Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

Alternative title:

I'm going to Zanzibar, to see the Zanzibarbarians!

HOLY CRAP, I'M GOING TO AFRICA!! Not a very eloquent start to the blog, I know, but it quite nicely conveys they way I'm feeling at the moment :P

For those of you who haven't already seen it on Facebook, I have won a travel photography/writing competition run by Leica to go to AFRICA to follow in the footsteps of David Livingstone to Zanzibar, Tanzania and Victoria Falls, Zambia. I will receive the new Leica V-Lux 2 digital camera (Camera geeks: 14MP bridge camera, 24x built-in optical zoom = 23 - 600mm focal length equivalent cf 35mm, f2.8 - 5.2, ISO 80 - 1600, AF tracking, macro mode. full HD video, jpg and RAW... plus it's a LEICA), €750 worth of The North Face outdoor gear & clothing plus a budget of €2000 Euros to make it all happen.

Here's the official announcement on Leica's Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/faWR1K

The catch - it has to happen QUICK SMART. Email received on 30 Nov, official acceptance of prize plus terms & conditions via email required by 3 Dec, flight/tour booking confirmation required by 10 Dec. Travel to be completed by end Feb 2011, but then take into account that I'm going to wintersport in Austria (where there are no kangaroos) from Feb 19 - 26 ... HOLY CRAP that's not very long. Cue the panic in 3.... 2.... 1.............

And panic I did! Firstly I had to look up Zanzibar and Vic Falls on a map (thanks Google Maps) then figure out how to get my ass from A to B in the space of 2 weeks. After much hemming and hawing I decided to go with an organised tour run by GAP Adventures, they have a 15-day tour going from Zanzibar to Vic Falls across southern Tanzania, along Lake Malawi and across Zambia to the falls. Perfect? I think so! I'll be travelling with a group of around 20 other travellers in a 4WD open bus, camping under the African stars. A real adventure if i ever saw one :)
Being the super-organised (if somewhat panicked and pressed for time) person that I am, I've already ordered the Lonely Planet East Africa and Lonely Planet Zambia & Malawi guidebooks from a lovely company in the UK that does free shipping (try finding English LPs in Holland - NOT GONNA HAPPEN). Done some topline digging on Livingstone, turns out he did a lot of exploring in the East African region in the 1860's and 1870's and lots of places are named after him. He's something of a hero in Zanzibar, and I think it will be fun discovering the places he's been and the influence he left behind. Once all the admin is out of the way I will look forward to reading up all about him and bookmarking some places to go.

Dr Livingstone himself

I get one of these!
(Surprise! It's actually the same camera as the Panasonic Lumix FZ100 - below - but with a red Leica dot... go corporate takeovers )

So now I'm getting stuck in, organising flights, tour bookings, yellow fever vaccinations and the list goes on... hope to have it all finished off in another week or so so I can start enjoying the lead-up :) One thing I very quickly found out though, €2000 Euros sounds like a lot of money but it actually doesn't get you very far once you start adding up all the costs (flights, tour, accommodation, food, visas, vaccinations and insurance etc.) but all in all, I get a €3000 holiday for considerably less, plus a new camera (ALWAYS welcome!) and top quality outdoor gear. Awesome!

P.S. I wonder if this means I have to edit myself a bit more carefully now, since people all over the world will be reading, or should I continue to be my highly observant, sometimes griping but always entertaining self? Your votes, people!

And if you're like me, you've never heard of Malawi except in this context...

Don't you just wanna wrap yourself in it?

Nope, I'm not over the novelty of snow yet! Just wanted to share a few snaps of our recent mini blizzard. Enjoy!

Click on this one to see the snow falling through the window!


and here are a few from my new collection, focusing on textures. I want to evoke a feeling of warmth & coziness, as if you could just wrap yourself up in the photo. 3 abstracts then a couple with a little more context. The white one is a closeup of the texture of the wool coat I had made in Vietnam
This is currently my favourite scarf (which, as a scarfaholic, I have a gazillion of), it's bright pink and advertises my personal quest to fight the grey, black and beige-ness that is taking over winter fashion in Europe. GIVE ME SOME COLOUR BEFORE I DROWN IN MONOCHROME!

