The Garden of Tea

I am planning a charity bike ride in March that will cover approximately 300km in 3 days. My main responsiblity is the route. I have it planned out and yesterday I had the chance to actually drive the whole thing. It is a beautiful route encompassing mountains, valleys, and the northwestern coastline of the island of Kyushu. I was stunned by some of the views and pinning for the day when I get to ride the whole thing. The above picture is from route 122 which hugs the coastline. I saw a sign for a "tea road observation point" and drove up it. This was the spectacular view I saw. I had fun wandering through the bushes of tea and snapping away.

On Her Way

I took a lot of photos on my trip in Southeast Asia. About 1,300 clicks of the shutter to be exact. I went through them and I marked just over 500 as being worth editing. That is a lot of work and will take time--maybe even a year. The problem is that I keep taking pictures in the meantime :). It is fun however to see how I have improved and changed in my photographic style. Even since I have started using my first dSLR just over three months ago. So in a way, I am happy I have such a backlog of photos to go through.

Now the photo above. Of the photos I have edited so far, this is among my favorites. Someone else might not give it two looks when looking at a set of my Cambodian pictures, but to me it special. It is hard to quantify what keeps my thinking about and my eye exploring this photo. When I look at it, my eye follows the thin and weathered grandma and her bike out of the frame and my imagination suddenly takes over. I imagine where she is going, the countless hardships and moments of joy that have made up her life. I wonder how she got to such an old age, when I saw so few elderly people in the country. What have her eyes seen? How did she survive the Khmer Rouge? Does she tell her grandchildren stories of that time or does she hold those nightmares close knowing they are more horrifying than any ghost store they have ever heard?

This photo takes my eye and my mind on a journey that it would never have gone on, and this is why I treasure this photo.

Bayon - Tower of Faces

Bayon is a beautifully eerie place. The temple is huge, but it's halls and rooms are constricting. Scrambling up stairways you run into huge faces 1.5 times your size staring at you. As you walk past, you look back to make sure the eyes aren't following you.

Thinking of the time and labor required to build these temples is mind-paralyzing. The scale of them and shear number of them spotting the countryside are amazing. Why did they only teach us about the pyramids in school?

Kids in Cambodia - Free Hospital in a Land of Abundant Need

As we were on our way to Angkor Wat, we stopped at this road crossing. At first nothing was happening, but soon this baby was being wheeled across the street. It turns out we were on a road that goes right through a free children's hospital. It was a little shocking to see, but at least this one was getting cared for. The longer we were in Siem Reap the more children we saw and most of them weren't this lucky.

Kids in Cambodia - I Am More Than My Possessions

A kid loses her sandal and another finds her meal for the day.

Going to the 3rd world where people have few possessions causes use to look past these when judging and valuing a person. This is something we lose living in the developed world where people worry about having an iPhone that is a generation old.

Kids in Cambodia - How You Doing

This kid had a fun attitude and as the sun was setting, he was more interested in having fun then selling anything. I got two nice shots of him. You can see the other one here.

Kids in Cambodia - Off to the Races

A little tyke in Cambodia sprinting to catch up with his sister as she runs after tourists trying to sell postcards. He's just a little too young to start selling.

Buddha's Parasol

Curls of Buddha

Kids in Cambodia - Offering

This scene was heartbreaking. While I was exploring one of the outlying temples near Angkor Wat, she came up to me. She was rail thin and only knew the words "one dollar" in English. She picked a yet to bloom flower and offered it to me. It was the last one within eyesight and all her hope has riding on it.

Kids in Cambodia - Lost in the Land of Giants

Kids in Cambodia - A Beautiful Moment

Kids in Cambodia - Hey

Alone

Midday Nap at Angkor Wat

Kids in Cambodia 2

Kids in Cambodia 1

Pilgrimage through the Heat

Off to Angkor Wat