This is a kind of convenience store (the pile on the left, not the right, which is a kind of buddhist-shamanist good luck pile) on a mountain pass in the wilds of Mongolia
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The first time I saw outdoor billiard tables, they were beside a lake in the Himalayas, surrounded by glaciers and peaks over 5000 meters- I thought it was something that these tribes of different traditions could get together over. This picture, from a marketplace near the former capital of Genghis Khan, sort of confirms that theory (Mongols were once many tribes as well)
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Yes, that is a "PARKING" sign there, and next to it, a "Do Not Enter, One Way" sign next to it. The Mongolians can be neat, tidy, AND logical in the middle of nowhere. The tent in the foreground is the equivalent of a tourist trap concession, selling, naturally, things made of wool, the only material availiable here. One wonders how much it cost to build the fence out of wood, which grows ever scarcer here.
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The timelessness of the wheel is reflected in this truckstop in the middle of nowhere (which is EVERYWHERE) in Mongolia....
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For Today's Day of the Dead, this comes to you from the dashboard of our 'taxi' in Ulan Batur - a Mercedes Benz (we had to pay extra)
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Why are you showing us a pile of styrofoam?...Well, for one, it is a particularly LARGE pile of styrofoam, neatly bundled - but the main reason is that when I was in Mongolia, I scoured the capital for bits of throwaway styrofoam, so I could package my bicycle- at one point even dumpster diving, and then I nearly got in trouble for 'stealing' some guys livelihood (I gave him a few bob for it, though) - then the day I come back to Korea, this is the kind of excess and contrast that I witness on the street...
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although I've lived in Korea many years, and have watched nearly as many MASH episodes as the next guy, I never really associated 'choppers' with Korea - but finally got a good closeup of this service helicopter in Sorak San Mountain which was ferrying building materials for a temple being built halfway up the mountain.
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Mongolia was full of fun-looking beer labels. Of course this one didn't pan out so well, sort of tasted like the stub end of Ol' Winnies cigar doused in water...
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mongolian knobs (not as bad as it sounds)
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Welcome to my 'Hometown' of Portland...follow the river south through town, just down and to the left of Lake Oswego, you'll find a very amusingly named town. Apparently town fathers finally got a clue that tourists, especially British ones, were having a lot of fun, so the name no longer appears on maps- replaced by a blank spot- a bit of a shame, really. The old name makes you wonder if everyone in town is like David on The Office...
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I travelled with three polish guys, two polish girls, and another American who teaches at my university. Here Ana, a self-confessed ketchup junkie, demonstrates just how good ketchup can spice up any meal inside of a Mongolian yurt (Ger)
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a natural swimming pool at Soraksan National Park. This emerald-green water is quite a bit different than the turquoise/carribean blue color I photographed ten years ago.
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BUBBLY FOR BRATS...

From a shelf in a rural Mongolian shop, we bring you...Champagne for the kiddies! Why should adults have all the fun?
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? ? ?

Well, we thought the Berlin Wall would never fall, either....I really didn't know what to make of this poster I saw on a wall of an office near mine in Seoul, South Korea.
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Eerie rock piles constructed by bhuddist visitors to Whitelake, TseTserleg, Mongolia
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The office where I work, which was painted over the summer, adding this eerie John Carpenter feel to it. It's actually a much more cheerful place than this.
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NEWS FLASH!
Finally I discovered how to turn the 'Drunken Cowboy' video right-side-up, unfortunately the file size went wacko - over 400 MB at this point, ten times the original size before resampling. Anybody have any clues about how to resample without losing quality?
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"I Hope Your Sheep Are Fattening Nicely..."

This is probably the best shot I ever got out of a car window - it helped that the car wasn't moving at the time - and although I recognize the pictures that come before and after this, I really can't say where it is, though I'm pretty sure this bucolic scene was shot somewhere near TseTserleg, TseTserleg, Mongolia
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SHOVED by Herzog!

I'm a little bummed, gentle readers, not only because in a single week all my appliances went on the Fritz (a North Korean Electro-Magnetic-Pulse bomb?), including a new Samsung Washer, a standing fan, and my laptop hard drive. I'm bummed, like so many other naive computer users, because I hadn't backed it up properly. The drive failed with no warning; I left it on, went to get some tea in the kitchen and when I came back the screen said 'No OS detected' - worse than the 'blue screen of death', I didn't even have blue; my hard drive had just gone 'kerching' and left.

