There are no cars here, on Lamma Island which is near Hong Kong. As soon as you have sailed up to Lamma Island you can walk up the hills and view the outskirts. Mainly, the view is traders and barges that can be seen in the distance. The island has an area of 13.55 km2 and is 7 km in length, the height of the island is 353 m. Only about six thousand people live there.

The post is continued with photos and comments .

Lamma Island is half an hour away from the central part of Hong Kong. In the photo, there is another high-rise building which is being built in the port.

When I was ferried I took one of my film cameras (Smena) and shot a few pictures through the glass.

There were high-rise buildings of unusual proportions scattered on the shore. All of them had striking views of the ocean. I shouldnt wonder if they are extremely expensive.

The tubing of a gigantic high-power station with the output of 3.736 MW rises over the island like a huge iron from the classic animated series “FLCL”. The output of the station together with the output of wind-turbines  which have recently been put on the top of the hill can be compared with the size of Bratsk hydro power plant.

Tourists ride on kayaks and pedal catamarans in the bay.

City dwellers buy up flats in a small village.

Local fishermen live in usual Chinese conditions.

The state of some corners of the village leaves much to be desired.

On the top of the hill there was one of the most affordable hostels, in which I almost stayed by mistake. There was a good distance from the hostel to the city, notably half an hour to cycle and half an hour to ferry. But as for the view it was just superb from there.

This is quite an affordable stay for hippies and for people of different ages that are keen on a “green” way of life. It can be seen by soaking/drying water skis on the roof and a fashionable painting of the shed. Something there reminds me of Raglan, a surfers town.

A lovely view of the power station during the sunset.

They say there is a hangout for outsiders on Lamma Island due to the ban on personal building. However, the city is growing and urbanization is inevitable. It is a common belief that there will be a “city-garden”, and it cant be helped. You can see fishers floating platforms in the photo.

Owners of small yachts and cutters run around in the coastal zone.

Hong Kong: city, people

In the center of Kathmandu there are both: shabby cows rambling through the town and youngsters with mobile phones strolling about. There is a great contrast between scales of living in Nepal, the same way as in any developing country, though. Next to a huge black jeep, one can see a toothless old woman keeping dirty barefooted children off. 

The situation in the country is not stable. Maoists have got out of forests and taken their seats in the Parliament, but there still are striking workers, malcontent peasants. Every now and then, members of the royal family are smuggled out of the country. After 11 PM there are only dogs, streetwalkers and policemen in the streets. The foreigners are asked not to leave hotels if it is not absolutely necessary. By these and other reasons, guards being on the door at the biggest movie theater in Kathmandu inspect  visitors for bombs, knives and other harmful things and substances.

After buying the ticket for 250 rupees (about 3 USD dollars) and passing the inspection, a well-to-do Nepalese can drink something in the theater bar, buy some beer, popcorn and something sweet for his girl. The choice of films includes films by usual Bollywood, local Kollywood and imported Hollywood. Perhaps, in the capital, the matters stand in a better way but the mean monthly income of an ordinary Nepalese is about 500 rupees: two movie tickets for the film about Bond.

There are, of course, cinemas in back streets here and there. The prices are lower there and the art is more affordable. Quite by chance, on my way from a stronghold of globalization, notably a school of design and fashion, my eye fell on the advertisement hoarding representing Indian superheroes. Thats how I hit on a common cinema for people of modest means. One cannot find there American movies, the most expensive tickets cost 60 rupees and the cheapest ones – only ten. In the beginning of the show boys try to filter into the theater and a lean guard keeps them off by shouts and clips on the back of the heads. The youngsters lose the change in a tiny room in the corner.

There will be a special post with bright pictures, explosion and beautiful Indian girls.

In the center of Kathmandu there are both: shabby cows rambling through the town and youngsters with mobile phones strolling about. There is a great contrast between scales of living in Nepal, the same way as in any developing country, though. Next to a huge black jeep, one can see a toothless old woman keeping dirty barefooted children off. 

The situation in the country is not stable. Maoists have got out of forests and taken their seats in the Parliament, but there still are striking workers, malcontent peasants. Every now and then, members of the royal family are smuggled out of the country. After 11 PM there are only dogs, streetwalkers and policemen in the streets. The foreigners are asked not to leave hotels if it is not absolutely necessary. By these and other reasons, guards being on the door at the biggest movie theater in Kathmandu inspect  visitors for bombs, knives and other harmful things and substances.

