Dear Hillary,
This is a story that touched my heart, it concerns a huge festival at Wat Doi Noi Temple in Lamphun about a month ago. I was taking a video movie and gave my pocket camera to a student named Ang. She took lots of photos which I got processed and returned them to Ang to distribute to the various people she had taken photos of.
Well that evening she phoned me to say that on giving one of the photos to a novice monk he started to cry. She asked him why he was crying and he told her in all his seventeen years he had never had a photo taken of himself. He loved the photo and put it under his robes near his heart.
So I guess if we Farang ever take photos of Thai people it would be nice to make sure they get a copy, who knows it might be the same story. It really touched me and made me feel so good to have been a part of the story.
Just a couple more things, I was involved in a bad motorcycle accident and if I had not been wearing an good crash helmet I would be dead the police told me. There were three nineteen year old lads on the bike that hit me head on, two died on the spot, the third was hospitalized like me. They had no helmets but that’s not unusual is it, no driving licenses, no registration or insurance, my hospital bill was 130,000 baht, but my 900 baht ‘Index’ helmet saved my life. Oh I did get my picture on the front page of Thai News, not a pretty one Hillary!
All the very best to you all at “The Mail” Hillary, I hope you all enjoy the Songkran season.
Delboy
Dear Delboy,
Great to hear from you again, and you certainly had a narrow escape. Hillary will not travel on motorcycles, as at my age, falling off one would be very dangerous. But back to your photographic escapades. You are so correct for many of the country people. To have a photo of themselves can be quite a thrill. Particularly with today’s digital cameras, many photographers do not bother to have prints made, so the subject of the shot never gets to see it. To take the time and effort to have them printed and then distributed is very good of you, Petal. Maybe some others reading this will do the same in the future.
