On the subject of white.

Here's how that look works on the other side of the Pacific. Shot taken in June in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California. Sunglasses from Bangkok, T-shirt from H&M, shoes and shorts a mystery.

Eating well in LA.

When the weather heats up in the summer, the kind of foods I start to crave become much simpler. Yogurt with homemade granola. Grilled meat. Fresh fruit. And LA is a great city for this. Because while it's always been a city that cared about its diet, its increasingly a city that loves its food; its a combination that means you can easily tailor your eating to be spare, fresh, and healthy, but still delicious.

Taco stands are probably the last place one would think of going for healthy eating, but a good taco can be a thing of beauty in its spareness. Grilled marinated meat, a fresh salsa of chile, onion and cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. A great meal for a smogy LA lunch.

Almost every neighborhood in LA seems to have its own Farmer's Market, one day of the week when stands set up selling overflowing baskets of fruit, vegetables and herbs. We visited a nearby market at Echo Park, where between buying peaches for a clafouti and heirloom tomatoes for a simple salad, we even ran into a few friends.

We picked up a mixed basket of berries which were u-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e. They fat and sweet, perfect in the morning with just a little tart yogurt. The evening after the Farmer's Market, we attempted to muddle some in drinks, and despite our weak mixology skills, the drinks still shone thanks to the flavor of the berries.

Of course, when you would like to be eating badly, that's easy too. Near the intersection of Echo Park and Silverlake, we found a truck fresh churros, dusted with sugar. The were still hot, the golden exterior crunching to give way to a doughy interior. They certainly made all that healthy eating worth it.

Los Angeles is Beauty.

Not for everyone, sure; but definitely for me.

Missing.

Taking a moment to read posted signs, ads, and leaflets can be one of the quickest ways to connect with the soul of a city.

It gives you an instant tap into the triumphs and heartbreaks of its residents. We're having an art show. Our cat is missing. We're economizing-- come buy the stuff we can't afford to keep.

Abbot Kinney in Venice may be one of the few places I can imagine seeing a $350 chair being advertised on a hand-drawn flyer.


Come home, Whiskers. No questions asked.

Sunny in Silverlake.

Silverlake is one of the best Los Angeles neighborhoods for strolling around. There are cafes with amazing coffee, interesting independent shops and vintage outlets, and most importantly, lots and lots of beautiful people dressed amazingly well. It's a great area for people-watching and style spotting. We headed over yesterday for the Farmer's Market, where we picked up some delicious berries and heirloom vegetables, and kept an eye out for stylish locals.

Sometimes, I can't stand how much great style everyone has.

It does help, at least, that one of the best dressed gents out was my husband.

NM to TPE.

As of last night we have airline tickets booked, so our route for the next month has finally been mapped out. We're going to stick around Albuquerque a little longer, enjoying the clean dry air and the delicious green chile, then we're heading up to Utah (1) for a few days of camping among surreal desert landscapes. After a stop in Vegas for an even more surreal landscape, we'll be heading to one of my favorite cities in the world, Los Angeles (2), to hit up food trucks, hang out in well-styled cafes, and wish that we were staying permanently. Then at the end of June we'll catch a flight for our new home, Taiwan (3), where we'll be full-time teachers, and part-time street food explorers.

As much as I'm getting sad about leaving New Mexico once again, I am actually starting to get excited for the trip. Hope you'll join me along the way.

Sleep with the Stars.

Any trip I take around the world would ideally include a layover in my beloved Los Angeles. Thankfully I will have a place to crash when I make it back there, but that doesn't mean I can't imagine an escape to one of these retro lodges. In some ways, their diverse styles evoke different eras, different facets of Hollywood...

...from the aged and slightly worn hotels of the city's early years, where one can picture a struggling writer trying to polish a script...

...to the iconic and glamorous playgrounds of its golden age, where starlets sat poolside, and producers met over coffee in the Fountain Room...

...to the fantastically glitzy motor lodges of the space-age '50s, where sun-seekers ended their trip along Route 66.

