Jon Brown's take on travel, photography, technology and WordPress.
One of the many cool things that the folks at Automattic do is provide a year end stat report for anyone on WordPress.com as well as anyone running WP Stats (part of JetPack) on self hosted WordPress sites.
Well, 2013 wasn’t exactly an “amazing year” for traffic on WanderingJon.com, but suspect 2014 will be different now that I’m blogging again!
Checkout my report here: https://jetpack.me/annual-report/12537792/2013/
Once upon a time I was scootering around Chiang Mai just north of the moat (north of Chang Puak) early in the morning. I was just out exploring a neighborhood I’d never visited in my pre-scootering days. Somewhere lost in the sois I came across a local market. I love markets and dismounted the scooter to explore. It was full of the usual smells and sounds of Thai markets, some were inviting and others not so much! Dried fish and squid sat in baskets next to massive steel bowls full of non-decript curries and soups. Then along the side of the market I found a woman pouring milk into little divots in a hot metal plate. My life was about to change.
Several Thai people stood waiting and I step forward to order. The woman nodded and I proceeded to wait… and wait… Finally after several trays full of these little white mysterious things were given to others by the half dozen I was handed box. I promptly plopped one in my mouth and was hooked.
I wouldn’t learn the name of Kanom Krok for years, but I would hunt for them high and low. Even when I finally successfully described them to a Thai person and learned the name of them they would remain extremely hard for me to find.
So now when I’m in Chiang Mai I go back to that market and find that same woman there cooking them whenever possible. They are my most favorite Thai breakfast worth hunting high and low for in the early morning hours.
Go check out Elena’s post on Food Practice for more on them including ingredients: Kanom Krok At The Morning Market
Here’s a little video of the making on Kanom Krok, gobble them up if you’re lucky enough to find them:
Last week I was IM chatting with my niece on Skype about my upcoming travels and she commented that “you and Elena are soo lucky you guys get to travel soo much”. I know what she meant, and she meant well, but it’s worth pointing out living and traveling like we do takes a great deal of work. Too few ever seem to really recognized that.
The first time around it was harder to hear statements this, but I’ve since learned to put it in the same category of people that say things like: “OMG that photo is so beautiful! You must have a really expensive camera”. In these situations people are sincerely trying to pay a compliment, they just don’t really realize what their words really suggest isn’t so much a compliment of the human involved.
A lot of my fellow photographers have heard that refrain so often they have a saying about this, “It’s not the camera”. I think we travelers can similarly embrace, “It’s not luck” as our refrain. More on the hard work that goes into this life in another post.
I’m as guilty as the next person of making comments like this, but hopefully this post will help us all remember next time we are amazed by something someone has done to take a moment to recognize what went into that accomplishmen. And perhaps even better to sincerely ask them about the hard work that went into realizing it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the photographer with beautiful photos, the Olympic athlete with a medal around their neck or the parent with amazing kids… Take a moment and ask “How did you capture such a beautiful photo?”, “Tell me about how you trained so long and hard to achieve that medal?” and “What have you done to raise such amazing children?”
Side note: this officially marks my return to travel blogging so start paying attention to this site again if you’re interested, much more travel related stories and photos to come.