After buying the ticket for 250 rupees (about 3 USD dollars) and passing the inspection, a well-to-do Nepalese can drink something in the theater bar, buy some beer, popcorn and something sweet for his girl. The choice of films includes films by usual Bollywood, local Kollywood and imported Hollywood. Perhaps, in the capital, the matters stand in a better way but the mean monthly income of an ordinary Nepalese is about 500 rupees: two movie tickets for the film about Bond.

There are, of course, cinemas in back streets here and there. The prices are lower there and the art is more affordable. Quite by chance, on my way from a stronghold of globalization, notably a school of design and fashion, my eye fell on the advertisement hoarding representing Indian superheroes. Thats how I hit on a common cinema for people of modest means. One cannot find there American movies, the most expensive tickets cost 60 rupees and the cheapest ones – only ten. In the beginning of the show boys try to filter into the theater and a lean guard keeps them off by shouts and clips on the back of the heads. The youngsters lose the change in a tiny room in the corner.

There will be a special post with bright pictures, explosion and beautiful Indian girls.

In the center of Kathmandu there are both: shabby cows rambling through the town and youngsters with mobile phones strolling about. There is a great contrast between scales of living in Nepal, the same way as in any developing country, though. Next to a huge black jeep, one can see a toothless old woman keeping dirty barefooted children off. 

The situation in the country is not stable. Maoists have got out of forests and taken their seats in the Parliament, but there still are striking workers, malcontent peasants. Every now and then, members of the royal family are smuggled out of the country. After 11 PM there are only dogs, streetwalkers and policemen in the streets. The foreigners are asked not to leave hotels if it is not absolutely necessary. By these and other reasons, guards being on the door at the biggest movie theater in Kathmandu inspect  visitors for bombs, knives and other harmful things and substances.

After buying the ticket for 250 rupees (about 3 USD dollars) and passing the inspection, a well-to-do Nepalese can drink something in the theater bar, buy some beer, popcorn and something sweet for his girl. The choice of films includes films by usual Bollywood, local Kollywood and imported Hollywood. Perhaps, in the capital, the matters stand in a better way but the mean monthly income of an ordinary Nepalese is about 500 rupees: two movie tickets for the film about Bond.

There are, of course, cinemas in back streets here and there. The prices are lower there and the art is more affordable. Quite by chance, on my way from a stronghold of globalization, notably a school of design and fashion, my eye fell on the advertisement hoarding representing Indian superheroes. Thats how I hit on a common cinema for people of modest means. One cannot find there American movies, the most expensive tickets cost 60 rupees and the cheapest ones – only ten. In the beginning of the show boys try to filter into the theater and a lean guard keeps them off by shouts and clips on the back of the heads. The youngsters lose the change in a tiny room in the corner.

There will be a special post with bright pictures, explosion and beautiful Indian girls.

Here in Kathmandu, local cinema is called Kollywood. The cost of one movie, as I was told by a manager who decided to audition for the part of a tour guide, is 10-50 thousand American dollars. In just a few months, a crew of 7-10 people manages to make a ready product. Detective stories with a lot of killing are well-liked. In one year, the studio makes up to about 70 (!) films. I got to visit and participate in the making of the movie “Dasdgunga,” about the to this day mysterious death of Nepalese leaders.

The story is so fishy that the movie did not pass censorship right away and was approved for showing only in January of this year, one year after its making. In short, the plot is based on the death of two representatives of the top of the government of Nepal: Madan Bhandari and Jivraj Ashrit. In the 1993 incident, they died in a car accident. The driver, Amar Lama, somehow survived, but was killed ten years later. The murderer was not identified.

The main part of a detective with a difficult life is played by the star of Nepalese theater and cinema Anup Baral. The director is the round-faced Manoj Pandit with kind eyes. They say hes also pretty famous.

Meanwhile, we look under the cut at a series of 35 photographs with commentary.

Make-up took over an hour. Mustaches got combed, faces got powdered and after three hours of waiting for lights to be ready, filming began. I included the best picture from this period in the “The Culture of Modern Nepal” series.

An extra playing a guard watches as the workers set the lights.

Meanwhile, a scene was being filmed in the hallway. A driver is being led to be interrogated. The blinding light of a projector hits the characters in their backs.

Most of the first day was spent on setting the lights.

The workers of the studio spent over four hours covering, setting and adjusting do-it-yourself reflectors made from rags, white panels and mirrors.

