my bike

The bike I go around on.

on a laotian bus

The long, dusty and winding road from Huay Xay to Luang Nam Tha brings back memories of Burmese bus rides, though the Laotian ones are without music which makes them a little bit less intense.

Clouds of dust flying around the bus swallow us and wrap us up. Red, pink and white colours on both sides of the path. Red, pink and white covering all the shades of green, the green is not green any more.

The lady sitting next to me does not stop spitting out of the window. She does not talk. She does not look at me. She does not smile. She only bends a little to spit out of the window in 15 seconds' intervals and then comes back to the upright position. When she asked me with gestures to swap our seats, I thought it was because she wanted to vomit. No. She only wanted to spit once and again all the way from Huay Xay to Luang Nam Tha. Exactly, 5 hours and a half.

luang nam tha

Anoche dormi en Tailandia. Esta manyana cruce el Mekong y pase a Laos. En cuestion de minutos la realidad cambia a mi alrededor.

A este lado del Mekong, la gente aunque similar es distinta, las fisonomias, recuerdan un poco a las de los chinos. La dureza en las miradas y las pieles denota la dureza de la vida rural en el norte de Laos. La curiosidad de ninyos y mayores en cada parada del polvoriento camino, arremolinandose alrededor de la carraca de autobus que, a cada nuevo bache y cada nueva curva, uno piensa que no aguantara mas y el techo se colapsara encima de nuestras cabezas bajo el peso de tanta maleta amontonada en la parte superior.

A este lado del Mekong, la carretera no es carretera sino camino polvoriento. Aunque freneticamente se afanan en talar los bosques para abrir los claros necesarios y construir la nueva ruta que llevara mas rapidamente de Huay Xay a Luang Nam Tha.

stupa

The Stupa illuminated for the celebration of the Buddha Day. Buddha days are celebrated coinciding with every new moon, first quarter, full moon and last quarter.

temple dragon flies

The day before I left I adknowledge these two beautiful dragon flies. They were sunbathing in front of my room.

10 silent days

Around the Buddha My meditation corner

No talk. No eye contact. No reading, no writing, no listening to music, no drinking, no eating after midday and sleeping 6 hours a day. Only practice, practice and practice the Vipassana technique of meditation for 10 hours each day.

I have improved my concentration and I am calmer. But as my teacher used to repeat to me Practice begins after practice.

locuras tailandesas / thai crazy stuff

Hay tres cosas que vuelven locos a los tailandeses:

1. El aerobic, lo hacen al aire libre en explanadas con un escenario donde se coloca el profesor.

2. Su rey.

3. Comer, cosa que agradezco profundamente, se puede comer de todo a cualquier hora, barato y bueno.

*****

There are three things that make Thais go mad:

1. Aerobics, they practice it in the open air in yards where there's a stage for the instructor.

2. Their King.

3. Eating, which I love, one can eat anything at any time, good and cheap.

globalizada / globalized

Llevo los anillos de plata que compre en Koto Gadang, Sumatra, no mucho tiempo atras. Mi pelo cubierto con la panyoleta de batik que me hice en una sastra de Pekanbaru.

Los pantalones, tailandeses; la blusa, india, una de esas cosas que cada vez que te pones te das cuenta lo buena compra que fue.

En la munyeca derecha el brazalete de coco que compre a un joyero de las islas Andaman a juego con el anillo del dedo del pie, tambien de coco, que me regalo Chris.

La ropa interior comprada en Singapur, aunque hechas en China, reza la etiqueta.

La mochila, espanyola, otro regalo, de Sara.

Me pregunto si esto es otro modo de ser o estar globalizada.

*****

I'm wearing the silver rings I bought in koto Gadang, Sumatra, not long ago. My hair covered with the batik scarf I had made in a taylor's in Pekanbaru.

My pants are thai, the blouse, indian, one of those items you realize how good purchase it was every time you wear it.

In my right wrist the coconut bangle that I bought to a jeweler in the Andaman Islands, matching the coconut toe ring in my foot, a present from Chris.

My underwear bought in Singapore, but made in China, swears the label.

The backpack, Spanish, another present, from Sara.

I wonder if this is another way of being globalized.

breathe deeply, in, out
instants between the instants
live deeply, in, out

morning pai

the queen of the jungle

I guess it's true and I have good luck with the trek guides... Preesha guided me through the forest and garlic fields yesterday. For some hours he treated me like the Queen of the Jungle.

Not only he held my hand and helped me out every time I was about to fall down but he also made a couple of chopsticks and a cup from a bamboo for me to eat and drink. He made a bed with huge banana leaves for me to sleep on and he cooked the most delicious tea inside a bamboo on a fire lit with two bamboo sticks.

