TOKYO STREET STYLE

Since Tokyo is synonymous with street style, I couldn’t resist snapping portraits of some of the city’s fashion-conscious citizens when we visited last week: the Sailor Moon look-a-likes luring passersby into manga shops, the Little Bo Peep girls out for a stroll in Akihabara with their boyfriends, the teenagers in layers and lenseless glasses loitering outside Shibuya station.

Aside from all the crazy subcultures, I was surprised to see that mainstream fashion in Tokyo closely resembles the Pacific Northwest (think Pendleton flannels, Patagonia fleeces, and puffy vests). In one of Harajuku’s many “vintage” stores, I saw a tatty North Face jacket from the 1970s retailing for about $200. If only I had known—I gave one exactly like it to Goodwill a few months ago.

BUSAN CHORAL FESTIVAL

Last week I spent two days shooting photos at the Busan Choral Festival & Competition, an annual celebration of choral music featuring singers from all over the world. It was fun getting to see the colorful costumes and chat with choirs from places like Indonesia, Norway, China, and Latvia.

The highlight of the festival was a performance by the renowned Incheon City Chorale, who made a grand entrance down the aisles with thumping drums, hanbok (traditional clothes), and a powerful arrangement that sounded like something from the days of the Chosun Dynasty. Unfortunately, from there their performance devolved into a silly display of Gangnam Style dance moves and pantomimed lovers’ quarrels. I’m all for not taking yourself too seriously, but it seemed strange to undermine an art as elegant as choral music for the sake of a few laughs. The audience seemed to love it though, so maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

ODE TO ROTI

Nearly everywhere I’ve traveled in the developing world, I’ve nurtured a love affair with sweetened condensed milk. While I’m normally not a fan of its sickly sweetness, its presence in everything from coffees and teas to snacks and desserts has a way of hitting the spot when you’re otherwise subsisting on rice with sauce. My guess is that an absence of sugary foods—not to mention the milk’s infinite shelf-life—contributes to condensed milk’s popularity in places like Africa and Southeast Asia.

Luckily for me and my taste buds, sweetened condensed milk is a crucial ingredient in Thailand’s most famous street snack, roti. A fried flatbread descended from Indian chapatti, the roti is stuffed with bananas, drizzled liberally with chocolate and sweetened condensed milk, and sprinkled with granulated sugar. (In other words, a diabetic’s worst nightmare.) It might sound repulsive, but trust me: after a few tries this saccharine snack becomes strangely addictive.

GUERRILLA YOGA PART 2

A few more of my favorites from last week's photo shoot.

GUERRILLA YOGA

Last week I had the opportunity to photograph one of Busan’s most intrepid yogis in what could best be described as a guerrilla yoga operation. When Mindy—a yoga instructor and co-founder of the new holistic health center Kaizen Korea—first mentioned a guerrilla yoga shoot, I envisioned her in the middle of Jagalchi Fish Market with rubber-suited ajummahs flinging squid in the background.

Alas, when we arrived at Jagalchi we could barely move in the crush of people shopping for Chuseok (Korea’s Thanksgiving). Luckily we didn’t have to look far to locate empty warehouses, loading docks, and the atmospheric nooks and crannies of Busan’s Old Book Alley. Though yoga is catching on in Korea, Mindy’s out-in-the-open asanas quickly drew crowds of confused onlookers. As she balanced precariously on a crumbling ledge of concrete, one particularly befuddled boy asked, “Why here?”

At least to Mindy, the answer is obvious: Why not?

CHIANG MAI POSTCARD

It's actually been a few weeks since I was in Chiang Mai, but today I remembered a detail about the city that caught my eye. In several neighborhoods, I noticed a thin white string connecting the houses like a giant spiderweb. Were they using an old-fashioned tin can telephone to communicate with their neighbors? Nope. Turns out that monks create this yarn network between the homes of Buddhists to symbolically unify the neighborhood's believers. What a simple but cool way to represent community.

A GIRL'S VALUE

On our visit to a hill tribe village in the mountains surrounding Chiang Mai, one house stood out from the rest. Elaborately carved in teak, with a shiny new pickup truck parked in front, it towered over its muddy, dilapidated neighbors. The owners of this house, the village chief explained, had sold their two daughters to a sex trafficker. The family renovated their home and the girls were never heard from again.

On another outing, we stopped for coffee at a roadside cafe where the proprietor--a gregarious middle-aged man--happened to speak English. Without prompting, he began telling us how he and his wife had tried for years to conceive, and just when they were about to give up, she became pregnant with a baby girl. While his wife finished blending our mochas, he gushed about their daughter as if she were a Fulbright Scholar (she's five). "You should hear her pronunciation," he said, imitating a British accent. "It's better than mine!"