Speaking of the necessity of a professional set, lighting equipment and super-expensive lenses and cameras. Any available resource is used in Kollywood. The room was whitened in one day, rags, mirrors and ropes were brought from storage. The intensity of the projectors light is set using black discs with a hole in the center.

A static stage, the set is ready. We are witnessing an interrogation in the basement of a Nepalese security service.

Before starting to film, the director and the actors discuss the details.

The director accentuates the attention on something of moderate importance.

The equipment, as you can see, isnt cheap. The camera, no matter what, is rented, and theres a special person designated to watch it. One films, another controls, the third watches over so that the camera doesnt get dropped.

The operator seemed like a nervous person, smokes one after another.  There is something in his position that opposes the power of the director.

The detective wearing a hat strictly gazes into the eyes of the suspect. They sit close to each other, so their eyes are a bit crossed. On the chair with an umbrella during the filming sits the suspected Amar Lama and sweats.

The director and operator occasionally check how the light falls on the faces of the actors. Sometimes they asked me to show them what the photographs looked like: sometimes the shadows were too rough, sometimes there was too much light.

The terrifyingly quiet partner of the main character. At some point, judging by the circumstances, they attempted to play bad cop/good cop. It didnt really work, the suspect laughed a couple of times.

I dont know why they gave the main character of Asian decent, who doesnt have very abundant facial hair, a stupid mustache. But a special person adjusted it almost every other set.

The directors assistant. Anup Barals companion at the teaching workshop. A sweet person with pretty decent English.

Outside of the scene, of course, you have to sit quietly and wait for it to end.

The view of the set.

In my search of an interesting angle I climbed to the top level using a rocky ladder. The director is explaining something to Anup.

The director, Manoj Pandit.

The actor playing the main part, Anup Baral.

Dayahang Rai, the actor playing a secondary character, the driver Amar Lama at the interrogation.

Its normal to smoke in the police station basement, theres nothing to explain here.

The detectives assistant repeats the text. He did not have many words. Mainly he goggled his eyes.

The person who controls the operators work. As you can tell, he wears the headwear of a brahman and not all work can be done by him.

Working on the key moments with the director.

Since you scrolled through to the end, you will probably be interested in finding out a bit more.

You will recognize some scenes right away. Some of the phrases were repeated so many times during filming that even today, a year and a half later, they seem familiar to me.

The guys and I spent several days with the crew. Pasha (r0ver) ended up with a short but good combined report. In my remaining posts from this series you will see the second day of the filming process and the dungeons of the film studio where development, printing, editing, voicing and everything else without which a movie cant happen take place.

Part two

Part three

Here in Kathmandu, local cinema is called Kollywood. The cost of one movie, as I was told by a manager who decided to audition for the part of a tour guide, is 10-50 thousand American dollars. In just a few months, a crew of 7-10 people manages to make a ready product. Detective stories with a lot of killing are well-liked. In one year, the studio makes up to about 70 (!) films. I got to visit and participate in the making of the movie “Dasdgunga,” about the to this day mysterious death of Nepalese leaders.

The story is so fishy that the movie did not pass censorship right away and was approved for showing only in January of this year, one year after its making. In short, the plot is based on the death of two representatives of the top of the government of Nepal: Madan Bhandari and Jivraj Ashrit. In the 1993 incident, they died in a car accident. The driver, Amar Lama, somehow survived, but was killed ten years later. The murderer was not identified.

The main part of a detective with a difficult life is played by the star of Nepalese theater and cinema Anup Baral. The director is the round-faced Manoj Pandit with kind eyes. They say hes also pretty famous.

Meanwhile, we look under the cut at a series of 35 photographs with commentary.

Make-up took over an hour. Mustaches got combed, faces got powdered and after three hours of waiting for lights to be ready, filming began. I included the best picture from this period in the “The Culture of Modern Nepal” series.

An extra playing a guard watches as the workers set the lights.

Meanwhile, a scene was being filmed in the hallway. A driver is being led to be interrogated. The blinding light of a projector hits the characters in their backs.

Most of the first day was spent on setting the lights.

The workers of the studio spent over four hours covering, setting and adjusting do-it-yourself reflectors made from rags, white panels and mirrors.

Speaking of the necessity of a professional set, lighting equipment and super-expensive lenses and cameras. Any available resource is used in Kollywood. The room was whitened in one day, rags, mirrors and ropes were brought from storage. The intensity of the projectors light is set using black discs with a hole in the center.

