Connections this week between the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge and finding oneself in Odense, Denmark leads to a story-teller.
World famous Hans Christian Andersen.
The Ugly Duckling was written by H.C. Andersen
The Emperor’s New Clothes translated to Hindi
An impressive career as a writer mostly known for fairy tales.
Thanks for the prompt.
Coffee, Powerlines and other Stimuli:
Up for a cup? Always. I’m ALWAYS up for a cup of joe. I’ll have it in all forms. Hot, cold, was hot, mocha, latte, just a shot, whatever it is… yes please, I’m a junkie.
Traveling and on a lean budget leads to a lot of instant coffee. At times you only have a kettle and a 7-11. I’ve dug old espresso makers out of the back of cupboards and brought them back to life. I need my fix…
I have searched for a good instant blend and maybe I have just gotten used to them rather than think they are good. “Acceptable” is common.
But when the price is right I find the local joe.
Bali and other places seem to put what I call weasel coffee (Luwak in Bali) on a high pedestal. Like lobster of the seafood category, This coffee is harvested after passing through a mongoose, roasted and priced accordingly. 
Yes, you can taste the difference between male and female brew. Enough of that crap. Let’s talk about Vietnam.
Vietnam offered, and I couldn’t turn down, cà phê sữa nong. Slow pour over espresso with condensed milk. Small but powerful.
Just yesterday I had a beautiful Coffee Coa in Denmark. A shot of espresso and a piece of chocolate melted into it. Hygge in a cup. There is no photographic evidence of the actual cup but this one came close. It’s a cappuccino in a red cafe with candles on every table. Lovely and 25 Krone.
Ok enough coffee. What is up with the electricians in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand? Is there a contest I’m missing?
There are lines laying on the ground and hanging low across sidewalks in Da Nang begging the question, “It that hot?”. I didn’t stick around to find out.
Code? What Code? I’m not an electrician but I do know this wouldn’t fly in my neighborhood.
Other stimuli: Pull tab Beers.
A chicken egg washed up on the beach of Cambodia. Weathered yet still intact except for being hollow. It was out-of-place and appears to be somewhat space like. Reminds me of those earth pics from space at night showing the city lights.
I’m pretty excited about this challenge. My family has been traveling around the world for 6 months. I’m hoping these challenges get me back on the writing horse.
I seem stuck. Maybe it’s the culture and climate change that came with being in SE Asia for 4 months then finding yourself in Denmark taking care of a farmhouse in the snow.
Thanks WordPress for the prompt.
WordPress weekly photo challenge
She seems blue.
Bo Sang Umbrella Festival outside Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Better late than not at all. This is my first entry to the photo challenge prompt.
A photo challenge from WordPress WP Photo Challenge. Trying to spur some sort of writing flow.
Surfers Paradise, Australia tops:
Not many people seem to pay attention to what is above them. I can be on a balcony and watch folks stroll by not knowing that I am up.
My family grew up bird watching. If I catch a glimpse of a wing flap then I look for a nest or a perch. Doing this and being in several storied buildings I’m able to catch a different perspective and learn a bit about rooftops around the world.
Look for the decoration and the occasional critter. Pay attention to the materials, angles, lines, and construction. I find it interesting. I’ll note locations.
Bali tops:
Lego Land & Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia tops:
Singapore tops:
Vietnam top:
Thailand tops:
Bricks: The building blocks of Southeast Asia.
Behind every layer of cement lies a layer of red-orange (aka brick-red). It doesn’t matter if the building is purple or fluorescent green or both (Thailand), it’s still brick on the inside.
Each new Air b-n-b includes a near by construction site allowing you to play such games as “Guess what time the crew will start tomorrow.”, “What tool makes that much noise?”, “I don’t think THAT is OSHA approved.”, and “Do you see any safety harnesses?”.
Down every street and in most driveways is a stack of bricks. I watched a woman move an entire pallet sized pile from one side of the alley to the other. It was a 1.5 meter move and I wondered if it actually needed to be done. Maybe she was rearranging?
