Author Archives: jose

Arrival in Yogyakarta

by jose

The rising sun was painting the sky in hues seldom heard of: shy purple, hesitating blue, grays melting into whites as the stream of dreamy clouds passed by. I closed my eyes, at peace.

I opened them again what seemed but an instant later. New colors had appeared behind the windscreen: different tints of orange were struggling to see which one would become yellow first. The time read 6.14. The lady had said we would arrive at 6, but then, we had left an hour and a half late, so…

The bus stopped, once more. I lazily let my eyes wander to the side to watch the passengers recover their luggage from the hold. There was actually only one passenger. It was hard to focus, but I did nonetheless.

It was Aldi.

And he was frantically making me sign to get off the bus.

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Quickly, about Malaysia

by jose

Almost as quickly as we went through it. Following our beautiful, inspiring journey through Myanmar, we only spent a grand total of ten days in Malaysia — where to head to, given so little time? After Kuala Lumpur, the thriving megalopolis which was no more than an arrival point for us, we quickly made our way to Pulau Perenthian Kecil (small Perenthian island) before exploring Penang and its bright, exploding mishmash of cultural heritages.

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Burmese portraits

by jose

 

The openness and friendliness of the Burmese people allowed me to practice something I usually seldom do: portraits. So during our three-day trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake, going up and down hills, between rice terraces and vegetable fields, passing through remote villages and sleeping in a monastery, I tried to capture the diversity of the people we met on the way.

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The Plain of Bagan

by jose

More than four thousand Buddhist temples (you read it right. Four thousand) were built in the plain of Bagan between the 11th and the 13th century — and Myanmar stays, still today, known as one of the most devout Buddhist countries in the world. This incredible landscape, offered by innumerable pagodas piercing the green forests to reach the sky, is fully as breathtaking as the massive temples of Angkor were, back in Cambodia — despite their differences. Here, to the sheer size, complexity and grandeur of single monuments, the kings preferred the numbers, diversity, and immensity of the panorama.

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Countryside

by jose

“Left or right?”

I had no memory of that roundabout. The way to the bridge we had taken to cross the Ayeyarwady river was ahead, but I could not recall which direction we had come from. I had been too busy striving to follow the villager — who had showed us the way to Sagaing Hill on his own motorbike — to memorize reference points.

“No idea!” came the reply behind me.

“Whatever. Let’s eat at that restaurant over there,” I suggested while pointing at a building, which was actually no more than a roof above packed tables and low stools set on the bare ground. It was filled with locals. That was a very good sign.

“Yeah, looks amazing”

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Koh Tao, Thailand

by jose

We met up with Salome and Fernando, two old friends of Ladina’s, in Bangkok, the capital of the kingdom of Thailand. And after an evening of plotting and scheming, we all decided to head straight to the heavenly tropical islands of the South. So we made a run to the train station, dodged the touts trying to enlist us in an travel agency package, bought tickets in a sleeper train to Chumphon, came back under heavy rain in the evening, discovered inside the carriage that our tickets had been issued for two days hence, ran to the controllers, argued at the counter, changed our tickets for seats in a later train, sat down in the station hall to play Yatzy, and finally, boarded our train bound south.

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