OF HUMAN BONDAGE

My friend Nhu is a normal 20-year old girl: she studies hard, blasts Beyonce from her iPhone, and knows the best place for a cheap pedicure. It's hard to believe that when Nhu was 12 years old, her family sold her to an Australian sex tourist for $300. Nhu was locked in a hotel room with her rapist for three days, and her grandmother used the proceeds to buy food for the family.

Sadly, Nhu's rape and exploitation are "normal" for an estimated 3 million women worldwide, in countries like Cambodia, Thailand, India, and even the U.S. The good news is that Nhu's story doesn't end like so many others--with her permanently enslaved and beaten into submission at a brothel. Instead, Nhu is now the spokeswoman for an organization that prevents young girls from being sold into the sex trade. By providing girls from poor villages an education and a safe community to thrive in, Remember Nhu hopes to protect girls like Nim and Pat (pictured above) from the horrors that Nhu experienced.

KOREAN STREET STYLE #2

Koreans are fantastically photogenic. Whenever a camera is pointed in my direction I invariably look like a doofus, but Koreans seem to have a natural awareness of all their best angles. (One notable exception being the ajummahs, whose positions in the public baths are enough to give me nightmares.) Thus, when I asked some of Joe's students if I could take their photos, I didn't end up with a single bad portrait. Every one produced his or her own unique pose. A result of natural bodily grace or hours of practice in front of the mirror? I couldn't tell.

ON THE MOVE

The summer heat is starting to bear down on Busan, and I for one am ready to get out of Dodge. Luckily our summer plans will be taking us to more tropical climates, where warm temperatures and heavy rain are the ingredients for lush, green landscapes scattered with gold stupas. I'll be leaving for Thailand in mid-July to volunteer with Remember Nhu, an organization that aims to end child sex trafficking by caring for girls at risk of being sold into the sex trade.

A couple weeks later (after he gets done teaching Korean summer camp), Joe and I will meet up in Bangkok and (fingers crossed) get our visas for Myanmar. In case you haven't heard, Myanmar is on everyone's travel radar since democratic elections and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi took place this spring. We're hoping that by visiting for a few weeks during the off-season, we'll beat the hordes of backpackers bound to descend on the country this winter. Hands down, I'm most excited about seeing the monastery of the jumping cats. Yep, it's a real thing: Google it.

INTO THE WOODS

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

-Wendell Berry, "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"

We haven't found many quiet places in Korea. Granted, we're limited to the spots we can access by subway, bus, or walking (like Beomeo-sa, pictured above). There may very well be a temple in the woods that is just as quiet as it was a few hundred years ago, but the ones we've visited have all been crawling with snack vendors and fashionable hikers. Still, if you fight past the sightseers and step off the path, it's possible to take refuge in "the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years."

TIBETAN STREET STYLE

Like most women who idly trowel the internet, I'm a sucker for street style. Plus, my post about our Korean friend's unique fashion got me thinking about the other rare birds I've spotted in places like Portland, Shanghai, or Ouagadougou. I encountered this lovely lady sipping milk tea and catching up with her friends at a Buddhist nunnery one autumn afternoon in Lhasa, Tibet. When I picked up my camera, she immediately assumed this regal pose, as if having her photo taken by a stranger was the most natural thing in the world. I imagine one's posture has to be good to wear such heavy hair accessories.

MOTHER OF 20

Mother's Day always reminds me of Lillian, a woman I met in Costa Rica who has borne 20 children. Despite having given birth almost every year for more than two decades, this tough little lady still cooks over an antique wood stove and can make a mean gallo pinto. (In case you were wondering, the Guinness Record for the most children is 69, birthed by a Russian peasant in the 1700s.) And I thought having one sounded difficult.

KOREAN STREET STYLE

Fashion in Korea typically includes at least three of the following elements: glitter, ruffles, crochet, spiky leather heels that look like they belong on a dominatrix. And that’s just among young people—women over 40 uniformly favor animal prints, polyester, and plastic visors that shield the face like a welding mask.

The exception to the rule is Mrs. Shim, who has a style that’s uniquely her own and the confidence to pull it off. She sews a lot of her own clothes using natural, hand-dyed fabrics. On this particular day she was decked out from head to toe in handmade clothes, but often she’ll combine one piece, like a long skirt, with a leather bomber jacket and a Louis Vuitton purse (Koreans love them some luxury handbags). She doesn’t look like anyone else in Busan, and I think that’s fantastic.

FAMILY MATTERS

Last weekend we traveled to the foothills of Mount Jirisan, where our friend Mrs. Shim's elderly parents live, along with their brothers and sisters, in three identical houses several feet apart. Each weekend their children and grandchildren make the two-hour drive from Busan to spend time together eating, talking, watching television, and helping out around the farm.