Cpt/LA

In a recent entry on Girl in Asia, Saigon based blogger Liz described some of the differences between her life in Asia and life back home, in Australia. She compares the standard of living in the two locales, citing things she misses back home, but noting the things she’d miss if she returned. I think it’s simply part of the innate difficulty in being an expat—unless you left your home because you really couldn’t stand it there, there are likely lots of things you miss. I have to admit that I kind of have a continuous inner monologue that runs “but in LA we had…” Really, it’s gotten to the point that I’ve probably given Cape Town an inferiority complex. That wouldn’t be fair-- because really, this is a pretty fantastic city too. So as an exercise in being happy with what I have, I’ve listed below a few of the things that Cape Town has over LA.

1) The Neighbourgoods Market at the Biscuit Mill—LA does have some great farmer’s markets (not just the big touristy ‘Farmer’s Market’, but also loads of little once a week neighbourhood markets)—but none quite compare to the market at the Biscuit Mill. It’s a combination specialty food market, gourmet food court, and young designer shopping centre. There are always delicious foods to try, fun new food products to take home, and beautiful people to watch.

2) Shopping vintage—I never got too into second hand shopping in LA; I don’t know if I just had bad luck, but I always felt like I was never actually able to find anything good. It seemed to me that the second a handsome vintage item hit the Goodwill or a flea market, it was snapped up by a designer to be marked up and put in his shop on Beverly Blvd. Add to that the fact that the better markets, like the Rose Bowl, charge a steep entrance fee, and that prices for goods seem kind of inflated. So it’s with some relief that I visit the Milnerton Market here in Cape Town, where I always go home with a few fantastic items, and all for next to nothing. My latest finds? A giant metal biscuit tin decorated with a 70’s painting of impala, a set of 4 retro French dessert bowls, and a stream-lined footstool that is now acting as a magazine stand in our living room.

3) Independent businesses—One frustrating aspect about LA is that if you go to different shopping neighbourhoods around town, you’ll likely find the same shops: Restoration Hardware, Gap, Pottery Barn, Barnes and Noble, and of course, Starbucks. Great independent shops and cafes do exist, but the city is definitely dominated by chains. I’m not always opposed to the chains (I wouldn’t be adverse to an Ikea, a Target, or a Peet’s Coffee opening up on these shores), but it’s refreshing how in the absence of chain store monopoly, independent shops, cafes and restaurants have been allowed to flourish in Cape Town.

4) Cape Town really is a Town—I’m not exactly sure about this, but I’m fairly certain you could fit the entire area of Cape Town within the dimensions of Candy Spelling’s Hollywood estate. So basically, where LA is massive and sprawling, Cape Town is tiny and manageable. This does have its downsides—less to explore, and I sometimes feel the small pond thing-- but it has some major advantages, as it makes everything within the city so much more accessible. While LA also has beach and mountains nearby, I almost never took advantage of them because with the traffic, distances, and crowds, it seemed like too much of a mission. If I felt like going to the beach, it would mean packing up, getting in the car, struggling for two hours on the freeways, parking a mile from the waves, and then squeezing into a space on the sand between two other families’ towels. Here, we often do make the impulsive decision to go to the beach or take a picnic up the mountain, because it’s always less than twenty minutes away.

But just for fun, what does LA have over Cape Town? Trader Joe’s, the milder winters, cheap Ethiopian restaurants, the jasmine scented air, taco trucks, art museums, palm-fringed hills, gorgeous 1920s architecture, Zankou… ok, I need to stop again.

And next...

... is all a little unclear. And sorry Bkk, you didn't even make the shortlist. The one thing that's for sure is that I'm ready to be settled down for awhile. After five years of being highly international, I think I'm ready to be domestic...

Eating American in Los Angeles.

The above photos are not documentation of a bizarre three-course meal, but rather some samples of my first weekend eating again in the United States. Though I obviously had regrets about the food I'd be leaving in Southeast Asia, I was pretty excited about the food I'd be returning to in the US. And luckily the port of entry for my return was Los Angeles, the ideal place to get started eating.