SNOWvember in Holland!

Hi everyone,

Last Sunday marked my 2 month anniversary of arriving in Holland. Can you believe how fast the time has gone? In 2 months I’ve managed to visit Amsterdam (4 times),

Leiden (twice),

(that's Dr. Jane Goodall, foremost chimpanzee behavioural researcher and primatologist)

Groningen,

Hengelo,

Brussels,

and of course my 'hometown' Alkmaar

with Den Haag coming up next weekend. I got myself a train discount card – something I probably should have done 2 months ago, in hindsight – which gives me 40% off all NL train travel and 25% off all international train travel, and I plan to make good use of it in the coming 12 months.

But so far the most exciting thing has been the SNOW! Everybody had been dreading a repeat of last year (we all remember the satellite photo of the UK totally painted white) and there was a run on winter tyres, but it had been fairly mild until then. Then THIS happened:


Having only seen real snowfall once before in my life, I couldn’t contain my excitement and much to Emily’s embarrassment, was running around like a madwoman screaming “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!!”. In the middle of Amsterdam. I felt like a child, and I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot. It was the happiest feeling in the world! :)




It kept snowing right through the night and on Tuesday morning the whole world was covered in a blanket of white. It looked just like a fairytale! The perfect excuse – and perfectly justified – to bust out my snow boots, which we’d bought at Intratuin for €19.95 a number of weeks ago to use at wintersport. I’ve been living in my snow boots ever since :) It’s a hugely liberating feeling to run through a piece of grass that’s covered in snow, kick it around, lie down in it and make a snow angel, pick it up and throw it around, and generally marvel at the coolness (no pun intended) of this odd, fluffy, cold white stuff falling from the sky. 27 years old? Pffffft I’m a
tourist, I’m allowed :)

Today during my lunchbreak I went outside and played in the snow with one of my colleagues (who also looked on, bemused at my reaction but secretly enjoying it as well), then came back inside and had a (free) hot chocolate from the machine. Who needs the Swiss Alps or Canadian
Rockies when you’ve got a carpark and courtyard?





Stay tuned for a picture of my very own dog sled (have to build it first, wait for enough snow then convince the dog to pull it)…

Here are some photos to make you think

Welcome to the new look blog! I've given it a fresh coat of paint & a new header image, to signify the start of the Holland chapter (only 7 weeks too late). I'll post some fun things in the next wee while but in the meantime, I wanted to share a couple of snaps from the World Press Photography Exhibition I went to in Groningen over the weekend. It's hard core photojournalism at its finest; hard-hitting, often gruesome and unpleasant photos, but ones that really make you think. I liked how one of the photographers described his set as "challenging perceptions" - the idea of shaking up what you think you know and making you see things in a different light/perspective. So here you are.

This is the Photo of the Year, I personally think it's a bit blah but hey I'm not a judge.

>Pietro Masturzo, Italy.Women shout their dissent from a Tehran rooftop on 24 June, following Iran’s disputed presidential election. The result had been a victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, but there were allegations of vote-rigging. In the ensuing weeks, violent demonstrations took place in the streets. At night, people shouted from the roofs, an echo of protests that took place during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

I personally found this set to be my favourite. Brutal, in-your-face, but so refreshingly honest. How can you not respect that?

It's nice hi-res so click on it to see more detail.

This set reminded me of City of God, the Brazilian film. This set is actually from Guinea Buisseau, where the Prime Minister got shot then chopped up with a machete, and people wrap up cocaine in condom pellets to smuggle across borders. I wondered how the photographer managed to get himself in these situations and be able to take the pictures, let alone publish them.