Preesha is from the Karen tribe and he has grown up in this area. He knows these mountains like the palm of his strong hands. Yesterday I was his queen, today he'll find a new one.

lisu

Two Lisu women.

your head, your temple

When the owner of the guest house I'm staying at has come up to me saying "Monicaaaa" I knew I had done something wrong. The look in his eyes was like that in my mother's when as a child I had broken something valuable in the house. I was right. Without knowing I was being disrespectul to Thais.

I had my wet underwear hanging on a bamboo stick behind my hut. That is not an ofense, there's nothing wrong in you hanging your underwear on a bamboo stick behind your beautiful, perfect bamboo hut. But if your underwear hangs above somebody's head level, then you are ofending them. In Thai culture it is impolite to hang one's underwear above the level of a person's head, because the head is the "temple" of a person, like in other Buddhist countries, and I guess somebody's underwear is just not good, clean and pure enough as to be hanging above anybody's temple.

trenes son amores / trains are lovers

Viajando en tren desde Lop Buri hasta Chiang Mai y luego en autobus local hasta Pai me he vuelto a reconciliar con Tailandia. La Tailandia sosa y trillada de repente se disipa y logro ver a traves o a pesar de tanto turista parte de la esencia amable y la belleza y amabilidad de sus gentes.

Viajar en tren en Tailandia, como en tantos paises de la zona, tiene algo de otro tiempo, algo de romantico. Y es que los trenes todavia traquetean de verdad, como antes, de lado a lado y de arriba abajo y su sonido recuerda al ritmico sonido de los muelles de una cama maltratada por dos amantes. Quizas sea eso lo que nos haga pensar que viajar en tren es romantico...

*****

Traveling by train from Lop Buri to Chiang Mai and afterwards on a local bus up to Pai, I have reconciled myself with Thailand. Thailand, the insipid, the commonplace, vanishes overnight and I can see through or despite so many tourists some of its kind essence and the beauty of its people.

Traveling by train in Thailand, like in many other countries of the area, has something of the past, something romantic. The trains shake seriously, like before, sideways and up and down and its sound reminds of the rhytmic sound of a bed mistreated by two lovers. Maybe that's what makes us think traveling on a train is romantic...

cajon de sastre 12

¨Yo creo que el cerebro humano se hace el harakiri a los 12 años¨ Javier, filosofo, fotografo, poeta, MAESTRO!, que me encanta porque dice que nunca dice cosas con copyright asi que se las puedo plagiar y escribir aqui.

*****

¨I think the human brain commits hara-kiri at the age of 12¨ Javier, philosopher, photographer, poet, GURU!, whom I really like because he affirms that he never says anything with copyright therefore I can write his words down here.

quien ha colocado estos cables...

lop buri

david filosofia de bar para ti

Es ser prepotente pensar que todos los que te rodean no hacen mas que tonterias?? Este pensamiento no lleva implicito el hecho de que yo piense que no las cometa, las tonterias, sobre todo a la vista del resto de seres humanos que no son YO, es decir, todo el mundo.

Solo aquellas personas a las que quiero y admiro me parece que hacen menos tonterias que el resto o como minimo me da la sensacion que las tonterias que hacen son mas logicas (a mis ojos). Lo cual me lleva a pensar lo siguiente: Esto solo lo pienso porque les quiero y les quiero por que tenemos cosas en comun, por que me gustan, por que me hacen sentir bien, por que compartimos aficiones, por que me hacen reir...es decir, porque veo un reflejo exterior de cosas que me gustan y con las que estoy de acuerdo. Es el amor a los otros simplemente un sentimiento "narcisista"?????

Creo aquello de "Te quiero no por quien eres si no por quien soy cuando estoy contigo". El amor a los otros es solo un reflejo del amor a uno mismo? ...Cuantas mas personas quieres es un reflejo proporcional de cuanto te quieres a ti mismo?

Solo aceptamos aquello que entendemos ...Quiza deberia decir solo acepto aquello que entiendo ...Cual es la base del entendimiento del mundo y de sus contenidos y habitantes? ...El entendimiento de uno mismo primero y con ello el entendimiento de lo similar y/o distinto que hay en los demas... Y el entendimiento de uno mismo esta basado en una mirada carinyosa y/o amorosa a lo que uno es y siente??... Por tanto el entendimiento del mundo pasa por el amor a uno mismo....

frangipanis

i tried to dream last night

My dreams' guru says I don't dream any more and I am terribly worried. Yesterday I was chatting with Mr. Wilson and he misses my dreams. I miss them too, Mr. Wilson! I try and I try but I just seem to dream no longer. Although I have the feeling that I have just waken up from a dream... a sweet, sweet dream...

no fotografiamos las cosas como son

fotografiamos las cosas como somos...


¨Las fotos buenas son las de los instantes entre los instantes¨. Javier, un amigo fotografo.

¨La fotografia tiene que ver con el instante eterno y ese instante es el instante de la muerte¨. Idem.

