My travelling friend Phil was a biologist and wanted to stay at a National Park. While there I wandered off on my own to look for an interesting shoot.
I came across a large lake with lots of dead tree trunks sticking out of the surface, all black from being burnt. How those trees burnt above a lake still eludes me.
I took a couple of photos and noticed three young men in the water on the opposite side. I waved to them and they waved back, all smiles. To my surprise they jumped onto their log raft and pushed it all the way over, beckoning me to jump on. I happily did, took off my trainers and promptly sat down, only a little traumatised by the proximity of all that water to my very expensive camera (a Nikon F3).
It was worth the fear. They got straight back to work looking for fresh water snails and collecting them, presumably to eat. I knew no Thai and they knew no English. There were plenty of smiles between them and they chatted as they dropped in and out of the water, feeling around the tree trunks below the surface.
At one point they all stopped talking, went deliberately quiet and starred at the opposite back, whispering to each other. Nothing was there, it was a false alarm. I still don’t know what they thought it was but I did hear that about 2 weeks before we arrived someone was killed by a wild elephant. Or maybe it was a tiger, I can’t remember.
The memory of that event has never left me, I think of them with great kindness.
