As Slow As Christmas! Part III: home

Paul and I caught a ride from Pontianak to Singkawang

with Pak Zainal, who

happened to be going that way New Year's weekend. After we walked around Singkawang, and met many interesting people - including the local fire department, Willy, Jimmy, and Argo joined us. We went to Willy's hometown, Pemangkat, where we would spend New Year's Eve. Pemangkat is about the size of Monroeville, Alabama, the small town where I grew up, so the young people celebrated at midnight by driving their motorbikes around the village as many times as possible, and making as much noise as possible. Willy and I left the others back at the house - they were pretty tired - and rode around for a while. Loud music was blaring from every side street, and people were calling to their neighbors and waving to everyone as firecrackers popped in every direction. Earlier in the evening, we went to a social club to which Willy's mother belongs, where karaoke

in Mandarin and Hakka was the entertainment for the evening. People were super friendly, offering beer and best wishes for the coming year in this mainly Chinese town. The next day, we went to the Buddhist and Confucian temples on Elephant Mountain, the focal point for Pemangkat from which visitors have a terrific view of the entire village, with the bay in the distance.

I wonder if most people ever get to see the small places where their friends grew up or spent vacations when they were kids? As I think about it, I guess that we can learn quite a lot about a person by seeing these places. I am not totally sure I'd make a great tour guide for Monroeville (childhood) or Tuscaloosa (most of my life), but I think that when we show our friends these kinds of things, it means that they are officially in our lives to stay :) Our trip continued with a visit to Sambas, where we saw the sultan's palace, or keraton in the local language.

Although Indonesia is a republic, the Malay royal families still occupy an important place in Kalimantan society, especially for those who belong to the Malay nation. In the Malay culture, palaces are made of wood, not stone, and painted green and gold, the symbolic colors of the Malay people. The large mirrors visible in the photographs were a gift to the sultan of Sambas from Queen Elizabeth II of England.

As Slow As Christmas! Part II: pictures

The original title for this post was to have been "Paul: Photographing the Photographer." That's because during Paul's December visit, we spent two days walking through traditional markets in Pontianak and Singkawang, in search of his favorite photo opportunities.

Pontianak's traditional market sells fresh fish and produce of every description, and its name, Pasar Flamboyan, is very appropriate for the explosion of colors and intensity of smells one encounters walking through. I advised my friend, Olaf, today that Indonesian traditional markets are not spotlessly clean like those he might encounter in his native Switzerland, so he might want to wear shoes with a closed toe instead of sandals on his first visit to the Flamboyan. His question basically was "okay but what happens to your shoes?" Wear old ones, 'cause you don't wanna know :)

Paul's photographic journey through the Pasar Flamboyan, and the Pasar Hong Kong in Singkawang, was focused on texture, not color. He likes to photograph objects at extreme close-up range, in part because the resulting image, with its unusual textures, almost always becomes an excellent conversation starter for an ESL/EFL conversation class. By contrast, I often photograph "street scenes" at long range.










Indonesians are such "hams" for the camera - especially the guys, who will insist that the Western dude walking around their community take their picture as though it were a matter of self-preservation. For a people planning to rely on tourism in the future to support themselves through tough times, it perhaps does mean life and death. Being a professional, Paul had a professional's equipment, and he had only to point it toward a group of people to make them spring instantly to life, as though conditioned to respond to the lens.