¨No fotografio nada solo fotografio cosas que tengo en la cabeza¨. Idem.

the dance of minds

Body. Noun. 1 a :The main part of a plant or animal body especially as distinguished from limbs and head : TRUNK

Mind. Noun. 2 a : the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons.

Minds and not bodies are what we feel attracted to. Beautiful minds are trapped in all sorts of different bodies, beautiful bodies, ugly bodies, young bodies, old bodies, men´s bodies, women´s bodies...

Minds are what we fancy not the size of a breast, not the colour of an eye, not the shape of a body... Minds are what turn us on.

Some days ago I met an incredible person who could be my grandfather. This type of meetings always make me think, if these people´s bodies were different, 40 years younger for instance, would my perception of them be different too...?

Do the bodies affect the minds or it´s only the minds which affect the bodies?

walt whitman

Hoy, antes del alba, subi a la colina, mire a los cielos
apretados de luminarias y le dije a mi espiritu: cuando conozcamos
todos esos mundos y el placer y la sabiduria de todas las cosas
que contienen, estaremos tranquilos y satisfechos? y mi espiritu contesto
No! ganaremos esas alturas solo para seguir adelante.

Walt Whitman

soul mates 2

She asked him why people met, he replied that to learn something from each other. In that very moment she knew he would become a special person for her.

The first time they met she needed to tie a slipknot. She asked him to do it, he didn't know how. The look in his eyes, frank, clear, deep blue. By a cosmical coincidence they both had decided to travel to the same islands on the same ship, on the same date.

The next time she saw him he was in a rickshaw in Madras. She spotted him when it passed her by on a sidestreet. He looked different this time, distant. She thought she might had been wrong.

She was excited. It was going to be her first long journey by ship: 3 days, 2 nights. Everybody had told her to take loads of pastimes because in the ocean the hours seemed everlasting. She only had what she always carried along the way: her little black book with her poems in and a book. The English Patient.

She got herself settled in her cabin and went outside to the upper deck. There he was again. "You made it!" She said with a broad smile on her face. They sat down at a table to share a drink.

She can't remember what they talked about. She only remembers that was their first drink together. There would be many more. He made her laugh. It felt warm, close, familiar.

They spent the whole day together going up and down and around the ship. Meeting people, playing cards, laughing.

He had a harmonica. He would play and she would walk at the rhythm of his notes.

She can't remember when she first missed him but it was already on board, probably lying in bed, at night.

He had a chess board and a bucket full of ideas and jokes. He would talk and she would walk with her feet a palm above the ground.

She didn't want to arrive in paradise, her paradise was right there. She could sense the end. She was crying helplessly inside. She wanted to yell at him: "Let's go down together" but she didn't manage to let it out so she stayed on board forever. In her own private paradise.

at the doorstep

the power of random

I left Sumatra a week ago and, during this time, rain has not stopped from pouring down. There have been landslides and floods all over the island.

In the Celebes a commercial plane has crashed. Nearly a hundred people have died.

Now I am in Thailand. There were six bomb blasts on New Year´s Eve in Bangkok and subsequently in other cities.

I am safe and sound although I cannot help thinking that I have been getting away all this time. I guess it´s not my time. Furthermore I say to myself that all the events I´ve been through have helped me out. Many others are not able to say so.

dutchmen

Why do we make the choices we make? Why do we open our guidebook and with our finger choose one place and not another? Why did I book that room in that guest house last week and not any other? Why do people meet?

I just happened to have met the most amazing couple of guys. They're dutchmen. Their age is a well kept mystery but my guess is they're in their seventies. They are the type of people you never grow tired to listen to. The kind of people that has a perfect story for every moment.

"If you can travel and you can dance, you never get old" one of them told me last night.

I think we meet people to learn from them.

minimal stories

I want to thank all those people who I have had the pleasure to meet last year, because they shared their minimal stories with me and those minimal stories are, in fact, very very big for me.

Eduard, back in India. I'd love to share his life philosophy and say things like "Nos vemos a posteriori!". He made me laugh so much.

Maria who is always preparing, thinking, doing, dancing, ....living... she reminds me of that "I don't have time to get depressed... I am too busy at the moment"

Chris and Yotam with whom I lived some amazing adventures on the Andamans.... our private paradise.

Babeth and Jean Paul who taught me a bit of French and many more things on that island...

James and Vere, the two half-Kiwies. One working part-time on the Antarctica, the other one, capturing life with his camera. James taught me to understand your own family better. Vere, Vere, with that name that actually sounds to me like "beer", by observing him i learned so much about me.

Mike and Rany in Sumatera. Two great people. As simple as that.

Jos and Arnold who had the kidness to share some of their wisdom and amazing stories with me and Cris. Some of those stories dated back to the Second World War and who danced and danced with us...

I feel so grateful. I am so lucky.