Picture Perfect

Friday 29th January 2010, 1.20pm, Wat Xieng Thong Temple - Luang Prabang

I'm not a big photo taker. In fact, this is a simplification of the matter. I haven't taken one photograph in about 4 weeks, shameful I know. Ella is much better at remembering to do this than me and I have been resting on her laurels, happily posing when instructed but on the whole highly uninterested by the activity. Really, people who spend their entire time photographing everything wind me up something chronic. Yes, when you return home you'll have 4000 fabulous stills that neither capture the beauty, atmosphere nor synaesthesia of places you saw to bore your friends and family with - it's a universal truth that no one likes looking at other people's holiday photos - yawn. Maybe if you spent less time behind a lens and more time letting your eyes actually look at things then you wouldn't need to capture it all on film for remembrance's sake - it would already be indelibly engraved on your memory, with or without pictorial aid. A particular bug-bear of mine is when other tourists tut or sigh when you, God forbid, walk in front of the 900th shot they've taken of the same sunset. Oh I'm terribly sorry, I didn't realise this was your beach and your sun and your dusk, here, let me stand completely stationary and idle to one side of your tripod for 15 minutes whilst you get the light exposure just right. Cretins. You won't know what this photo is of when you get home because you didn't spend any time living in it!

For the past hour or so I have been at Wat Xieng Thong temple, a short walk away through rustic villages and wildflowers from the centre of Luang Prabang town. With Ella gone AWOL I decided it was about time that I acted like a grown-up and and assume partial responsibility for taking at least a few photographs of my own. Up until this point, temple fatigue had very much been setting in and I was beginning to get disgustingly blase about these magnificent, awe inspiring religious structures. Seen one giant bronze Buddha in a marble roofed dome surrounded by ancient gold leaf wall paintings and carved wooden pillars - seen 'em all. Wat Xieng Thong has cured me of this ingratitude though. For the first time in 4 weeks I was moved enough to make like a Chinese tourist and excitedly rooted in my bag for my abandoned camera, turned it on, and was instantly informed 'Battery Empty' before the useless thing promptly turned itself off. How can your battery be dead, I've not used you in a month?!! I expect it is trying to teach me a lesson for being so negligent. Typical, because Wat Xieng Thong really is a work of art and divine idolisation.

I am extremely glad that I have attempted to contend with my illness today because I can think of no better destination for rejuvenation than here. I managed to hold down an entire can of Sprite this morning and am currently making very concerted effort to keep said Sprite inside me, rather than depositing it over temple gardens. The guidelines for respectability here entail that you remove your shoes, you have to wear clothes that cover your arms and legs, and talking to or touching other people is frowned upon - I hardly think they'll appreciate me vomiting everywhere. Although it doesn't make any mention of this in the rules.....?

Unlike any temple I have seen before, these structures are covered in mirrored mosaic tiles depicting events from the life of Buddha (what a fat, happy little man he was). The sun blindingly reflects off every surface, casting it's rainbow light spectrum across the white stone courtyard and bushes of orchids and frangipani. One building is covered entirely in gold with tiny black silhouettes of dancing gods painted intricately along the frames, arches and turrets. Inside the main temple a few tourists are cross-legged on the molting, red, Ali Baba carpet and with closed eyes sit in quiet contemplation and incense smoke before the impressive 10ft gold Buddha who sits opposite them, mimicking their pose. In the temple garden, next to a silver-tiled elephant statue and a palm tree full of ivory butterflies, a monk is shading himself under a charcoal grey umbrella and playing the pan pipes. I am sat on a step looking out over the muddy Mekong River which borders the temple grounds and runs all the way from the Yunyan province in China to it's deltas where I have previously sailed it in Southern Vietnam. A bamboo village community on the opposite bank has lit a bonfire on the shore, the occasional fishing boat drifts past with it's nets floating lazily behind it, it's proprietors sit snoozing and sun-drenched on the deck blowing tobacco smoke through their noses. Scores of small caramel-skinned, almond-eyed local children are playing in the water, squealing and singing with delight every time one of them falls under. This is the Asia I dreamt about, but never really dared believe existed.

A functioning camera would have been a bonus I suppose. But only this, only a bonus, because such sights as these will be impossible to forget, and disappointing photographs might only taint my memory in years to come through their inadequacy. I do not want to be a snapping paparazzi tourist, not the photographer. I want to be a barely visible bystander with her back to the camera sitting in the corner of the frame, gazing out and inhaling views others will only take the time to look at through pixelated shadows of ill-remembered perfection.