The family matriarch, who we were instructed to call "mother" (top picture), spent the weekend tirelessly cleaning the house and cooking massive piles of meat for us in between her 6am hikes and late-night gabfests with the in-laws. Her take on us, according to Mrs. Shim, was "They're taller than us, but they're very weak." It's true: As both a Westerner and an introvert, I find this kind of familial closeness exhausting. When we were getting ready to depart, Mrs. Shim's mother announced, "You can think of me as your mom too." Just as long as I don't have to live next door.

CHERRY BLOSSOMS

This weekend we attempted to escape Korea's "bali bali" (translation: Hurry up!) lifestyle with a trip to the countryside with our friend Mrs. Shim, her husband, their two sons, her father and mother, and about ten other members of their extended family. But more on that once I've sorted through my photos. In the meantime, here's a few shots from when the cherry blossoms opened and fell last week. For some Koreans, the cherry blossoms are a painful reminder of subjugation by the Japanese, who planted them when they colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. But to most--me now included--it's the most anticipated and most beautiful time of year.

MAKING COFFEE

We own both a French Press and a conventional coffeemaker, so when our friend Mrs. Lee offered to teach me how to make coffee I wasn’t really sure what to say. Turns out that in Korea “dripping coffee” is more about the process than the final product, a labor of love akin to a tea ceremony. It begins with meditatively grinding the beans, followed by breathing deeply, adjusting your posture into the pouring stance, and dripping the water in a spiral motion without actually moving your arm. I guess I’m not that adept at coffee-making after all.

On an unrelated note, if you’re the type of traveler who fancies power breakfasts and bespoke suits, be sure to check out my business traveler’s guide to Hong Kong in April’s Global Traveler.

OLD BOOK ALLEY

One of our favorite places in Busan is Bosudong, i.e. "Old Book Alley". It's a narrow alley at the base of a mountain, densely packed with used bookstores whose volumes (both Korean and English) are sometimes stacked waist-deep and spilling out into the street. Needless to say, Joe can spend hours debating between a beat-up copy of Aesop's Fables or a study on the principles of language learning, and I'm pretty happy with the old editions of National Geographic. But mostly we go because it's one of the few spots in Busan with a strong sense of place--full of familiar comforts (coffee, doughnuts, books) but unlike anywhere we've been before.

IN LOVE WITH A LENS

For five years I've refused to buy a better camera lens. Despite the fact that I couldn't take a decent photo indoors or in low light, I told myself that a) good photos don't require fancy schmancy equipment, and b) a better lens would cost too much. And while I still firmly believe in Statement A, I'm a fool for waiting this long to change out the lens in my camera kit.

Just a little bit of research online clued me in to this lightweight Nikkor lens, which is a ridiculously good deal at a little over $100. I ran to the local camera store (Ilkwang Camera in Nampodong for you Busanites), snapped it on my Nikon D70, and was instantly sold on the beautiful portraits I could take without the dreaded flash. After paying I wandered around the nearby market, which is constantly cast in shadow because it's sandwiched between buildings. Without a hulking telephoto lens to give me away, I could step right up to the grumpy ajummas and surreptitiously snap a photo before they even noticed. I'd say this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

BEIJING

Joe likes telling a story about how, when he was a teenager, he went to his dad and asked, "What's the meaning of life?" His dad's response was: "Relationships." When we're traveling, especially for long periods of time, it's easy to wonder what the point is. I think the meaning mostly lies in connecting with people. When it doesn't happen (typically because we're caught up in getting from Point A to Point B) is when we feel most frustrated, but when it does happen it makes the entire trip seem worthwhile.

That's the feeling I was hoping to capture in my latest article, "Beijing: Portrait of Change," for this month's Global Traveler magazine. I'll leave it up to you whether or not the piece accomplishes that. What do you think is the point in traveling?

CHICKEN FEET

As I was wandering around Jeju Island late one afternoon, I passed through a heavenly-smelling steam pouring from the opening of a snack stand. Feeling my stomach rumble, I doubled back for a closer look, imagining steamed pork buns, barbecued beef skewers, or maybe a rotisserie chicken. As the deliciously-scented smoke parted, I nearly gagged. I had been salivating over an enormous pile of steamed chicken feet.

JEJU ISLAND

Given that I made my trip to Jeju Island in November, this post is a little bit past due. But I wanted to plug my article (and photos) about Jeju that appeared in last month's Global Traveler magazine in case anyone missed it. Check it out online here.

"The Korean Hawaii" is a bit of an overstatement, but I was impressed by the volcanic scenery and the laid-back culture on the island. Since it was too cold to get in the water, I mostly just bused around the coast snapping photos. Jeju's residents take the hosting role pretty seriously, so people were constantly drawing me maps and plying me with free tangerines. I especially appreciated how the intercity bus drivers make a little speech and bow to the passengers at the beginning of a journey...even when I was the only one on the bus.