We only had a weekend in LA, which was way too short to get in everything we wanted-- but we managed to do pretty well for ourselves. Highlights (most of which are illustrated above) included a greasy diner-style patty melt, an excellently prepared homemade Thanksgiving dinner, almond and cherry scones with a latte at Peet's Coffee on Larchmont, and a decadent pumpkin-spice cupcake at Swinger's Diner.

And though it doesn't exactly fit with the theme, I will also single out one of our best meals-- a delicious (and long awaited) Ethiopian dinner on Fairfax.

Sadly missed? Zankou Chicken, and even a single Taco Truck. Next time...

Craigslist Tourist.

I first learned of Craigslist as a senior in college, when a friend of mine was contemplating responding to an advertisement from a man who wanted to trade liquor for candy. I don't know if she ever took him up on his offer, but I will say that, without exaggerating, Craigslist quickly became one of the most influential websites in my life. I've found several jobs (including my current one) and multiple apartments through the site.

These days, Craigslist mainly serves one purpose for me: allowing me to imagine what it would be like if I lived somewhere else. Looking over apartment ads in different cities, I can calculate living costs, and get a peek into that city's domestic spaces. It also lets me consider what I like about my current apartment, and what I would like in a future apartment (a bigger kitchen, hardwood floors, a full sized oven, a garden).

Since I'm always have dreaming of returning to Los Angeles, I spend a lot of time browsing apartments there.

$1095 Slick 1920's pet friendly studio apt. w/ lots of characterThis would in many ways be a dream apartment for me. It's in Los Angeles, and the building itself seems to come with Hollywood charm built in. I love the hardwood floors, the large windows, and the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets. It's in K-town, which a lot of people dislike, but I think is an ideal location right between midtown and Silverlake/Echo Park. However it's been on Craigslist for awhile now, which makes me wonder what's wrong with it...

$1395 Front view oversized remodeled studio in Larchmont Village
Aside from the beautiful flooring, well sized kitchen, and architecturally interesting details, my favorite thing about this apartment is that it's so close to Larchmont Village. Though the neighborhood is a little generic, it has a delicious bagel shop, a friendly Peet's Coffee, and there's a great weekend farmer's market.

$1100 / 1br - Great quite Echo Park Apartment
Now this one has an ideal locale- overlooking Echo Park Lake. And I even like that rather outdated exterior with its flagstone trim. I'd even be willing to overlook the typo in the apartment's headline. But navy blue carpet? And they actually advertise that they just put it in! And why are so many apartments on Craigslist photographed so that they end up looking like crime scenes?

Or what if I were to consider living in Chicago?

$860 ~Great condition, desirable floor plan – heart of Lincoln Park!
The highlight of this Chicago spot is the building itself- I really like that mod exterior. The apartment itself is a little bleak- who ever decided slate was a great default color for apartment carpeting? The kitchen however looks rather fun, if a bit cramped.

$1145 / 1br - ~ Make this 1BR Your New Home
I'm starting to think the only thing drawing me to Chicago (aside from having a wonderful friend who lives there) are the beautiful brick apartment buildings. This one at least also has hard wood floors, french doors, and a tiny but decent kitchen. What it would be like to brave the midwestern winters here?

Or how about Singapore?

SGD9500 / 4br - Designer decor peranakan conservation shophouse- Little India
This might be the coolest apartment I've ever seen on Craigslist. It costs about as much per month as my current apartment costs in a year, but oh how worth it that would be. Aside from the idea of living in Little India, I'm rather taken with that exotic shopfront exterior, the beautiful wood floors, and the bamboo shades drawn low to keep the tropical sun out.

LAndscapes: The Silverlake Reservoir.

In thinking about my next move and potential future homes (thanks for all of the suggestions- Istanbul and Nepal would be awesome, and Vietnam is actually right at the top of my list), my mind drifted to all the things I love and miss about my previous place of residence.

When I last lived in Los Angeles, my apartment was right at the border between Mid-Wilshire and Korea Town. Though I was a little skeptical of the location at first, I came to really like being centered there. It put me within easy driving distance of both East and West LA, was practically next door to the Farmer's Market, and was near great diners and shopping. But one of my favorite things was that it put me just around the corner from the Silverlake Reservoir.

