TRAVEL IDEAS

POV: Passport Renewal

Here's a statement which could irk all the Libertarians and Tea-Party grumblers: I had an excellent experience with the US State Department's Passport renewal process! Yes, a government office!

I had to renew my soon-to-expire passport, and I decided to jump the gun a month or two earlier than necessary.

I wanted my old one back as it still has a number of valid visas....and as I suffer from acute separation anxiety if I don't have my passport within reach (no, I'm not making this up nor is it hyperbole), I chose the expedited route to speed up the process, and downloaded/filled the necessary application, and included a note saying that I needed the old passport back.

As I also wanted extra pages, I spoke to a State Department employee to clarify whether I needed to pay extra. She checked and responded affirmatively. I enclosed the fees required, and sent it off by Priority mail.

A few days later, I get a call from the State Department informing me that I had overpaid. We resolved the snafu in a couple of minutes, and within a few days, the new passport arrived along with the old one.

Easy, simple and very efficient.

Of course, my passport photograph looks like a mug shot...but that's a different matter.

POV: Apple MacBook Air

Well, Apple's announcement that it added two MacBook Air laptops is immensely welcome as it provides an embarrassment of choices to its ever expanding fan base.

I am especially excited by the 11-inch MacBook Air, which measures 11.8 inches by 7.56 inches, and weighs only 2.3 lbs. The 64gb flash memory model starts at $999 and would be ideal as a travel laptop for photographers. Couple it with an external hard drive of whatever storage capacity works for you, and you've got a winner.

And it's $300 more expensive than the iPad (the one sans WiFi)....that's really intelligent pricing.

I guess it isn't really a netbook..or is it? Although Steve Jobs assertion they wouldn't do netbooks, I do think this is a posh netbook...and what I do know for sure is that I'll have to hide my credit cards before Xmas.

Damn!!!

Robert van Koesveld: Bhutan

Robert van Koesveld is a retired psychotherapist living in Perth, Australia. His biography tells us that he delights in meeting with people from all walks of life, and describes as travel's best moments as those in which he encounters these people.

Robert is also about to publish his book Bhutan Heartland, (Fremantle Press, October 2010) which he produced with his wife, Libby Lloyd.

You can also watch the Bhutan Circumambulation video in large QT format here. Some nice bokeh in the movie.

Circumambulation of temples is an important Hindu ritual, and is similarly performed in most religious traditions; from Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I like how circumambulation sounds when it's uttered...but it's a word I can never spell it correctly.

Andrea Johnson: Burma

Andrea Johnson is a photojournalist specializing in documenting the wine and spirits, food, and travel industries. Her photographs regularly appear in related publications such as Wine Spectator, Food and Wine, VIA, Northwest Palate, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Additionally, Andrea has photographed three books: Passion for Pinot (Ten Speed Press, 2008), Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest, (Workman Press, 2010), and Luscious – 100 recipes and Insider Stories from Oregon Fruit Growers, Artisans, and Chefs (Arnica, 2011).

Take a look at her photographs of Burma in the above movie, which she made in February 2010. The fabulous Shwedagon Pagoda, the famed fishermen of Inle Lake, the monasteries with the Buddhist novices and nunneries with the pink-clad nuns, the Shin Laung initiates having their heads shaved, and the ageless U-Bein bridge are all captured by Andrea's lenses....and naturally, the Burmese smiling faces with thanaka paste.

I would have used a different transition between the photographs...I found the zoom-in too distractingly repetitive. The simple (and most common) cut transition is always the best, as it's the way we "see".

Sulawesi Surprise!: Leaving on a Bus

Oh, traveling back to Makassar - It would be such a long journey that you'd rather just pack your bag and leave on a jet plane. If you are reminded of Peter, Paul and Mary who recorded the late John Denver's Leaving on a Jet Plane in 1967, well, that couldn't be help. My friends and I were leaving Tana Toraja and using the same long route seemed so much like a bore that I thought it would be nice to just pack and leave on a jet plane but then of course, we were leaving on a bus. There would be a lot of greenery on the way and you'd probably get tired of the green green grass since they were not actually the green green grass of home. Now, perhaps you are reminded of the Welsh singer, Tom Jones and his rendition of the country song, Green Green Grass of Home. Never mind, just don't just snooze off. The journey should not be as boring as I made it. Besides the fabulous erotic mountains, there would be surprises yet...

Would you by any chance be interested in the limestone hills along the way?

Traveling Tip: Get ready for surprises!

Theodore Kaye: Theyyam Dancers

Theodore Kaye grew up in China, India and Indonesia. While majoring in Film, he studied also Uzbek and Farsi and worked as a newspaper editor and mountain guide in Central Asia.

Subsequently he was a staff photographer at Rhythms Monthly, a Chinese-language geographic magazine, and covered stories in India, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Japan, Ireland and Great Britain. His work has been featured by the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Asahi Shimbun and the National Film Board of Canada.

I was particularly attracted to his Theyyam Dancers of North Kerala for the vibrancy of his photographs. Interestingly, it seems that Theodore was guided to these performances by a contact who lives in Dubai, and organized his Keralite relatives and neighbors to provide him with all the support he needed to document these dances.

Theyyam is a unique ritual which is performed only in Northern Kerala. After a complex preparatory ritual involving elaborate make-up and meditation, the performers are incarnated as deities, and dispense advice and counseling to the throngs of devotees who attend these rituals. It's a living cult of several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs, and is observed by all the castes and classes in this region.

My own gallery of Theyyam Incarnate Deities is here.

The Travel Photographer's Channel on Vimeo

I've converted a number of my audio slideshows to mp4 movies, which are also iPad-compatible, and grouped them in a Vimeo channel. The channel is (obviously) called The Travel Photographer Channel....so this is a heads-up for TTP's readers to drop by and comment or "like" or whatever.

I prefer Vimeo to YouTube...I think its quality is better, and it seems to be more "serious" in its inventory of movies.