Day: 434

Gallery of Today’s Pictures

Yeah, I think all the waiting was worth it.

I’m really happy with the first picture on this page, it easily has moved into my portfolio of my to 30 pictures.

Day: 433

Gallery of Today’s Pictures

I know I have been in Luang Prabang a day or two too long, but I have a reason.  Tomorrow is a festival, with fireworks and giant flaming paper boats on the Mekong.  Now how do you expect me to move on when I see the locals decorating the temples, lighting fireworks in the street and promising to burn down all their hand crafted boats in the river?

That’s exactly what I thought.

Day: 432

Gallery of Today’s Pictures

With our Presidential election mere days away and the fate of the free world in our hands, it is dawning on me quickly how important this vote is to the world.  Every single person I meet immediately brings up the election and how the world is depending on America to make a change or we are all going to suffer, and when the world recovers, financially and emotionally, I would not be surprised if we no longer were the dominate force in world politics and economics.

The crisises we are facing are like nothing we have ever had to deal with all at once before. We are involved in a draining (emotionally and fiscally) war which continues to be touted as necessary, the world economy is failing primarily from our own bad lending practices, and the environment is quickly getting warmer from over consumption.

It is with all these thoughts in my mind that I came across an unnamed Laos-American photographer from Idaho here visiting his extended family.  We started talking about photography and after a couple of beers I brought up the voting question…

“I’m voting for McCain”

My heart sunk.  Here is a man that at 8 years old swam the Mekong with his parents under threat of a machine gun death if caught, escaped to Thailand and eventually took refuge status in the U.S. and became a citizen.   He doesn’t seem like your typical Republican.

When asked how he could think of voting for McCain, and what the Republican party has done right in the last 8 years, he couldn’t think of an answer.  All he could say was he was “voting for the party, not the man”.   He associated the Republicans with family values and that was his entire voting strategy. He listened to the campaign punchlines, and let his past decisions make his choice.  Like someone who was rooting for a particular team and wouldn’t change alliances during a bad season.  After many beers later, he and I parted ways, and he agreed to do some soul searching and research before casting his vote, he officially became undecided.

Undecided is still better than a McCain/Palin vote.

Anyways, I’ll be voting Obama from Singapore in a couple days here, I hope you can all go spend a couple hours researching before you vote and at least give some thought to this question:

What has George W. Bush done RIGHT in the last 8 years, and what has he done wrong?

McCain is another Bush and I just hope everyone can see that, or else we might have some real problems on our hands.

Travel related nonsense will return tomorrow.

Day: 431

Gallery of Today’s Pictures

Whats better than jumping off waterfalls into pools below?

When you jump, finding a young Lao child surfacing right where your feet will momentarily be…

Spreading your legs to do your best to avoid breaking his little neck, and making full Balls to Head contact…

OUCH.

(By the way, the pictures of monks below are from their daily rounds collecting food offerings from the locals)

Day: 430

Gallery of Today’s Photos

While wandering about today I met Khao, a 19 year old monk who wanted to practice his English he was learning in school on me.  Since my day lacked any sort of itinerary, I spent about an hour chatting with him about just about everything we could think of.  Turns out he is a Manchester football (soccer) fan and I claimed Arsenal (Felicia’s team, in reality its the closest thing I have to my own team), he wants to keep learning so one day he can get a job to take care of his grandparent who were unable to take care of him 5 years ago when his parents died.

I did my best to tell him what I knew about the world, probably corrupting him in the process, and was off to continue my quest for new pictures.