The neighborhood around the Silverlake Reservoir has a relaxed, almost rustic feel, with wood houses peeking out among the tree-shrouded hillsides. There were several independent cafes and design boutiques in the area, so it was a great setting for spending a relaxed Sunday drinking lattes and window-shopping. Even while running mundane errands to Trader Joe's or the video store, it was always a treat to drive under the shadows of pine-trees as I curved around the placid emerald-green waters.

LAndscapes: The Beverly Catalina Car Wash.

One of the most distinctive features of the Los Angeles landscape is the stately carwash. Its sweeping block-long form sums up so much about Southern California- from the glamour of its oversized Spanish Mission style lanterns, to the angular Googie signage that seems so evocative of a post-war enthusiasm for the freedom of owning a private vehicle.

Photographed between Midtown and Korea-town, on Beverly and Catalina.

The city you lived in is ugly: L.A.ndscapes.

When I tell people that I lived in LA, they frequently show no hesitation in informng me how much they hate the city. Perhaps they expect that I'll feel the same because it isn't my place of origin or because I chose to leave, or maybe they don't care what I think about it, but it always seems a little tacky to me. I love LA, so I have to admit I do feel a little offended when I hear that. I certainly don't expect everyone to like Los Angeles: I know of course that tastes and preferences vary, and that people have legitimate reasons for disliking LA. But it often seems that people simply repeat the sentiment without good reason, as if to dislike 'Hollywood' is a rejection of the qualities associated with it. And those qualities attached to LA, that it's vacuous, unintellectual, and shallow, strike me as a hollow cliche.

I find LA to be a vibrant, exciting city; it's a centre for progressive art and design, and a cosmopolitan mingling of diverse cultures. Beyond that- and this is where many disagree with me- I think that it's simply a beautiful city to look at. Then again, I'm not much helping that cause. Exactly one year ago, I started this blog with my first photographic entry, a piece about photographing Hollywood, which was written in and about Los Angeles. However, in the year that's followed, I've only written six more entries devoted entirely to the city. I have hundreds of photographs of LA, but I've probably published less than thirty of them on Primitive Culture. So I'm starting a new series: L.A.ndscapes. I'll be combining urban photographs with stories, pieces of history, or tips for traveling in the city of angels. I don't expect to change anyones mind about Los Angles- but I hope to at least show why I love it.

Coca-Cola Spirit House; Conclusion to Gods and Spirits of Thong Lo

After I started the series on the gods and spirits of Thong Lo, I realized that it was in part a way of working out some thoughts about modernity and globalization in Thailand. It's a topic that's been on my mind recently, but it's something I've been thinking about for years, since I first learned of spirit-houses.

I first became familiar with them during college, while living in Los Angeles. I ate out infrequently in Thai Town, a nondescript area of Hollywood with a lot of hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurants. Some of the grander properties had shrines out front: small but beautiful Thai-style houses, laden with fresh fruit and draped in flowers.

In 2003, I was assigned a sculpture project on pattern making. Since I had no experience with sewing patterns, I opted to go for something architectural. For some reason, my mind turned back to the elaborate shrines I had seen in Thai Town. I researched them, and learned that they were called spirit-houses: miniature homes meant to provide a refuge for spirits that were displaced when people developed land. People tend the houses, offering food and drink to the spirits that reside within. I read that spirit-houses used to be made mostly out of wood, but as development in Southeast Asia exploded and the forests thinned, they were increasingly being made out of concrete. The connections between ideas of displacement, modernization, and loss of tradition intrigued me. For my sculpture project, I built a spirit-house out of used cardboard. It was a Coca-Cola spirit house, with red and white soda-pop tiles dripping over a cardboard frame.

