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រូបភាពនៅលើគេហទំព័រនេះមិនមែនសម្រាប់លក់ទេ។
I hate weddings. The sadness. The despair. The loss of hope.
There was nothing we could do...
Elvis for an hour at a wedding
Best dancer I ever saw in my life, bar-none, anywhere, whether on TV or in movies or in a club -- it was truly something to see. The man. Not the daughter
This one lasted right at 30 hours
Hopefully this one lasted longer
Seeing cotton candy (candy floss) for the first time
Seeing cotton candy (candy floss) for the first time
Seeing cotton candy (candy floss) for the first time
Seeing cotton candy (candy floss) for the first time -- oops. Shouldn't have said that
Christmas in SE Asia. They have no clue what it's about -- just like American kids
Homeless family. There are no safety nets here
MyMateNate and his wife and child. No, no, we have no idea who those people are -- just some groupie and a child she snatched for this picture 5555
MyMateNate on YouTube -- SQUID GAMES at
Sanook Water Park, Jomtien, Thailand!
Hey! What are all those little white things? Oh! Oh! They're moving!! Gonna have to shave it---
ABOVE TWO: I was walking down a trail in central/eastern Laos with my "guide", looking for a longboat to take me to another island. We stumbled on this tiny school, open on three sides and elevated on poles, the only access being a rickety ladder leading up onto what was essentially a covered platform. There were about thirty kids and since this school allowed all of them to bring their pets there were 40-50 animals of every kind roaming among the desks. I found it beyond delightful. They had never seen a white person before and for the life of them they couldn't figure out why I couldn't speak their language. No doubt they just thought I was retarded. The whole world speaks Laotian, right? Of course it does. They were just breaking for lunch but no one had any lunch at all. There was a jungle "store" about 50 meters away, which consisted of some blue plastic tarps tied between banana trees, and some items for sale sealed in old US Army trunks to keep the snakes and critters out. No signs, no labels. It closed at dusk because no lights (no electricity, though they had heard of that). For $30us I bought enough snacks to give each student about four or five things and we passed them out. This nearly cleaned out the jungle shop of everything. The students were stunned. The teacher cried. After they ate (and the critters got at least half) they sang us a song which was pretty close to the sweetest thing I had experienced in this lifetime. When we tried to travel on they hung on us like crying kittens -- especially me -- my Laotian guide was nothing special to them -- and I had to literally gently pry them off as we got farther and farther from the school. Sad and sweet. I never got back there but I want to. It was a miserable place to reach, hours and hours in the backs of trucks, then hours and hours by longboat with unknown schedules and often even unknown and unknowable destinations. You paid your money and you took your chances. My Laotian guide couldn't even figure it out half the time and there was a lot of arguing between them, sometimes very heated, then more hours of walking, and you were often forced to pay little tolls on the trails, demanded by kids who had set up booths from scraps of lumber and driftwood. Once the price to continue on a path was exorbitant and we refused. They summoned the one policeman and he insisted -- pay, or don't walk on the trail, or go to jail. Who knows what the "jail" consisted of -- probably a chicken coup. I should have stayed to photograph all the abandon US military equipment hidden in the jungle. Tanks, cannons, jeeps. And French equipment too, from the early days of what they call The American War (Vietnam). There is a hatred in Laos towards Americans over that, especially among the older folks. It's pervasive and visceral -- quite strong and enduring, and it's mostly deserved: An estimated 30 per cent of the 270 million sub-munitions dropped on the country did not detonate and are still armed and live today. Indeed, two of the kids in this class were missing limbs from mines hidden in the jungle vegetation. I learned to stay on only the most well-traveled paths in Laos and Cambodia, even to relieve one's self in the jungle. Four+ decades after the war, these deadly items remain a persistent threat and daily reality for thousands of communities across Laos. Obama announced that the US has a responsibility to "help" Laos clean up this US-made mess. No, it does not. It has a responsibility to clean ALL of it up, not just "help". I volunteered repeatedly in Laos for mine-clearing details but was rebuffed in every instance because I was male, the reason cited as being: "Men don't have the temperament to do this job; you'll just get us all blown up." It's done almost exclusively by very patient females and trained rats.
SQUID GAMES!
With MyMateNate!
in Jomtien, Chonburi, Thailand!
December, 2021