Hunkabutta Archives
03.18.04

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Karen and Jack are here in Thailand now. We're staying at a place called Cactus bungalows, it's on Bo Phut, one of the quieter beaches on the island of Koh Samui. Jack's loving it: the family running the place also have a two-year-old boy, Makoo, so Jack has found an instant playmate.

My mini expedition in to the mountains near Chiang Rai last week was both exciting and satisfying. I went to visit some of the friends that I have in an Akha village called Mae Salep. I lived there for about six months (over a three-year period) in the mid-90's doing research as a graduate student in ethnoarchaeology. It was nice to go back and just relax, not having to worry about recording 'all of the relevant details.'

While there I got to attend a small 'child wellness' feast, and I just missed a 'new house building' party (though I got some pictures of the dog slaughtered for the main meal). I took a lot of good pictures of friends in the village which I'll be posting here over the next little while.

Thailand has changed a lot since I first starting coming here in 1991. It used to be incredibly unregulated and unpredictable, offering a wide range of dirt-cheap food and accommodation to both young and old alike. However, since the opening up of neighbouring countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in the mid-nineties a lot of the young backpackers have been heading to those destinations looking for something a bit more wild, adventurous, and cheap. Since then, Thailand has, wisely, started to cater more to older, monied tourists.

You can see this shift in the way that things have become more regulated. For example, bars have closing hours and they are taxed (because of noise) for live music, it's no longer permitted in many places to build rickety bamboo huts for tourists, every new place must have a toilet and water.

Anyhow, Thailand's still a great place, I guess that it's just aging right along with me.

I'll be updating Hunkabutta infrequently for the next two weeks until we get back to Tokyo. I'm going to show pictures in a roughly chronological order, so next time you can expect some photos of the northern town of Mae Chan and the Akha village of Mae Salep.

I'll be thinking of you while I lay on the beach...or maybe not.

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03.09.04

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I leave for Thailand tomorrow morning, Jack and Karen will be following me a week later.

I'll be spending my first solo week up in the mountain villages visiting some friends, so I may not be able to post to Hunkabutta, but I'll try to see what I can do when I'm in town.

After the 17th we'll all be on Koh Samui and should have Internet access.

I got my new camera the other day, a Canon EOS D10. It's pretty sweet, but I'm still learning how to use it. Let's hope I can figure it out before I land in Chiang Rai tomorrow.

Wish me luck.

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03.07.04

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Karen sometimes does a bit of modeling on the side, when she's not being an editor, and yesterday she did an interesting shoot for the new Sony CD walkman.

The shot consisted of about 30 foreigners dressed up as various music icons and stereotypes -- Madonna, Sid Vicious, Salsa dancer, Mod boy, Opera singer, etc. -- all heaped into one contorted pile inside a giant plastic CD case. The photographer was suspended in the air directly above the models.

Karen was dressed as an 80's glam rocker, kind of like Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister, with long hair extensions, mounds of blue eyeshadow, hot pink lipstick, and leopard-skin pants. She said that it took four hours to do her hair and one hour to do her makeup.

It was a long day for Karen: They started at around 8:00 a.m. and didn't finish until after 2:00 a.m. The shoot ended so late that Sony had to pay for cabs for everyone because the trains had stopped running.

Karen had a funny conversation with her cab driver. After she flagged him down and hopped in he looked at her in the rearview mirror with wide eyes.

Then he said something in Japanese that Karen could only understand parts of, something like, "Blah blah blah, you blah blah movie?"

Karen replied in Japanese, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't understand. My Japanese is not very good."

The driver sucked his teeth in contemplation for a moment, hummed and hawed, and then tried again.

"Ah, ah, you...you adulto movie...?"

"What's that," said Karen "Adult movie? What do you mean?"

"Yes, yes," he said "Adult movie, ah, ah,... Porno? Yes, porno?"

So,he thought that Karen had just finished filming a porno and was on her way home.

Karen laughed and said, "No, no,... No porno. Sony ad. Sony commercial."

"AH! Sony!?!?!" the driver gasped, "I'm sooo sorry, so very, very sorry."

After that I don't think he said too much more, and 20 minutes later Karen made it home with a head full of fake hair and an interesting story to tell.

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03.03.04

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I was recently looking at 'like a man, as a man,' an evocative photo series that James Luckett of consumptive.org recently put up online, and it occurred to me that I rarely direct you to any of the other great Japan photo sites. This has got to change.

When I return from my vacation at the beginning of April I'm going to do a little revamp of Hunkabutta and update my top page links to include a proper Japan section.

For now, here are a few other Japan-based photoblogs for your enjoyment:

sushicam
antipixel
35degrees
Hmmn..
Bastish
stuartwoodward.com

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