Vietnam was where I really started to notice. Da Nang was the clear winner in the brick pile competition. I think it’s because of their drive to become the Singapore of Vietnam. Every patch of land along what used to be called China Beach is being built up into high-rise condos or a hotel.
Go Broncos!
Hue and Hanoi were doing well also.
I guess not much attention to detail here. some of the letters are up some down. It really set me off.
We even passed the brick factory on our way to Halong Bay. Passing by a small town on the left side I marveled at the field full of neatly stacked piles and pillars that looked like a miniature city scape. A brick Hobbiton.
Some may say that SE Asia is built on bamboo and palm fronds and they certainly use a lot of each for almost everything. I also know I get fixated on a subject and soon I’m seeing bricks everywhere.
I rest my case with My Son.
The like new looking bricks are the originals. The black and deteriorating are the modern rebuild.
Built of brick and tree sap between 400 AD and 1400 AD the building are still standing. Located in the jungle of central Vietnam. Worn by moisture, weather and war, My Son is truly a marvel in construction to this day. Bricks layered without cement. Stacked and set to dry, the ancient construction is not holding the moisture. This baking of the bricks is what makes them better than the ones used for reconstruction.
Writing from the confines of a four bunk cabin rumbling along the tracks of the Vietnam Railway I have decided to expand minds by explaining SPACE. You may be thinking “What does Gurr know about space?” or ” When has he had time to learn such a vast subject enough to explain it as if he’s Carl Segan?”. Well to tell the truth, I don’t really know shit about space.
My brother, Casey, knows a lot more that I do so maybe you want to ask him to explain that kind of space. Man, I haven’t even seen stars for the past three weeks. We have been in big cities giving off light pollution.
I’m talking about space in the sense of your whereabouts and places you find yourself in around the world.
Ok, all aboard! Like I said we are on the train. A journey that is expected to be about eighteen hours.
We are seven hours into it. The space is just as you would expect from on of the James Bond movie chase sceans. A sliding door that won’t stay open and might stay closed, a tiny table and four beds thirty inches wide, exactly (trust me, I have worked in metro shelving and kitchen countertops for years.). After our $1.50 per person hot meal we started to enjoy the company of small cockroaches and a little mouse. And don’t forget the neighboring young boy that keeps peering through the window at us. All these guests have my wife and two boys sleeping up in the top bunks leaving me to patrol the ground level.
We are fascinating to the locals. The boys because they are young and white, with me getting a lot of looks due to my beard. It’s all about location though. If you hang out in the area of Ho Chi Minh City where the westerners are then you just get pressured to buy sunglasses, lighters, cigarettes, fans and such. You don’t get the flat out stare in the face, the look to the boys from the women, old and young, who just smile and maybe reach out for a touch of such a rare creature. Oakley was having none of that. Canyon on the other hand just gave them a smile back and went on with his business.
As I report on various spaces I have been in I want you to think of where you are. What is your space?
Australia is huge. You can’t go for a visit thinking you’ll be able to see all the sights unless you have about a year.
This is the poster the car rental company had up in the office. A subtle way of saying “Have fun exploring Bulgaria.”
We would bring up a map planning the nine days we have between housesits in Gold Coast and Brisbane. We started pointing out places of interest and dreaming of a grand tour of the coast around Fraser Island and up into The Great Barrier Reef.
Caravan here we come! 
We thought we would be able to zip here and there. The fact is the map isn’t to scale. It couldn’t be. Maybe it’s the Kilometer that throws you off? Anyway we quickly changed to a smaller area of interest after traveling for a few days with three and six hour dives only to be able to explore the destination before sleeping and zipping (we were right about that part) to the next location the following morning.
My recommendation is to plan on staying somewhere for two nights at the least. The night you arrive after the drive and another night so you’re able to enjoy the area.
Our caravan tested our patience a few times being a bit tight and having to transform it from drive mode to sleep mode to eat mode.
The Boys up top doing a bit of reading.
We got pretty fast at it and I’m pretty sure I broke a Queenslander record on the last two days as I set it up for drive mode.
Bali is small. With so many tourist pics of empty white sand beaches and vast rice terraces there is an expectation of room to move. I think it’s a toss up.