A static stage, the set is ready. We are witnessing an interrogation in the basement of a Nepalese security service.

Before starting to film, the director and the actors discuss the details.

The director accentuates the attention on something of moderate importance.

The equipment, as you can see, isnt cheap. The camera, no matter what, is rented, and theres a special person designated to watch it. One films, another controls, the third watches over so that the camera doesnt get dropped.

The operator seemed like a nervous person, smokes one after another.  There is something in his position that opposes the power of the director.

The detective wearing a hat strictly gazes into the eyes of the suspect. They sit close to each other, so their eyes are a bit crossed. On the chair with an umbrella during the filming sits the suspected Amar Lama and sweats.

The director and operator occasionally check how the light falls on the faces of the actors. Sometimes they asked me to show them what the photographs looked like: sometimes the shadows were too rough, sometimes there was too much light.

The terrifyingly quiet partner of the main character. At some point, judging by the circumstances, they attempted to play bad cop/good cop. It didnt really work, the suspect laughed a couple of times.

I dont know why they gave the main character of Asian decent, who doesnt have very abundant facial hair, a stupid mustache. But a special person adjusted it almost every other set.

The directors assistant. Anup Barals companion at the teaching workshop. A sweet person with pretty decent English.

Outside of the scene, of course, you have to sit quietly and wait for it to end.

The view of the set.

In my search of an interesting angle I climbed to the top level using a rocky ladder. The director is explaining something to Anup.

The director, Manoj Pandit.

The actor playing the main part, Anup Baral.

Dayahang Rai, the actor playing a secondary character, the driver Amar Lama at the interrogation.

Its normal to smoke in the police station basement, theres nothing to explain here.

The detectives assistant repeats the text. He did not have many words. Mainly he goggled his eyes.

The person who controls the operators work. As you can tell, he wears the headwear of a brahman and not all work can be done by him.

Working on the key moments with the director.

Since you scrolled through to the end, you will probably be interested in finding out a bit more.

You will recognize some scenes right away. Some of the phrases were repeated so many times during filming that even today, a year and a half later, they seem familiar to me.

The guys and I spent several days with the crew. Pasha (r0ver) ended up with a short but good combined report. In my remaining posts from this series you will see the second day of the filming process and the dungeons of the film studio where development, printing, editing, voicing and everything else without which a movie cant happen take place.

Part two

Part three

Here in Kathmandu, local cinema is called Kollywood. The cost of one movie, as I was told by a manager who decided to audition for the part of a tour guide, is 10-50 thousand American dollars. In just a few months, a crew of 7-10 people manages to make a ready product. Detective stories with a lot of killing are well-liked. In one year, the studio makes up to about 70 (!) films. I got to visit and participate in the making of the movie “Dasdgunga,” about the to this day mysterious death of Nepalese leaders.

The story is so fishy that the movie did not pass censorship right away and was approved for showing only in January of this year, one year after its making. In short, the plot is based on the death of two representatives of the top of the government of Nepal: Madan Bhandari and Jivraj Ashrit. In the 1993 incident, they died in a car accident. The driver, Amar Lama, somehow survived, but was killed ten years later. The murderer was not identified.

The main part of a detective with a difficult life is played by the star of Nepalese theater and cinema Anup Baral. The director is the round-faced Manoj Pandit with kind eyes. They say hes also pretty famous.

Meanwhile, we look under the cut at a series of 35 photographs with commentary.

Make-up took over an hour. Mustaches got combed, faces got powdered and after three hours of waiting for lights to be ready, filming began. I included the best picture from this period in the “The Culture of Modern Nepal” series.

An extra playing a guard watches as the workers set the lights.

Meanwhile, a scene was being filmed in the hallway. A driver is being led to be interrogated. The blinding light of a projector hits the characters in their backs.

Most of the first day was spent on setting the lights.

The workers of the studio spent over four hours covering, setting and adjusting do-it-yourself reflectors made from rags, white panels and mirrors.

Speaking of the necessity of a professional set, lighting equipment and super-expensive lenses and cameras. Any available resource is used in Kollywood. The room was whitened in one day, rags, mirrors and ropes were brought from storage. The intensity of the projectors light is set using black discs with a hole in the center.

A static stage, the set is ready. We are witnessing an interrogation in the basement of a Nepalese security service.

