Tag: Thailand

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

Burma, Photography, Thailand

IMG_8731

Meet this child. I don’t know his name. I didn’t talk to him – I can’t speak his language. He’s a refugee. Whether he was born in Myanmar/Burma or in the refugee camp, I don’t know. He’s one of many. There are an estimated 160,000 refugees in camps on the Thai-Burma border, and 40-50,000 of those are in the largest, Mae La. All of those need food rations, bamboo rations, charcoal rations, drinking water, electricity, blankets, a home, somewhere to go when the camps are closed, an education, a teacher, a future. All of that costs money. It can be easy to think in numbers. But remember that each refugee is unique and has his or her own story to tell. What will happen to this little boy when the camps are closed?

28.11.12

Burma, Photography, Thailand, Travel Photography

Today, the majority of my students and I hiked for three hours to the river that separates Thailand from Burma. We met at 5am, and set off before 6, arriving just as the sun started to break through the morning clouds. The far side of the river is Burma, the near side is Thailand.

This place – the first place we arrived at – we decided to leave because we could see the DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army) stationed across the river.

05.11.12

Photography, Thailand

One of the students who volunteered to cook for me every day. She’s only 18 but she’s like my mother here!

It’s interesting to look back at the pictures I’ve taken this year, and how the style has developed and changed depending on where I’ve been living and what I’ve been doing. I’ve only really started taking pictures of people in the last six weeks. What do you think?

20.10.12

Photography, Thailand

My breakfast is typically a cup of the sweetest tea known to humankind, with something fried like whatever this is. It used to make me feel incredibly sick, but now I rely on it as my only source of sugar and fat during the day. One of the other teachers told me that sugar is incredibly expensive here, so when they go to a tea shop they invariably spoon a huge amount of sugar into their tea. It tastes more like hot chocolate!

 

18.10.12

Photography, Thailand

As it was taken a little sneakily with my phone camera (I’m never going to feel comfortable whipping my D-SLR out and taking close-up pictures of people I don’t know), it’s hardly the best picture. Believe it or not, we’re moving quite fast. We’re sitting in (or hanging off the back of) a songthaew (much smaller than the one shown on 16.10.12) and all of these people are refugees travelling back to camp.

05.10.12

Photography, Thailand

A 40 minute adventurous hike/scramble/slide/climb up muddy cliff slopes through jungle infested with stinging plants, mosquitoes and ants brought me to a place where I could see half of the camp. Unfortunately, there were so many trees that my photos don’t show the majority of camp – this is less than a quarter of it. Note the golden roof of the monastery to the left under the smoke.

04.10.12

Thailand

I’m sorry for the poor quality of this photo. The white on the right-hand side is actually a whiteboard in the teacher’s offie that I have to lift away from the wall.

This is a Tokay Gecko. It has a very distinctive call which is worth listening to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mating_call_of_a_male_Tokay_gecko_(Gekko_gecko).ogg

Apparently, it can be quite dangerous; if it bites you it doesn’t let go for up to an hour or more. This one seems to be quite small – it’s about 20cm.

27.09.12

Photography, Thailand, Travel Photography

 

 

My first ever attempt at taking photographs of lightening certainly taught me one or two things. Firstly, I don’t really know how to use the manual mode on my camera, and I really should do by now! Secondly, sheet lightening doesn’t look like much more than a generic sunset on photographs. I was lucky that the only instance of fork lightening I saw all night happened to be when the camera’s shutter was open. And thirdly, even if the lightening itself looks quite dramatic, the foreground really does need to be interesting to make the photograph work. These are the only two photographs in the 15 I took that came out OK at all.

24.09.12

Photography, Thailand

This is where I shower. There’s a hosepipe to fill up the water barrel and then a smaller bowl inside it to pour the water over me. The black bowl on the floor is for washing clothes. Obviously there’s no hot water, but in this heat it’s hardly a problem! I have complete privacy in this little hut, but I think I’m just about the only person who showers here; everyone else showers in a sarong outside, behind a fence, often talking to their friends. The hut is a typical wooden hut, but it has a concrete floor and the water just drains away into the ground outside.

23.09.12

Photography, Thailand

One of the older-style squat toilets where you have to awkwardly climb up first and then squat! There’s a bucket of water to flush it with, filled by a hosepipe, and they keep the toilet spotlessly clean. It can be fun to watch the centipedes (which can apparently be dangerous here), spiders, cockroaches and lizards run around inside the hut!

22.09.12

Photography, Thailand

Some of my photos are turning out to be quite similar it seems! Unfortunately this is something to do with the fact that I can’t really leave the sheltered section of the camp I’m in due to the fact that I don’t have a permit to be here. For that reason, I haven’t started walking around with a camera just yet and have stuck to taking landscape images from my little area.

 

21.09.12

Photography, Thailand

 

The French NGO Solidarites has helped to install decent sanitation facilities throughout camp. This is the ladies toilet, and the hut to the left houses the bucket shower.  The hosepipe comes from a pipe buried underground (in places) and has a direct tap into the toilet, which you use to fill up with bucket to flush it with. The hosepipe also feeds the barrel for the bucket shower (left) and the barrel for the kitchen and shower of a house just out of the picture to the right. It works really well.

20.09.12

Photography, Thailand

One of the three classrooms I teach in here. I don’t quite get on with it; the only reason being that the teacher is elevated about 60 cm above the class, and I’m not used to it! Other than that, it’s great. People walk past the open side quite often, but the students are used to it and concentrate on me regardless. The other two classrooms here are smaller and next to each other – if one class is working in the workshop or having a lesson involving speaking, I personally find it very difficult to concentrate on my teaching!

16.09.12

Photography, Thailand

You can just about see the roofs of the huts opposite in amongst the trees, and on the far left above the roof, the lighter parts are actually roofs of buildings. Unfortunately I had to compress the file so much to upload it that you probably can’t tell!

10.09.12

Photography, Thailand

Mae Sot village

I’m really not having much luck with my photography at the moment. Firstly, my original canon battery has died. Then I forgot my camera, and today I left my memory card in my laptop so this is taken with my phone, which chose to ignore the pinks and purples also present in the sky at the time.