Friday, June 06, 2008

Skywatch Friday 6 June




Since I didn't post anything last week - it was quite a week - I have some catch-up to do. The monsoon has come in and the changes in the sky are incredible. On Wednesday, just after lunch, the light suddenly darkened in my office - a giant black cloud slid over the sun and the rain poured down.



This is my neighborhood temple. The top picture is looking out across the Mekong River to Thailand and the picture below it is of the temple buildings and the sky behind them.

Going back through the week - we drove back from southern Laos on Monday, and crossed the path of a thunderstorm. The clouds were this weird:


I didn't really fool much with the above picture. Though I fooled with this one:



Going further back into the week and weekend - we had some guests visit our program and we took them on a trip to a remote district. I was worried for much of the trip - what if it rained like crazy and we got stuck out in this remote district, or worse still, on the road. In fact, everything worked out, much better than we expected. The clouds moved in on Saturday morning but it didn't rain.


This village above is a grouping of bamboo and thatch houses, some of them built in a long house style with several generations living in the house. A few people in the village seemed to have bicycles, a few less had motorcycles and no one had access to a car. Since it took four hours to drive the 70 kms. from this village back to the province capital, you can just feel how isolated this village is. Imagine a villager being struck by appendicitis.

Fortunately, our work has helped people in these villages - part of what we've been doing with our project is to upgrade medical and emergency care at the district hospital - so folks in villages like these have better access to health care.

And my last picture was taken on Sunday, 25 May. Across the river, in Sri Chiang Mai, they were holding a rocket festival. Communities depend on rice cultivation in the fickle weather patterns in Laos and NE Thailand have festivals where they shoot homemade rockets, fashioned out of bamboo and PVC pipe, into the sky. They can go very high before dropping back to Earth.

I heard the whistling of the rockets and decided to watch them near the market. By that time, the clouds were blowing up - as in this picture - and all the people in the market were securing their stands so their goods wouldn't blow away. A moment later, the sky opened up.

They continued shooting the rockets into the sky - even though the spirits of the sky had gotten the hint and provided some rain.


This is my contribution to Skywatch Friday which is hosted over at Wiggers World

22 comments:

SandyCarlson said...

I love what you've done with these! The silhouettes invite me in. I want to see more!

chanpheng said...

I've got a bunch of silhouette photos on my flikr pageespecially the pictures of blurry trees and strange clouds taken from the truck as we were traveling this week!

Rose said...

Everyone of these are a joy to look at!

FO - 2 said...

Great series.
Beautiful silhouette of the temple. :)

Kay said...

Oh my goodness. Each one of the photos are so very dramatic. Beautifully done!

Scotty Graham said...

Well done my friend....I particularly like the one you messed with.....nice effect.

Anonymous said...

Each one of these photos is like a masterpiece!

Anonymous said...

These are nice photos. I like them.

Daniel J Santos said...

all beautiful images with a beautiful sky, excellent.

Barb said...

Such a damatic series! I especially love the skyline of the temple and the last photo at the market, it is framed quite beautifully!

Aisha said...

I enjoyed reading and looking at your photos! Such great shots.

Tom said...

A truely fantastic set of pictures.. each one a 'gem'... you are doing great work there and I am amazed you find the time to blog and post such great pictures.. Thank you for helping Sky Watch along each week.

Tom

Keera Ann Fox said...

A lovely series of photographs, Chanpheng! There's such a variety of sky and silhouettes.

Neal said...

Beautiful pictures! I like them all!

Petunia said...

Nice effect. There are so many great shot here I have to take a second look at them.

Well done!

Petunia's SWF

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the visits and comments especially about my pants.

Anonymous said...

great pictures. I loved your snake story you left in my comments. I sure would like to see pictures of that cobra.

pts said...

excellent pictures!

chrome3d said...

Magnificent series of photos. The lake and the temples look intriguing.

GMG said...

Hi Changphen! Back home and profiting from the Lisbon’s Day holiday (St. Anthony of Lisbon, not Padua), I’m trying to catch up your posts (What a nice week: June 10th, Portugal’s Day; June 13th, Lisbon’s Day… ;)). But it seems you had another difficult week, as no posts appeared... or are you avoiding Fiday 13th... ;))
Anyhow, the skywatch pictures are gorgeous! Excellent job!!
Thanks also for your comments at Blogtrotter, which is now landed in Santiago de Compostela, Spain!
Hope you enjoy, and have a nice weekend!

GMG said...

Hi! Still busy?
Blogtrotter

sonia a. mascaro said...

Wonderful photos! Love all them!