Before starting to film, the director and the actors discuss the details.

The director accentuates the attention on something of moderate importance.

The equipment, as you can see, isnt cheap. The camera, no matter what, is rented, and theres a special person designated to watch it. One films, another controls, the third watches over so that the camera doesnt get dropped.

The operator seemed like a nervous person, smokes one after another.  There is something in his position that opposes the power of the director.

The detective wearing a hat strictly gazes into the eyes of the suspect. They sit close to each other, so their eyes are a bit crossed. On the chair with an umbrella during the filming sits the suspected Amar Lama and sweats.

The director and operator occasionally check how the light falls on the faces of the actors. Sometimes they asked me to show them what the photographs looked like: sometimes the shadows were too rough, sometimes there was too much light.

The terrifyingly quiet partner of the main character. At some point, judging by the circumstances, they attempted to play bad cop/good cop. It didnt really work, the suspect laughed a couple of times.

I dont know why they gave the main character of Asian decent, who doesnt have very abundant facial hair, a stupid mustache. But a special person adjusted it almost every other set.

The directors assistant. Anup Barals companion at the teaching workshop. A sweet person with pretty decent English.

Outside of the scene, of course, you have to sit quietly and wait for it to end.

The view of the set.

In my search of an interesting angle I climbed to the top level using a rocky ladder. The director is explaining something to Anup.

The director, Manoj Pandit.

The actor playing the main part, Anup Baral.

Dayahang Rai, the actor playing a secondary character, the driver Amar Lama at the interrogation.

Its normal to smoke in the police station basement, theres nothing to explain here.

The detectives assistant repeats the text. He did not have many words. Mainly he goggled his eyes.

The person who controls the operators work. As you can tell, he wears the headwear of a brahman and not all work can be done by him.

Working on the key moments with the director.

Since you scrolled through to the end, you will probably be interested in finding out a bit more.

You will recognize some scenes right away. Some of the phrases were repeated so many times during filming that even today, a year and a half later, they seem familiar to me.

The guys and I spent several days with the crew. Pasha (r0ver) ended up with a short but good combined report. In my remaining posts from this series you will see the second day of the filming process and the dungeons of the film studio where development, printing, editing, voicing and everything else without which a movie cant happen take place.

Part two

Part three

For a few days of my stay in Hong Kong I kept roaming about the streets of that super city and could not help but strike dumb. During long Easter holidays Ive sorted out my archive files and processed a few dozens of Hong Kong photos. For convenience, I will divide them into three posts which will be entitled as “city”, “people” and “suburb”.

The central part of Hong Kong reminds an anthill made of glass and concrete. High-rise buildings in new districts grow like mushrooms. In China, people like adjectives in the superlative, for example, a building is the highest and the tunnel is the deepest and the longest. That love for the superlatives is deeply rooted in the tradition of Great China.

Those, who have been to such megalopolises as New York or Tokyo, must be familiar with the feeling of reverence for human engineering achievements. One is seized with awe when, throwing back ones head until the jugular vertebrae crunch, he or she tries to figure out how many floors there can be in this or that building. The tempo of life certainly depends on the city size and on the population density. In Hong Kong, everybody is in a rush exactly like in detective stories of Darya Dontsova (“I rushed to the police station”, “Ive done my shopping in a rush” or “I rushed to work”).

For a long time Gaulung (Kowloon) have been considered one of the most densely populated area of the world. The population density here is about 40 000 people per km2. I counted one day that if the population of that district is to be arranged on plane there would be a man every five meters. There would be no room to move. Regarding the size of the megalopolis, Hong Kong is fifth in the rank nowadays (graph).

The post is continued with photos of Hong Kong city labyrinth. All the photos are clickable.

Balconies and windows are hanged with air-conditioners. Nothing saves people from heat and dampness but air-conditioning only.

The height of the International Commerce Centre 2 is 417 meters.

Traditionally: where there is the rich there is the poor.

In the distance, one can discern a small fragment of a green hill hidden from view by the buildings and the smog.

My favourite picture of the series. This is how the Asian city jungle looks like. The piece of live greenery is lost among the reinforced concrete constructions. This is a city for those who are organized, active and accelerated. No doubt that it can be considered one of the centers of our civilization: you can find here all things that are the newest, the most beautiful, the most technical, as well as the dirtiest and the poorest.

Next time I will show Hong Kong suburbs (it will be Lamma Island) which strongly differ from the cement boxes of the city.

