Terengganu, album

And here the second album of the trip to the east coast, Kuantan and Terengganu, the end of December 2009. Photos taken on 26th, 27th and 28th of December.

Click here for the album with some 21 photos.

Click here for the total index.

Small harbour in Kuantan, album

And here the album of the trip to the east coast, Kuantan and Terengganu, the end of December 2009. Photos taken on 25th of December.

Click here for the album with some 13 photos.

Click here for the total index.

Floating Mosque

And one more of the Floating Mosque in Kuala Terengganu.

More photos soon through the albums...

Click on the photo for the bigger version...

Views and beach

View from hotel in Kuala Terengganu...

View from hotel in Kuala Terengganu...

Me, in a washed up light bulb at the beach of Kuala Terengganu...

Flies feasting on a dead fish at the beach of Kuala Terengganu... I'm no fish expert but I think it's a puffer fish...

Click on the photos for the bigger version...

Sungai Lembing

One of the pleasant surprises of the latest trip in Malaysia was Sungai Lembing.

Not really knowing what to expect we drove there from Kuantan. It's about 40 kilometers from there, and the drive reminded me of Borneo a bit. A long stretch of green into the middle of nowhere.

At the end of that 40 kilometer long road lies Sungai Lembing. A half deserted mining town. Once blooming and an economic hot spot with tin mining - apparently the biggest tin mine on the planet -, the town is now in decline. Closed up shop lots, some of the few streets deserted. The building style quite different from other places in Malaysia, mostly wooden houses. It felt a bit like an abandoned Hollywood set from a Western; The town in 'High Noon', right before the fight starts...

We visited the small museum on a hill at the end of the town, all about the tin mining, which lasted till 1986, when tin prices on the world market dropped and the cost of mining started to outweigh the profits.

Then we drove a bit further into the kampung area behind the town and saw some spectacular views of houses along the river side and a very long but small suspension bridge across the river wobbling up and down when walking over it...

Sadly the sun didn't corporate and photographing landscape in Malaysia seems almost impossible. The view is never clear due to the humidity. Perhaps at sun rise - I'm not a morning person - but during the day landscape pictures always suffer from this blue dispersed haze, due to the light being broken by the water in the air.

Bridge...

Bridge with motor cyclist...

Near the museum...

Typical shop lot in Sungai Lembing...

Click on the photos for the bigger version...

Kuala Terengganu

Here's another photo...

Crystal Mosque...

Click on the photo for the bigger version...

Small harbour in Kuantan

Click on the photos for the bigger version...

Crystal Mosque

Night shot of the Crystal Mosque in Terengganu.
8 seconds exposure, 26th of December.

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Candles

But in the spirit of Christmas you might like this one better... :-)


Note that these photo's weren't processed with any software. The effect of the candles is as shot. A technique I read about on the Internet. Apparently this trick has been used by photographers for decades. To me it was new, just a first experiment...

Click on the photos for a bigger version...

East Coast II, third day - album

And here finally the third day of a second trip to the east coast last year...

Click here for the album with some 22 photos.

Click here for the total index.

Elephant orphanage, the album

And here's the album of Kuala Gandah...

Click here for the album with some 22 photos.

Click here for the total index.

Elephrend

Had my Dutch friend Nora over last week. Hence the somewhat silence on this blog, I hardly had time.

Was fun to see her outside of her normal environment.

We actually never met up a lot in The Netherlands, it was more of a phone relationship. She's a colleague from one of my former jobs and after I left there we had become friends. I visited her when I was back in The Netherlands during the last two years, but this year she decided to come this way. I showed her around a bit, and she wandered the city by herself a few days when I still had to work, having lunch and dinner with her.

She very much enjoyed KL, but not so much the climate :-)

Highlight (well, for her anyway, I very much dislike organised tours) was a trip to Kuala Gandah, the elephant orphanage in Malaysia, where Nora turned into an elephrend...

Took some ok shots there, which I will show soon.

As far as I understood the orphanage takes in elephants that can't be set free in the wild anymore. Their habitats over here get smaller and smaller and when they get too close to civilisation they become a threat to humans and the oil plantations. It's the classic tale of human development making it impossible for wild life to sustain itself.

You can feed the elephants there, ride an elephant for a short round around a tree, and they even take you into the river to be dropped by these huge creatures into the water. All voluntary mind you...

