I spent a few days while in Cambodia going on an elephant trek. Here are the first four video segments I shot.
Just got back from a two day elephant trek, my first time riding the beasts and spending up close and personal time with them. They really are quite big! You ride so high up, and it’s quite a swaying motion that you have to get used to. But it’s a very pleasant way to traverse the rain forest, and the animals lumber along like a low torque diesel engine.
The big news is that the Bunong people really do love these wild animals, and sort of have adopted them in an unusual hybrid model where they manage them but don’t own them. They go gather them, but only ride them for 3 days. Then they are free to be let go to chill for a couple days.
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Bill’s been living here in Mondulkiri Province for ages, and works as hard as he can to save the Bunong people. The Bunong people are the indigenous peoples of the province. This is a 15 minute interview I did with him. I will be trekking with him in the next few days.
Reporting live from the street 35 years after the war, here’s the big news: Vietnam is just like America — with “crazy people, regular joes, cool kids, hot mamas”…just like America!
The world fluxes through like eddies in a big current of pleasure and torment, most of which we do to ourselves, and some of which we do to each other. It’s a bit torrent, and the results ebb and flow like a global lava lamp. The US American South hears Africa mixing with Appalachia, and the Blues are born, then become Rock, which the Beatles of Britain pick up to pick themselves up, and then to blow away the Germans one more time, and then to make us fall in love with them and the music they got from us all over again. They then take it back to the USA for us to hear what they heard but totally remade. We take the British Invasion as something new, not as the weird mirror of us it actually was. The Jamaicans hear the same African roots, but to them it mixes with Island music, and becomes Ska, and then we influence it some more and kick it back to them and it becomes Reggae, and then it comes back to Britain in the USA in Dub form, and we take it into the clubs and and a new crazy beat, electronica, and the beat goes on… [click to continue…]