Recently, I read an interview with an Australian photographer about his work in Thailand. The photographer complained about Bangkok, how he had come looking for the exotic, and found a city just like every other. He lamented the loss of tradition, which he saw as the result of consumption and consumerism. He felt that soon Thai culture would disappear completely in the face of Western influence. While I too have nostalgic feelings about the loss of traditional cultures, and understand that hegemonic forms of globalization are troubling, his comments annoyed me. In part, I simply disagree with him about Bangkok; it's an extraordinary city that is just as unique as it is global. Beyond that, I think that it's a colonizing gesture to look at an 'exotic' culture, and wish for it to remain 'traditional'- while he likely doesn't expect the same of his own. But most strikingly, I found his suggestion that Thai culture is something static, able to be bulldozed in place of something new, to be completely incorrect. Thai culture (like most cultures) is inherently dynamic. Part of what makes Thai culture so vibrant is the degree to which it is a result of the merging of different cultures. Thai cuisine, which seems so distinct, is largely the collision of local, Khmer, Chinese, Indian, and even Portuguese (in the desserts, anyway) influences. Globalization isn't something that's going to wipe out Thai culture- it's what's gave birth to Thai culture in the first place.

The spirit-houses themselves are actually a great symbol of resilience. Buddhism is, after all, a foreign import- and the spirit-houses that link back to older traditions managed to survive. Thong Lo is one of the city's youngest, hippest, most moneyed streets in Bangkok- and yet people still create spaces for gods and spirits among the luxury condos and cutting-edge shopping malls. The spirits of Thong Lo don't linger as relics of a 'traditional' past, but thrive as living forces in the lives of modern people. And really, aren't spirit-houses about making way for something new while not losing touch with the old?

In the end, my thoughts came back to the spirit-house that I had made nearly five years ago. I don't think I fully understood what I meant when I created that Coca Cola spirit-house, but perhaps I know better now. I had made the spirit house out of non-traditional elements, out of ugliness. I thought it might be an indictment against modernization, but in the end, it was a beautiful object, with lush red and green tiles glistening over an ornate corrugated frame. The beauty of my recycled spirit-house had a meaning I hadn't intended. The materials and tastes of a culture may change, but isn't it possible that the spirit stays the same?

Lonely landscapes of the LA zoo.

Many people complain about the LA Zoo. They say it's too small, too strange-- they favor instead the massive animal amusement park in San Diego. But the LA zoo seems just the right size to me. With its overgrown landscape, it seems almost to be a massive, primeval garden-- making it all the more surprising when you turn a corner, and come across a Sumatran rhino or a Bactrian camel.

Perhaps because so many people overlook it, the grounds of the LA zoo are often quiet, and perfect for exploration. The further back in the zoo you walk, the farther you get from the minor crowds, and the more you escape into the manicured wild.

The Top 7 Locales of 2007.

2007 has been an incredible year. It was a year of multiple residences, and a year of long travels in strange lands, both familiar and exotic. It was a year in which I was exposed to the wonders of Southeast Asia, and in which I came to grasp the beauty of my own dessert home. This list doesn't represent everywhere I visited this year, or even everywhere that touched me- notably absent are Cambodia, Cape Town, Taos, and a number of spots around Thailand. This list is simply a collection of the places that affected me the most, and have lingered in my mind the longest.

7. Gauteng. The placement of Gauteng at the bottom of my list represents, to a degree, my ambivalence about the place. The social character among many people is of fear: they've built up massive shopping malls and walled-in squares, where they can safely avoid having ever to go outdoors. In 2007 I spent a little time exploring Johannesburg on my own, and for the first time visited Pretoria. The architecture of the two cities cannot easily be described as beautiful, but has an odd ironic appeal. They're an uncomfortable mix of styles that represents so much about the contradicting values in South African culture: from the conservative monuments and boulevards of Pretoria, to burgeoning Urban redevelopment in a downtown Joburg reborn. Yet Gauteng is perhaps the most African of South African landscapes: a rapidly developing center that represents- both symbolically and literally- the financial aims of the continent. Perhaps as a result, one can see a distinctively African modern style in Gauteng, perhaps more easily than in Cape Town. For this reason, Egoli keeps me intrigued, and hopefully I will return to see more.