I skipped all that, busy taking pictures. I'm not afraid of animals (well, all in moderation, it's unwise not to be afraid of venomous snakes or a growling tiger ready to jump you) but I sat on a horse once and I felt it for a week. Besides, I'm very much a 'better safe than sorry' kind of person, and I decided early on in life that it is best to keep some distance when it comes to trained wild animals. No matter how gentle they might seem and act, they still can trample you with one kick if they have a moody day. I know I would if I were an elephant... And since riding an elephant was never very high on my secret wish list, I just took pictures.

The bus driver of the small mini van to Kuala Gandah was a bit of a bore and kinda racist, telling his little story about how KL came about, and that set the tone for the rest of the trip... Think these outings are better done with just friends in a private car, or in a really big bus with lots of people where you can escape the guide, and wander off unnoticed...

Into the river... click on the photo for the bigger version...

Beijing, the final album

And here's the last album of Beijing, the seventh and eight day.

Those were two rather lazy days. Done with all the tourist sites we just walked the city center and one of the outer areas which turned out to be a sort of little Russia, with a lot of fur industry going on. Quite a depressing neighbourhood actually, with a lot of ugly buildings. Not many photos of that day.

Click here for the album with some 17 photos.

Click here for the total index.

Phnom Penh album II

And here's the second and third day.

Click here for the album.

Click here for the total index.

In the meantime...

Something I forgot to mention, but I got my sensor cleaned, before the trip to Cambodia.

And for people who don't know what I'm talking about, see this post and this post.

I flashed Tha Professional card in their (Canon Malaysia Headquarters) faces and that got me a 'please sit down and wait 15 minutes', whilst other less fortunate people could pick up their camera the next day. I'm not one for special treatment, but in this case I felt I payed Canon enough to deserve it.

A bit apprehensive I tested the camera at home. Afraid they might have made it worse. The hair I already removed myself, but in that process I messed up the sensor even more, so I was really hoping for an improvement. And indeed there was. Almost spotless, not enough spots left to be bothered about, you'd never see them on a regular picture. They really cleaned up the mess I made of it.

I also ordered two new focusing screens. Turned out that replacing those, although technically easy, isn't that simple, because no shop has them in stock. Even Canon Malaysia didn't, they had to order them in Japan. Guess the model camera isn't that popular here, which is not a total surprise if you look at the price of the thing.

And for people wondering, a focusing screen is a small piece of glass that hangs directly under the viewfinder inside the camera. It disperses the light and you really cannot do without. I tried the camera without it, but apart from a very distorted image in the viewfinder, exposure gets all mixed up. Sensors in the camera clearly expect this thing to be there. Apparently ít's engraved with laser, not just an ordinary piece of glass.

And the final issue, the 70-200mm lens making some shaky noises after a small drop on the tiles of my apartment turned out to be normal. Something I suspected, but wasn't sure of, cause I didn't know if the sound had always been there when shaking the thing. It's the image stabilizer rattling around a bit. Wasn't too concerned about that anyway, cause the lens worked fine after the drop, but it's nice to know for sure.

So, all issues surrounding the camera resolved, waiting now for a phone call on the arrival of the focusing screens. I ordered two, the regular one, to replace the present scratched one, and an extra, with a grid on it. I tend to make shifted pictures sometimes, where the verticals or the horizontals are not completely straight, and the screen with the grid on it is supposed to help you prevent that. It's easily corrected in any editing software, but it saves time if the photos don't have the problem to begin with.

Scroll

It's something I bought in Beijing.

I don't buy a lot of souvenirs. Small stuff sometimes. Problem is that it just stacks up, and my life is a bit unclear location wise. Don't feel like dragging along too much stuff if I need or decide to move, either within Malaysia or forcibly back to The Netherlands. The suitcase I arrived with is already too small.

This I couldn't resist.

Bought it at an art exhibition near the Forbidden City. The girl who sold it to me told me it was painted by her teacher, and for a 'souvenir' it wasn't very cheap. She was a student at the Beijing Art Academy. It was one out of four, depicting the seasons, but this one was clearly the best.

The real deal is about two meters tall and I photographed it in three pieces. Had some trouble stitching it all together without the seams showing up, but worked out ok. Not fully sure about the coloring yet, need to compare it a bit better in daylight. The original blossoms are a bit more pinkish.

Click on it for the real big one. It's big though, about 2mb, so give it some time to load if you're interested.

Phnom Penh

It's poor, it's underdeveloped compared to any standards, there's kids begging and the poverty is striking. But they're friendly, they seem curious, they like to make contact and their smile is appealing.