Dont miss the post with photos of Chinese twin city Shenzhen which is just “across the road” from Hong Kong, on the Canton side.

Keep abreast with the updates, or “stay tuned” as Sergei Dolya says, there will be two more posts of the series.

Here in Kathmandu, while the workers of the Nepalese film studio were setting up the lights, I walked through all the rooms, took pictures of what the personnel of the studio are busy with. See the photographs with commentary in the rest of the post.

Mini-reports from the set can be found in previous posts from this series: first, second.

This is what the filming pavilion looked like after several hours of the crews work with setting up lights and decorations. The room with awkwardly white-painted walls is supposed to create an atmosphere of an interrogation room in the basements of the Nepalese intelligence service. See these photographs in the first post.

Meanwhile, in the dark and cool basement of the studio, a worker diluted chemicals for the development of the film. As far as I can remember, digital movies are not available to everyone, so most movies are made using film.

In a small boxroom with a strong smell sits a lady who is in charge of chemicals. Her work involves marking in a big record-keeping book how many kilograms of white crystals have gone to one project or another.

Giant tubs with chemical soup will be lifted to the highest point and connected with pipes to the development apparatus.

Another worker of the development shop who is in charge of a giant machine through with film is ran for development checks in with some book.

Its a serious apparatus: it hums, clunks, rollers spin. This person was very concentrated on what he was doing, maybe even a bit hostile.

Occasionally this light began to shine dimly. After which the keeper of the apparatus came and looked at the buttons for a long time. The shop smelled of chemicals, on the floor here and there were whitish dried puddles with salty edges.

A fingerless chemist from the laboratory had a lively interest in the model of my camera. He then took his Canon 400D out of his backpack and after a brief conversation became engulfed by the newspaper. A person with a North Face jacket and a camera that costs about one thousand American dollars slightly amazed me. The average salary in Nepal is about $170 a year. Apparently the movie industry is a profitable business here, too.

In the cutting room, a Nepalese in gloves cut the film, measuring the footage in accordance with tables with numbers on a piece of paper. Carefully, with a razor, he cleaned the edges of the film, after which he glued one of the sides and squeezed them on a special pressing machine. The glue, the consistency of which looks like the well-known super-glue, melts the film very well: it gets a death grip on it. Cleaning the edges with a razor is essential so that the thickness of the strip remains the same where the film had been glued. Otherwise the mechanism of the projector can stall.

A young guy about twenty-five years old (as with any other Asians, its very hard to determine the age of the Nepalese) was preparing lists for the editing procedure. They are what a special person will use to cut the film, and another to glue it into a whole reel of film.

Brochures for Nepalese movies with the smiling faces of actors with a look very similar to a European one are all over the studio.

A lady with polished robot-like movements marks the places where the film was cut on it.

She runs the film back and forth and marks something on a huge list of numbers on the screen of the monitor.

Im not sure that these devices are used by anyone, but I found a whole room full of old projectors in the back part of the building.

For some reason, the hole in the door is covered with rags and tape. The feeling of a basement of a Russian research institute did not leave me.

In the sound-recording studio, audio-tracks for the video are edited on real macs. There is a quiet, soundproof room with microphones behind the glass. The actors have already recorded their lines, and I got to watch only the work of the audio editor. Typical Bollywood sounds of gunshots and ricochets could be heard in the room.

Id like to remind you that over seventy movies a year are made in this studio. They are as low-budget as they can be, but, nonetheless, they find their audience, since for most, movies arent a cheap form of entertainment. Naturally, like in any developing country, a huge contrast is seen between the poor and the rich: black jeeps drive by the proletariat movie theater, and cows that run in different directions scare off pigeons.

The arrangement of the chemical laboratory. Notice the dust, dirt and spiderwebs in the corners.

Ever since childhood, the process of film development has fascinated me. So after touring the building, I once again went down to the basement to watch as the mechanisms, with humming and quiet, rhythmical rattling, pull kilometers of film through themselves. On which are faces, terrors, intrigues, investigations.

Part one

Part two

An Asian businessman at the Kowloon Waterfront Promenade.

There live more than 7 million people in cramped Hong Kong. They get born, hurry to their scheduled affairs, laugh, cry and die. Today I am going to post photos of some people living in this striking city.

“Pirates” on board of a sailing vessel “Aqua Luna”.