Arriving at the airport and walking through what seemed to be the largest banquet hall I’ve seen. The ceiling was at least 3 stories up. It was as if we were in a football stadium all alone. Stepping outside you are swarmed by taxi drivers making sure you have a ride somewhere. If you make it by the cabbies then the next challenge is the roads full of scooters driving fast and close on narrow roads. I mean really close. I could have trimmed riders fingernails while waiting for a green light.
“I’ll just walk over to the market.” you say, because you’re not crazy enough to rent a car or bike. This thought is met by the lack of sidewalks and or giant unmarked holes in the sidewalks.
Bali ended with an amazing stay in an Airbnb near Gianyar that was what I imagine staying on a plantation in the south is like. 
Each room was basically it’s own house.
The space had a ping pong table room, pool with a cabana, stand alone kitchen, upstairs balcony, and more. It was huge. So big that Oakley was nervous about sleeping such a distance away from us and we had to yell to let each other know where we were. I made a quick outing to the jimbaran fish market. It had a low ceiling and was quite the stimuli to the senses. I’ll cover that in more detail in another post.
Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) is tight, not small, but just close quarters. From where we were it took a few days to find a patch of grass.
Houses seem to have a storefront included. lots of narrow houses combined with narrow roads and then add in twice or three times as many scooters as Bali and you get really tight.
Around eleven million people live in HCMC according to the guide on our Cu Chi tunnel excursion. He also mentioned there were seven million motorbikes in the city and forty-seven million in all of Vietnam. Over half of the population of a country has a scooter. That’s almost twice as many scooters in Ho Chi Minh City than people in Oregon! Tight might not be the word for it, Jammed is better. Don’t forget it’s not stopped as in a traffic jam, it’s ALL moving.
Now that I have you singing Garth Brooks I’m going list the various bugs (friends) we have encountered. Here is a list and a few photos of the who and where along with a bit of their behavior.
Bali spider with a spread as big as your hand
Friendly and seem to creepily track you as you move from side to side. They are great at hiding under the back of the toilet. Check your surroundings!
This fella watched me do dishes. He never blinked.
. I met a few by the pool and one in the bathroom. He was hiding under my swim trunks and as I reached to get them from the ledge he jumped and stuck to the far wall of the shower. Quite the leap, a good distance of about 4 feet. I jumped about twice that and then he jumped again to the wall to his left. I had returned to stationary panic position and thought it was cool until his final move. He landed on my lower leg and grabbed on. I swear I could feel each individual finger gripping my calf as he took a rodeo ride on my now flailing leg. Disapearing behind the bathroom sink I recovered with my voice dropping back from seprano to baratone in good ten minutes. You win frog, well played.
Cut me some slack on the photo quality. It’s pretty good for low light full panic mode.
That’s it, I’m not adding anymore to this list. I may have jinxed myself by deciding to write on this topic (my wife suggested it) and I don’t have the energy for another battle.
I know I will write more in this area. I’ve already had a few more encounters since writing this post.
Time to download the last of my Australian notes of interest. These are random so don’t look for any rhyme or reason to them. We are countries away form Australia now but I needed to get this out of my head. 
He let me have a look at a fishing magazine to explain what the hell those were. He said the fishing was off due to a large seaweed mass that had moved into the area. Said it hasn’t happened in about 150 years. He jokingly blamed our current president letting me know that he knew my funny talk was American.
The only place in the world to have a number as a name 
Coocoo Buros 
with mud nests in the crouch of a tree, Scrub turkeys (aka Bush turkeys), empty beach for miles
Oakley 1770
and sea turtles seen from cliffs above. Oh and glow in the dark spiders.
has a call (one of many) that is the same as the alien communication in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kindhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075860/. Pretty sure that is where they got it from. Steven Spielberg not the birds. I need to watch that movie again. Some have said my Dad looks like Richard Dreyfus and I would agree.
We thought Brisbane was set up on a flood plane. Nope.
Bush Turkey always seemed to be around.
I don’t have a photo of the Bush Stone as he was quite elusive. There are so many more.
Degrees of Kelvin 