here now. Terence and I have visited this post a couple of times too! I think each time we’ve been so struck with the photo – it’s so powerful! – that I’ve forgotten to leave a comment, I’m sorry.
Anyway, I’m just letting all the entrants know that judging is currently underway for the August Grantourismo Comp. We should be announcing the winners later today and posting the September contest details as well on the site http://grantourismotravels.com/
Thanks again for your entry and best of luck!
Thanks for stopping by, Lara!
Hi Mike
Congratulations on winning second prize in our August Grantourismo travel photography competition!
We announced it on Twitter this evening, but I couldn’t find your Twitter address.
Details of exactly what you’ve won here: http://grantourismotravels.com/2010/09/03/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-august-winners/
I’ll send a formal email over the next day or so to connect you with Viator and Our Explorer so you can arrange to collect your prizes.
We’ll be posting details for our September competition today too – this month the theme is food, inspired by our series on The Dish. Hope to see another entry from you!
Sweet! My Twitter address is Quarteryear also.
Thanks for running the contest!
Wow, those are some nails… so many questions spring to mind as to how one copes in daily life with nails like that! But I most definitely couldn’t even have managed to ask the few questions you did. Very impressive!
wow, thanks for commenting on my blog.
love what you have here..
and that is one heck of a portrait. amazing photography! love those cultural exchanges, however limited they may be..
:)
also interested in your travel by scooter thing? how did that work with backpacks and such? wanting to do something similar in vietnam with a travel partner possibly. sounds too adventurous for me!! ;P
Hi Janet!
We LOVE traveling by scooter. You should definitely give it a try…. there’s no better way to travel independently quickly.
We actually made a video about packing our stuff onto a scooter, here. But that was a pretty big scooter, I doubt the Vietnamese ones will be as large. In Bali we did a little of this:
http://www.quarteryear.com/us-vs-bugs/
That was a bit ridiculous, but it was only for a little while.
In Thailand we left a large bag at our hotel in Chiang Mai, then went on a four-day loop along the Myanmar border. We packed really light on that trip because Azure had to carry it all on her back (no top case, no panniers), and of course it went just fine. It’s funny – you take only a little stuff when you go backpacking and you realize you didn’t need everything you had at home in the first place. Then you cut that stuff in half and go on a scooter ride and you realize you didn’t even need as much as you took on the trip…
I’ll be excited to follow if you do take a scooter trip. Let me know if you have any other questions!