In spite of a great number of people in every place of Hong Kong, for some reason, the city seemed to me “uninhabited”. May be, that was why I got photos of individuals and not pictures of omnipresent and constantly hurrying crowd consisting of dark-haired units of a new communist-and-capitalist world.

Appreciate the color-and-type decision in the stand signs of an underground passage in Hong Kong metro.

A night guard next to a laundry in the center of Kowloon.

An Indian paterfamilias in 3D-glasses in the amusement park.

A tired tourist at the Kowloon Waterfront Promenade next to the Avenue of Stars. In the Avenue there, I found out that Mark Dakaskos had “girls”palms, and as for Jackie Chan, we were “palm twins”.

A man staring into the distance. You see it yourselves, though.

A man sleeping under the sign “”Crossing the Victoria Harbour” with Star Ferry is one of the fifty places of a life time”. That what they wrote in “National Geographic Traveler”.

A group of builders busy with the renewing of a decrepit high-rise building in bamboo scaffolding.

A nice Chinese girl with the Diana lomo camera which was no less nice than the girl.

Children rejoicing at soap bubbles in Hong Kong Disneyland. I showed pictures from there but it was long ago.

At the same place, in Disneyland, a boy is enjoying with rather primitive “races” created after the cartoon “Cars”.

An inhabitant of the Lamma island which I wrote about yesterday. As you can read on the sign in the background, the land is a property of the state and one can neither dig nor even just go there. 

An elderly Chinese man at the waterfront is showing the other bank of the Victoria harbor to a child.

It was the season of pouring rains in Hoi An on my birthday in 2008 and I decided to do something special. I  yielded to the reasoning of two ex-soldiers and bought a mountain tour in the middle part of Vietnam. Those two guides were to outfit us and ride us quick as the wind on their reliable Suzuki bikes.
Four years ago a small company called Easy Riders consisted of two Vietnamese with rather powerful motor bikes. One of them could speak English well enough, he was an interpreter during the Vietnamese war. The second one, a sturdily built man with a scar on the cheek, kept silent all the time but in the end it was he who managed to sell that entertainment to us. 
Quite by chance, I came across one Scandinavian who had just returned from such a tour. The same guys took him back to the hotel next door and he described what it was all about: it was a few day ride on a motor bike about the mountainous districts of the country, the raincoats were outfit, personal things were packed to prevent them from soaking. The only thing for us to do was to negotiate the price. The man with a scar came to his “work” perfectly ready. Without a single word (to tell the truth I thought him to be numb at first) he described the route by means of sign language, then he took out a thick notebook with maps, photos and multiple “hurray-comments” of previous clients.
If only my memory does not fail me, we agreed that we would pay 150$ a day per a person. Early in the morning, one day before my 26th birthday I tied my rucksack to a motor-bikes side and we ran across rice fields and through dense forests. The agreement was that I would tap him on the shoulder if I needed to stop and make a photo.
The post is continued with a few dozens of photos with comments. Real Vietnamese jungles, pioneers and a mountain village where smaller nationalities live.
There are the steel horses of our Vietnamese friends: “Easy Riders”. The company still exists, all the more so with a high appraisal of 4.5 out of 5 it is described on TripAdvisor. Good guys, still working! Here is their site: easy-riders.net. By all appearances, that business seems to be doing well. I see many new motorcyclists-guides in the photos of tourist sites.

Red pioneer ties. As you can guess, bicycle is a cardinal vehicle in the countryside of Vietnam.

A farmer is pasturing geese in the field. The weather at the time of our ride was awfully rainy. Water was everywhere: rain from above, puddles below.

A schoolgirl is going back home, children are fishing in a pool near the road.

That construction is to be sharply taken out of the water, the small fry is thrashing about in the green net (see the previous frame). I asked a fisherman if he was seining those fries to fish some big fishes later. He said he was going to eat them and I felt uneasy. What could I say! One needed a lot of such fries to be full up.

Vietnamese pastoral. We are going in the direction of the mountains. Pouring rains caused the rivers flowing down from the mountains to burst their banks: “high water”, and turbid, too.

I have to say that roads in that part of Vietnam (west from Hoi An) are made to last. They are good roads.

One of the rucksacks came loose and we stopped to tie it up again and stretch our legs.

At some place between the bridge and the entrance to mountain gorges we dropped in at a mini factory where thin rice noodles were made.

 
A cemetery with figured graves. Clouds were hanging low above the cemetery, we were going up the mountain road to the pass.

