The unexpected when you’re traveling

Look what I’ve got: GREEN HORNED COW FISH!
(trip to Guimaras)

I love that bit part of traveling when you get to see the unexpected in the usual day-to-day living of other people. The shock of what’s different, and the slow or sudden smile that creeps across your face, or the outright laughter that it produces.

I saw some of that in India. 

lending a foot

a cow right outside the mall

a contemplative donkey at the side of the road

 

And in Bali.

Liquid Petroleum Gas

Malaysia: KL.

If the left one means 'Pregnant Women - Not allowed'
what does the right one mean?!?
"Bawal ang batang umiiyak dito?"

Malaysia: KK.

everyone would really have to be aware of any stinger this big!

Even at home, the oddities of the standard lives of others could be amazing!

loading up a live cow
(Batanes)

I’ve lived in cities and the next suburb from it & the next province from it my whole life. Heaps of buildings crowd over me every day. I endure heavy traffic for an hour per destination. I am lost in the 11 million people of Metro Manila. I look back to my childhood and think of my days in our street: fishing out guppy from the gutter after the rain, relishing fruits meant for birds, played in its streets that are often under construction, precariously treading at the compacted black mud of an urban river, swinging at trees and running around under the midday heat. Traveling affords me an escape from my own daily existence and relive that carefree moments of childhood, 20 years later. So when I’m away, I do anything I can that is different from the life I now lead . . . 

driving Nina around in a 'cyclo' in the middle of the night
(Vietnam's old Imperial City - Hue)

even though most of the company I keep won’t do it, on account that they are now all grown . . .

ledge jumping @ the Hundred Islands National Park

fishing a baby snake out of the water (Casa Roro Falls, Dumaguete)