Posts tagged "travel"
← All tags-
The Best Camera is the One You Have
I have been an avid enthusiast of phone photography and videos even before iPhones arrived in the world. To that end, I still chuckle when I think about how in the mid 00s, I not only took cool photos that I still love today, using a Nokia N73, one of them even went on the front page of Flickr for a while! A photograph…
-
My First Time in Myanmar
Photo taken on Sony Nex-5 in 2012. Around a decade ago the world was a vastly different place. Aung San Suu Kyi had been released and was poised to run her country, finally. The country, so close to mine yet so far apart in so many ways, was opening up. I set out to try to see it before it became another Southeast…
-
Hari Gawai, some years ago
One of the things I love about my home region is how it's home to so many unique cultures. Even in countries that I know well, like Malaysia, I never run out of things to do, people to meet or things to learn. In 2007 or so I went to Sarawak, one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, and lived with a…
-
Silhouettes
Most people love the Golden Hour. I also love the moment just before the sun sets where the light changes so quickly you don't know what you're going to get. A photo of temples at Angkor Wat, some time in 2005. Nikon F-601, not sure which film stock. A photo of camels in Jaisalmer, India. 2006. Canon 350D.
-
Roadtrips and Chicken Rice Balls
In my last year of university I started dating a person who lived 250 miles away from me. It was my first serious relationship, and my last long(ish) distance one. Before we found a living arrangement (that involved me moving to her city), we met sometimes in the middle. Luckily, her country was full of fun towns and…
-
Past Life: Sana'a Street Life
Getting to see Sana'a in 2009 was an honor. It was one of my favorite cities: ever. Anywhere. I stayed with a friend and I got to wander around sometimes with him and his family, but sometimes alone. It was the weight of history and the air of what was about to happen: I frequently described Yemen as 'better than a set…
-
Street Life: Air Mata Kucing
As a child, my parents would put us on a bus or train to Kuala Lumpur to see friends, visit people, or just have a weekend break. One of my strongest memories of KL: getting out of the overnight train at the old railway station, and strolling to Chinatown (Petaling Street) for breakfast. Air mata kucing (literally…
-
The Market in Mae Salong
Mae Salong is one of the most interesting little towns I've ever been to. It is said that many of the town's folks are descended from the southern Kuomintang army during the Chinese civil war. They went south through to Thailand with instructions to wait there in case Generalissimo Chiang wanted to mount a southern…
-
Five Frames: Chinese Gods
Singapore is technically a secular country. A large number of its ethnic Chinese population practices traditional Taoist rituals, though evangelical Christianity is encroaching quickly. As an ethnic Chinese person raised in Christian traditions, I felt surgically removed from these practices and I wanted to document…
-
Touching Grass: Taroko Gorge, Taiwan
Taiwan's Taroko Gorge near Hualien is a place of great beauty. I spent a fun day here in 2006 with my family, with my Leica M3 and some black and white film (I am guessing it is Tri-X 400, which would have been what I was using a lot back then). I don't photograph nature or landscapes very much, so am very out of my…
-
Well Fed: Two Artisans
As you may know from elsewhere, I love food. I am obsessed with it. I love eating, I love food stories, I love writing about food, I love writing about people who make and eat food. I did that more actively in the past where I wrote a few travel guidebooks and cookbooks, and also published a few articles about Asian…
-
Five Frames from Ceylon
Between 2013 and 2016, I went to Colombo quite frequently for work and relaxation. An old friend of mine from school lived there, and it was such an easy flight from Singapore that I found every excuse to go there, really. The scuba diving is phenomenal, too. This past year, Sri Lanka has been in my thoughts. The…
-
Outtakes from a cookbook
In my mid-20s I was involved in the production of several cookbooks behind the scenes. That helped start a love for food. I helped to write and photograph a cookbook for an international hotel chain's Dubai restaurants, which had all types of cuisines (their Thai chef also taught me how to cook the Thai food I now love…
-
All of my wildest dreams
Scrambling down Alamere Falls (which is now dry) on the rock face I spent the past weekend hiking. Some of it was on a dried out waterfall, such as this one. For a long time now I have wanted to lead a wilder life than the one I had. Earlier in my youth, wild meant something else altogether. Today, it means:…
-
Jharkhand Task List
Jharkhand task list photo Some of you may know that I have spent the last 9 years or so working to support children's education in Jharkhand, India. In better times I visit them 2-3x a year. I want to share something that stuck with me the last time I went: one of the girls we work with showed us their daily schedule.…
-
Travelogues, Ten Years On
It was the summer of 2004. I don’t remember things like seasons before 2018 (I did not live somewhere with real seasons until 3 years ago). Unless they had to do with travel. In 2004, I was a college freshman in a school in Singapore that was also the only one at the time which followed American semesters, terminology,…
-
Memories of Home
Every overseas Singaporean has the same fear: that when we return, we will not know our way home. Our city builds and tears down much quicker than most other places. Nothing is safe. The price of progress: everyone's memories. No time for nostalgia, or poetry, when we can have... growth. When I move between worlds, my…
-
A World of Adventure
On Twitter, where I live, I posted snippets of the things I have done, the places I have been, the places I have gone. Where they might have felt jumbled up and messy on a blog or Facebook post, the Twitter thread / tweetstorm format seemed to be a natural home for my adventures. I am grateful for the mess that my…
-
Fresh Off The Boat
When I first moved to America nine months ago, I was perplexed by a never-ending list of things. They were not the 'big' ones, like having to learn a scary new language. We already spoke English. We'd seen enough movies. Our accents, we were told, were non-existent! You sound Californian!!! You have no accent! (Didn't…
-
Munduk
Munduk. Two people, suspended between heartbreak and fury, met on Hong Kong Street after almost 2 years without each other. Their hearts, recently broken by others, found each other agreeable — even safe. They made a plan. The universe attempted to foil it. To no avail. Through long public holidays, expensive flights,…
91 posts tagged "travel"