Link to the winners' gallery 2010:
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/index.php?option=com_photogallery&task=blogsection&id=20&Itemid=257&bandwidth=low

If you're in or near a city where the exhibition is going to be on display, I highly recommend you go.

Until next time
ML

Ewen Bell's famous China Photography Tour - Part 3

Welcome to sassy, savvy Shanghai. It's glitzy, it's glamorous, it's modern, it's commercial... but underneath it all it's still very Chinese.


The last stop on Ewen's photographic tour of China. My last stop on the 6-month tour of Asia, before flying to Holland to start a new life. A lot of emotions running through me at this point; mostly the conflict between wanting to keep travelling and just wanting to go home. After a few crushing lows in Vietnam involving calls to Canada & New Zealand at all hours, I'd had another one in Yangshuo and had come to the realisation that 6 months of continuous travel is just too much for me. It gets very weary having to hunt for food, hunt for accommodation and constantly hustle to get the best (or even the most reasonable) price. Being on the tour and having everything arranged was a big relief, but I just couldn't shake the underlying wanting to go home-ness and wanting familiar things-ness. I still can't shake them - at best you can distract yourself with new and interesting things, but generally you have to learn to live with them.

So Shanghai was everything we expected and more! The lights were brighter, everything was larger than life, and the hotel was LUXURIOUS beyond belief. It even had a gym! Yes I went for a good long run and it felt good.

We visited the antiques market in the Old Shanghai part of town. Totally unfindable if you don't know where it is - truth be told we nearly didn't find it even with Ewen and Yi Ran giving the driver directions. Inside was a treasure trove of carved jade pieces, calligraphy, old coins and trinkets of all descriptions. All of it on the top floor was authentic stuff, sellers come in from all around on Saturdays for the ghost market because it's so well known amongst local antique dealers. Downstairs are the regular (local) tourist stands selling mass-produced strings of jade, jade stamps, posters of Mao etc. and on the ground floor you can get your jade professionally strung & finished. I bought a beautifully carved jade piece which I had strung on red cord, very Chinese!


After the ghost market we headed to the local market of old Shanghai to take photos of a rapidly disappearing community. It was an interesting atmosphere, a mish-mash of things I'd seen in other markets. Old ladies dressed in pyjama outfits doing the daily grocery shopping (freshly cut frog by the kilo), smartly dressed ladies taking their smartly dressed dogs for a stroll while picking up some laundry, old men walking their grandchildren and just enjoying life out on the street. We saw all sorts, and it was a very interesting contrast to the sky-high steel & glass skyscrapers of the Bund.

Proud grandpa with baby

That is one angry cat

Filet of frog?

This old man was proudly walking the street with a book about the disappearing old Shanghai, which has a picture of him in it

I'm not sure why he's carrying a mattress

We finished up the tour with cocktails on the observation deck of one of the tallest towers (I forget which one - a tall one), followed by one last fabulous dinner at Grandma's restaurant (or something like that) - Ewen's favourite restaurant! And I must say, the pork was fantastic. It was all fantastic! If my metabolism hadn't been in overdrive from constant travel and I hadn't lost 8kg in punishing tropical climates. I'm sure I would have packed it on in these 2 weeks. (As it were, I've packed them on here in Holland, as expected)

I had the last 2 days to myself to unwind & prepare for the move to Europe. I moved to a hostel downtown (a very nice and very professional hostel, I might add, with own cafe/restaurant and comfy lounge suites, probably the best hostel I've ever stayed in), strolled along the Bund, took the obligatory pictures of the Pearl and meandered up & down Nanjing Road. Close to the hostel was a huge shopping mall filled with western brands, so I indulged in a little (actually, a lot) of retail therapy and spent a whole day in the mall trying on jeans and jumpers in prep for Europe. I introduced myself to Zara, Esprit, Benetton, M.A.C., and a raft of other international brands, bought a pair of jeans and cute cartoon cat jumper, ate one last Big Mac Combo and on 27 September, said goodbye to Asia for good.

~ breathe out ~