They were also easy targets to photograph. Either a friendly smile, a big laugh, a wave or a shy looking away, but never an objection. They actually seemed to like the attention.

Big smile and laughing when they spot the camera...

A lot of them literally live on the streets. I'm not sure if they have homes or live in one of the slum areas I saw, and just venture out to the city during the day, but they eat, pee, play, sleep, get their hair cut and dry their clothes on the streets, as some of the photos show. In fact, I caught them sleeping everywhere. On trucks, on benches, in tuk tuks, on seats at a funeral, they clearly like to sleep. My kind of people :-)

Kid playing near Phnom Wat...

'They' is of course not everybody, but the street life is in your face. It makes parts of Phnom Penh a very lively mess, especially around the market area.

Knowing a little bit of the history of Cambodia and the horrors that went on there - first by the Americans, then by Pol Pot slaughtering his own people - the resilience of the people seems amazing.

I don't want to romanticise it though. Life there seems also harsh. They might smile and some might seem genuinely happy with the little they have, a few days isn't enough to get a sense of what these people are thinking or feeling or how they experience their daily life. Think it's safe to assume that everyone would prefer a normal house over a slum, and a clean bed over a bench in the park. And the smiling might look friendly, but I remembered a book about the Pol Pot regime, in which Cambodians are described as friendly but also as spiteful. I'm quoting here freely, but in the book they're called 'the most spiteful Asians of the whole of Asia'. In short, don't piss off a Cambodian, because he might seek revenge in a less pleasant manner. How true it is, I don't know, it's second hand knowledge, but it's not unwise to keep such knowledge in mind when visiting there :-)

One tip worked out quite well, the street kids begging. In stead of giving them money - which is either spent wrong or possibly given to other people for whom they work - I bought a big bag of candy, and we just handed that out whenever the occasion arose. And it works, they leave you alone after that, with quite a happy face.

I also handed out money to disabled, landmine victims and other unfortunates, but you quickly realise it's impossible. They keep coming. It's one of the nasty aspects of these places: the confrontation with your own luck, the fact you have and they don't, and how to deal with that if they rub that almost literally in your face, with missing limbs, in wheelchairs and with other deformities. The Dutch suffer from guilt quite easily - I wrote about that in another post about Calvinism - and it's also a part of my nature. I haven't found a convincing way yet for myself. I give some, I reject some, but it still lingers in the back of my mind without a resolution, because there is none. This is the way it is, this is their life. You visit, you leave. Most you get out of it is the feeling of being lucky and a sense of admiration for this nation and its people.

Another striking thing, of which some Cambodian artists make fun themselves in paintings I saw, is the number of people they carry around on trucks, buses and motorbikes. Five people on one motor cycle wasn't an exception, and some seem to carry their whole material existence on their motor cycle. Furniture, stoves, bags, appliances, hardware, tools, you name it, you can find someone driving around with it, stacked, stuffed or folded onto a bike or truck, usually with people on top, also quite visible on some of the photos.

Two motor cycles and a lot of other stuff in a truck, with people on top...

Took me quite some time and trials to get some photos of the people on motor cycles, visible in the first album, but luckily they don't drive faster than about 30km per hour. Traffic is very chaotic, but because of the low speed it doesn't seem to go wrong often. Five on a motor cycle is quite acceptable if you don't go fast.

The weather was so so. It's the rain season now, and the first few days we had on and off drizzle and a grey sky. Dry enough between the drizzle to walk around though. The place is also quite windy, and as sandy and dusty as Siem Reap. Completely flat land, no mountains, so the wind can do its thing undisturbed, bit like The Netherlands, where a day without wind is quite rare.

Otherwise, apart from observing the life going on, there's really not much to do in Phnom Penh. There's a few sites to visit and there's some nice restaurants and cafes around the river area, but that's about it. My initial guess that a few days would be enough turned out to be true.

I did enjoy it though. Not sure if I will return there soon, but I think it was a worth while trip.

(Click on the photos for the bigger version)

Phnom Penh, album I

Yes I'm back, and already done with the first album. Was quite happy with the photos I took, so I'll plunge you right into it. Coming days more about Phnom Penh, also in writing.

Click here for the album.

Click here for the total index.

Kampung Budaya, album

And before departure, another album finished. Almost there now, ready for new photos.

Some of the photos of this one I've already shown earlier. See this post for some explanation.

Click here for the album with some 15 photos.

Click here for the total index.

Beijing bird...

Trained bird flying off to pick up coins...
...click for the bigger version...