I’m very close to rolling out my new website layout – it should be within the next couple of days after I’ve worked out the last few bugs. Here’s a sneak peek of what to expect on the home page. I’m also adding a new feature to the blog: a ‘featured post’ section that will provide content in the right column while allowing me to showcase some of the more interesting posts.
New layout for Ankhou.com
There’s been a bit of an unexplained absence on my blog, and for that I’d like to apologise. It’s likely that anyone reading this will know me in person and consequently know the reason, but I feel like I should explain myself anyway.
I went on a six-week backpacking trip to South East Asia, briefly visiting Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia with my girlfriend (V), my brother (Robin), and his girlfriend (Alice). It was an amazing journey with both highs and lows, but felt terrifying swift and short. Six weeks isn’t a long time to spend visiting one country, so to make our way through four was a pick and mix affair that we could probably have planned a little better.
Nevertheless I don’t regret a thing, and I now have a number of destinations in mind for when we eventually return. Pai, a small town in Northern Thailand, was the favourite of our stops. A relaxed atmosphere, busy night market, beautiful mountainous countryside and cheap scooters all added up to a lot of fun! Chiang Mai, the gateway city, is also beautiful. Even without the attractions such as the comprehensive night market and the Old City, it has such a slower pace than Bangkok, our first stop, that it was a very refreshing change.
V and I scootering in Pai
Siem Reap and Angkor Wat in Cambodia also ranked highly. Angkor Wat, it goes without saying, is spectacular to the extreme, and Siem Reap, although very tourist-focused, lures you in via Pub Street (not kidding, there’s a street called Pub St.).
Vang Vieng was another spot on the traditional tourist trail. We were under the weather while we were in Laos, and we didn’t make it to Luang Prabang, a heritage-listed peaceful city in the North, but at least we completed our goal of floating down a tube on a river and flinging ourselves into it via various incredibly unsafe contraptions. A worthy investment if you can get past the sickening sound of Friends and Family Guy blaring out from every restaurant.
Ko Tao was our last destination in Thailand (barring another couple of days in BKK), and it was well worth the trip. Everything about it screamed ‘tropical island’, and cheap scooters and delicious seafood more than made up for the brief episode of Thai Belly I experienced while we were there. It was a little more expensive than the mainland, but expensive for Thailand is hardly a hit in the hip pocket.
Over the next few days I’m going to do some entries showcasing what I think are some of the best and most interesting photos I managed to snap on our trip. I ended up with 2200, and although there’s a lot of culling still to do, I think some have potential! I’ll start with a brief look at Angkor Wat, Bangkok and Chiang Mai. As a sidenote, all the photos were taken with a 6MP Olympus SP500-UZ. It’s developing some dead pixels now, but it’s been a trusty companion for a while.
Buddha heads at Angkor Thom
I’ve had one newspaper article published in the Adelaide Hills Courier, an interview with Geoff Balkman’s Elecdrawnic, and another article in the Adelaide Weekender coming up as a result of my win in the TJ Schiller ski design competition. You can also check out some of the other winning designs which have now been uploaded to TJ’s website.
You can read an excerpt from the Courier article, ‘Design career on downward slope’ here (who came up with that headline?), and my interview with Elecdrawnic is here.
I made a small gift for my girlfriend and mounted it on a CD. It looks a bit silly, but everything on it has a special meaning for us.
View from above
View from the side
In other news, I went to my friend’s first classical piano recital for honours last night. She played brilliantly as usual, and she’s definitely going to go far. She also plays in a local quartet called Monkey Puzzle Tree, who fuse genres with contributions from percussion, keyboard, electric violin and classical guitar. They’re great, and I’d strongly encourage you to check out their MySpace.
The band from left: David O’Callaghan, Michelle Lam, Matthew Gorgula and Sophie Calderbank
Another talented friend’s just finished his first year of illustration at UniSA. His work’s great, and very surreal. Check him out!
I’m really stoked right now because I just found out that my design has been picked by TJ Schiller to be featured on his next season’s CoreUPT pro model.
A big thanks to TJ and his crew for running the contest, and congratulations to the runners-up, Daichi Ishikawa and Joseph Toney, looks like you guys’ll get some nice gear!
The announcement is on TJ’s website, and my winnning design is below. If you click, it’ll take you to a higher resolution copy in my portfolio.