On the drive were some photos I'd taken from my recent trip to Bangkok - since I've been there twenty times almost, I hardly ever get any pictures worth the trouble of looking at. This time, however, was similar to my magical first trip to Bangkok 18 years ago. Back then, by chance, I was an extra on the set of Good Morning Vietnam. I had been in the right place in the right time, and had been able to meet and have a minute or two nearly alone with the great Robin Williams. This time, I got to act in a Werner Herzog film (Rescue Dawn) , and so, of course, I was holding my breath to see if I could meet the great director himself. Holding my breath, because the sort of on location shots that extras get to act in, are usually the kind of things relegated to assistant directors. So it might work out that I wouldn't even see the man from a distance.

I needn't have held my breath. Herzog was there, and before the extras were called up for our shot, he had us line up in our pilot outfits, sweating under the Pattaya sun, and shook each and every extras hand. This was extraordinary. I have been an extra for TV and movies maybe, oh, 10 or 15 times, and never, never, have I seen an extra receive any more acknowledgement than "You there! Move over there!"

He was a kindly man, and I took great pleasure in seizing his hand and reciting the cliche, "I'm a huge fan of your work" - at which he brightened, since on the set, Christian Bale (the star of the recent BATMAN BEGINS ) was stealing all the limelight - since he was also friendly and liked to hang out with the extras (in his makeup for the shot , scraggly beard, tattered clothing and all, he looked like somebody you could meet at a Koh Pangan Full Moon Party, or a junkie you would run into on Khao San Road).

Herzog didn't stop there, though. During the shots that we were in, he was in our midst, barking directions (in a nice way) and even shoving the crowd from behind (CAN YOU IMAGINE? I can tell my grandchildren I was SHOVED BY THE GREAT HERZOG! ). The high point came when, after giving orders to move one of the on-set speakers, a behemoth Public Adress speaker on a pillar stand, he ran over and grabbed the giant thing himself, nearly toppling it (it must have been at least 80 pounds) and started dragging it across the set while we all gaped at him, open mouthed. It wasn't so much the feeling that he was picky and wouldn't trust anyone on the set to 'do it right' - it's just that it was obvious to us that this man lacked any sort of feeling of superiority as a director, that there was no job beneath this man (I'm sure he would have been an extra, as did the assistant director at one point, if he had been the right age for the shot)

All in all, a great moment, and it nearly made up for the grueling 16 hours, the multiple takes that seemed identical (except for the actors flubbing their lines), and the heat aboard the ancient British aircraft carrier (it now belongs to the Thai Royal Navy), of which the assistant director said, "The good news is that they have air conditioning on the ship. The bad news is that it makes you sweat more than no air conditioning."

I had just purchased about five of his films from a pirate shop in Chetuchak market, so I felt guilty. I wanted to dig in my pockets, produce a 100 baht note and walk up to him and pay him his royalties directly. Now of course this is flawed logically, since I'd have to seek out the estate of Klaus Kinski, Bruno S., and so on, and pay them all 50 baht or whatever their share is - but it was an emotional response - I mean, I really like his movies, but at this point I'm totally unlikely to pay thirty or fourty bucks a pop (that's including postage to a non-Western country) plus risk losing it in the mail or to the customs guys (who reputedly have a preference for sports videos over art flicks), especially when I can browse in air-conditioned comfort in the Thai weekend market and pay 3 dollars a title.

Rather than get bogged down in the whole controversy over piracy and copyright and so-called intellectual property (which, the very word, presupposes the notion of a unique creation, a western construct invented by London Publishing houses in the 18th century and mistakenly supported by the Romantics) - rather than get all bogged down in that stuff, I just wished I could have walked up to the man and handed him my money, personally, directly - it would have been money well spent, if only we could somehow get around all the legal/societal taboos of such an act.

My niece's nickname - while combing a backstreet Bangkok market for good Christmas gifts, I came across this happy circumstance. Unfortunately this outfit is for a 2 year old, while my niece 'Beebee' is about 7.
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