6. Southern Colorado. I visited Southern Colorado often as a child. Just several hours north of my home in New Mexico, it was an easy destination for weekends away or short family trips. But never before this visit have I been so astounded by what a place it is. Perhaps it was seeing through the lens of my foreign traveling companion, or a filter gained from years abroad; either way, Colorado seemed to me a distillation of all the classic images of America, free and glorious. There were horses running in wild overgrown fields, tremendous storms, and ice capped mountains crashing over the horizon of pine trees.

5. Ho Chi Minh City. The home that almost was. For a week I struggled in Ho Chi Minh, worrying about finding work and a place to live. It wasn't until just before I left to return to Bangkok that I was able to see what a truly beautiful, graceful city it is. Where Bangkok is tropical in its steamy, swampy overgrowth, Ho Chi Minh has refined its tropical heat into an elegant style, with pale painted walls, and ornately shuttered windows. The frantic pace of the city is visible in the motorbikes that swarm the street, and yet relaxation is offered in discretely hidden cafes, and in leafy courtyard restaurants. And though I had to choose not to live there in the end, it was undoubtedly one of the most intriguing cities I was lucky enough to visit in 2007.

4. The Deserts of Southwestern USA. On our way from Los Angeles to New Mexico, Bordeaux and I passed through the great deserts of the American Southwest. While it was in many ways a home-coming for me, I was struck for the first time what a bizarre and unusual landscape it was. I revisited some places, like Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, but I also searched out new places I had never been to: Salton Sea, the mission at San Xavier, Sonoma, Organ Pipe National Park. I explored abandoned motels, drove through thunder storms, and slept under the gaze of kitt fox and kangaroo rats. From the neon wasteland of Las Vegas, to the austere grace of Spanish mission cathedrals, to wonderland cactus gardens, I came to see how the desert Southwest is undoubtedly one of the most exotic landscapes in the world.

3. The Mekong River. The exotic pleasures of Southeast Asia are given form in the meandering brown river called the Mekong. For almost a month we followed the river, from the overgrown hills of Northern Thailand, through the Oriental splendor of Laos, into the wild, dusty landscapes of Cambodia. The river is home to such incredible places as the elegant village of Louang Phrabang, the stylishly mod capital of Vientiane, and the frontier town of Kompong Cham. It was for me a river of untamed jungles, golden temples, and painted blue shutters. And traveling for two days on a slowboat, through tall lush forest and tiny bamboo-and-thatch villages, is unquestionably an experience that will stay with me long after 2007 has passed.

2. Los Angeles. It may seem odd to make a city where I lived from 2001 to 2005 my #2 spot for 2007, but I have reason. I spent most of 2006 in Cape Town; and though I love the Cape, I thought often of LA. I remembered places I missed, thought of neighborhoods I never got to explore, and lamented the fact that I had taken no photographs of the city. I had lived in LA while going to college, but I had never really gotten to know the city, never became a local. So when I returned to the US in late December, I took it as my second chance to get to know Los Angeles. I arrived in California on New Year's Eve, ready to start 2007 in LA. I got to know the city in ways I never had, discovering the styles of midtown, the charms of Little Ethiopia, and the grungy pleasures of Echo Park. I shopped at farmer's markets, used public transport, become a local at several cafes. I came to really enjoy the way that life existed somehow between asphalt reality and a fantasy vision that Hollywood had created of itself. In 2007, Los Angeles emerged for me as a place not just where I went to college, but as a city that I really know; a city from which I draw inspiration; and a city that I now think of as a distant, beckoning home.

1. Bangkok. The number one place for 2007 was, without question, Thailand's capital city. With it's addictive flavors, hip urban culture, and lush concrete landscapes, Bangkok grabbed me in a way no other city has. I arrived in Bangkok unsure of what to expect, prepared to hate the city. I had been told for years that the best strategy when traveling in Thailand was to fly into Bangkok, and quickly get out to anywhere else. But the moment my airplane lowered below the clouds and I took in the towering sky-scrapers, piercing wats, and python-curves of the Chao Phraya river, I was entranced, and I've only grown more fascinated since.