That part of jungles was made quite “habitable”: there was an electricity and the amount of storage ponds was constantly increasing. I will tell about it a little later.

Judging by the information drawn from the Internet there is an active building in that part of Vietnam. The system of cascade hydro power plants provides most part of the Asian country with electric energy. It is amusing that the banner is done out in the Soviet style which is yellow text in the red background.

I could not help it and made several photos of all-absorbing jungles.

When I watched the jungles I, whether desired or not, remembered films about the Vietnamese war. It must be awfully scary to war in such conditions.

Obelisks (like the one shown below) erected here and there recall the past and victims of hot war.

Late in the morning we stopped for lunch.

Simple food of workers and peasants happened to be quite saturated. Strong and hot coffee was especially good: any way, it was easy to freeze on the run even in a raincoat.

We went farther into the mountains. It became clear that the weather was not going to become better. Quite the contrary, it was becoming worse and worse. We had to stop our cross-country motorcycle race a couple times due to landslips like the one shown below.

Or even like that one: the road was absolutely impassable. We had to wait about half an hour.

Asian unruffled calm always impressed me: if we had to wait that was OK, we dismounted from our motor bikes, waited and did not torment the builders with questions. It was quite obvious that we would not continue our journey before we cpuld do it.

Jungle which my eye could embrace was boundless.

To feel the scale of the picture I recommend to find a human figure near a stream. In truth, that stream is a mountain river in a Vietnamese dense forest.

I think that “a house in the village”, I mean a Russian “dacha”, would be overgrown with trees and grass in half a year the way one could never find it again.

We stopped to refuel, warm ourselves, have a bite and look at the life of an ordinary village not far from the stopover. Those Vietnamese fuel filling columns were rather amusing. They comprises glass containers with markings and one could easily see if there was any gas or not. We started for the village.

Goods of a general country store in the “display window”.

A dog near an outer door. Simple folk live in this part of the country and their living is very plain.

No post about Asia can do without a picture of an Asian child.

A boy wearing a helmet is playing with a bicycle tire out in the pouring rain. It may be odd but it is my favorite photo in the series.

A small store near the road. Vietnamese like football very much, watch football matches and know Russian players by their names. I dont know as many players as they do.

Motor mechanics from a repair shop near a gas station. It was bucketing down all day, the camera got wet and the picture became dithered.

Some smaller nationalities live in this village which is away from civilization. Their distinctive feature is matriarchy.

In the village, “ladies choose cavaliers”. Young boys appear as brides and are given away in marriage to girls. There are many young men loafing about the village. The task of a young unmarried boy is to do some work about the house and, by his full age, become a hunk of a man.

The villagers earn a husbandry livelihood (which, in fact, means “pick up a scanty livelihood”). They grow coffee, cayenne, papaya: everything grows well in jungle heat and moisture. Women make 70% rice vodka, we did not fail to warm ourselves with it. Man, the drink just got at me to the marrow!

As I have mentioned Vietnamese people like football but the football is kind of “armless-legless” here.

Vietnamese eat dogs.  A good fat dog costs like a bad electrical stove. That is the reason why dogs here look rather miserable, hang around the door or shrink into a corner. 

Children are always happy to show off. Camera was wet through and started to become misted inside.

From the village, we went to the nearest settlement hotel for a night.

It was a small town and there even was a game club with the Internet. I visited it and wrote on that very day:
When I had dinner I watched news on TV about the summit meeting between the leaders of Vietnam and Russia. Indeed, small people rule the world. Medvedev spoke rather funny and used all six dialects of the local language. The guide translated that they were going to work on the formation and development of technologies, and strengthen something. The other guide showed a bullet wound already healed over and said that after the war he was deaf in one ear. It became scary to have a drink with a person who could rise in arms as easy as raise a beer.
In the village Internet club, teenagers were playing Counter Strike until sweated, and I was preparing to have my 26th birthday just in few hours.
In the morning the guide with a scar was unwell, so the second part of my birthday trip I spent in attempts to get out of that drowned area to a relatively safe town – Danang. Posts about the flood in Vietnam were popular in due time and were even mentioned in BBC news in Russian: Flood in Vietnam and Vietnam Under Water. It came all right in the end, everybody survived.

As you can guess, I am done with photos made during months of my Asian journey 2008. Next, I am going to post photos from my journey to Australia and to some islands in the Pacific Ocean. It may interest you.