The IMAX Cinema in Darling Harbour is one of my favourite buildings I’ve ever seen anywhere. 

Designed by Australian architect Lionel Glendinning, it’s an architecturally striking and perfect solution for a nightmare design brief. 

Situated between two overhead freeways (the red area on the satellite photo below) on an oddly shaped block of land usually wouldn’t help most architects come up with such an amazing design.

Glendinning has created a building that not only serves its purpose as a large screen cinema he has also designed a landmark that just yodels with the rapturous joy in amongst all the other bland buildings downtown.

It’s a masterpiece of aluminium cladding and a brave colour scheme. The building seems to be a combination of an aeroplane’s wing and a commentator’s stand at a motor-sports event. It looks fantastic as you drive by it on the overpass, and it almost makes you feel like you are on a race track on your way to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Every time I see this building it puts a smile on my face to think that such courageous and inventive design can occur on such an ugly and difficult site.

Back in 1982, when I was in Morocco, I travelled south to Goulimine. At the time Morocco was in the middle of what its government laughingly described as a “green revolution”.  The so-called green revolution was actually a naked land grab by Morocco of what was once the Spanish Sahara..  In late 1975 as Franco was in the process of dying, (the odious) King Hassan of Morocco with tacit American and French approval, declared that he was sending in 350,000 Moroccans as mujahedin to reclaim the area for the motherland totally disregarding the local population’s desire for independence from Spain and self rule that had been sanctioned by the U.N. since the early 1960s.
 
Morocco has not been a good neighbour to the countries that surround it and has been in an undeclared state of war with Algeria for the last 30 years due to Algeria’s support of the Polisario (which had been fighting for independence from Spain since the early 1970s). Plus Morocco did not recognize the right of Mauritania to exist until 1969.
 
At the time when I was in Morocco, the furthest south that a foreigner could travel was Goulimine.
 
When I was younger, I had romantic notions of travelling through the desert with the Tuaregs to Timbuktu.  So when I was in Morocco, I tried to make it happen by going down to Goulimine. The further south that one travels in Morocco the more “African” it becomes.  The European influenced whitewashed houses of the northern coastal areas give way to pink and blue structures with touches of sub-Saharan design.  In the north of Morocco near the Mediterranean, many of the people could be mistaken for Greeks or Italians but the further south, one goes, the more African looking the people become. Still fine featured like Arabs but with much darker skin and frizzy hair
 
Just like in the rest of Morocco, one is beset by touts, offering to be your guide as soon as you step off the bus.  I’m pretty deft at losing these guys, but in small towns It’s hard to get away from the really persistent ones as they will follow you to your hotel, and then wait outside the front for when you decide to go out later.  The guy in the photograph latched on to me from the time that I’d got off the bus and followed me around for at least two days before I eventually relented and had conversation with him. 

Even I can’t be unrelentingly rude.  His persistence is a testament to how a little work there is and how desperate people are.  There was no way he was going to let a clueless, pasty, foreign, bag of money like me slip through his grasp.
 
Moroccan culture is impenetrable to people who don’t speak the language, and after a couple of days in Goulimine I was starting to realise I wasn’t going to get anywhere without some local help and that’s when I made the mistake of asking “my guide” to help me find some Tauregs who would be willing to take me to Timbuktu as part of a camel caravan.
 
By the next day, my newfound friend had arranged a meeting for me with some very hospitable and amiable Tauregs.  In retrospect, it is no wonder why they were so friendly.  After all, there I was, a totally clueless and naive sack of money from overseas, who was only too willing to part with his money for the craziest of reasons.  Why would you want to travel by camel through the desert when you had enough money to fly?
 
I was plied with mint tea and regaled with stories about the Tauregs, and their amazing skills in the desert.  “I have a friend, a very wise man, who can travel in the desert using only the stars to tell him the way to go”, I was told in awe by one of my hosts.  I guess astral navigation can seem pretty amazing to someone like him who hadn’t been in the Boy Scouts.  Some Taureg clothing was also brought out for me to try on.  They really knew which of my buttons to push as I thought it would be pretty cool to cross the desert in disguise, accompanied by people with dangerous reputations.  This would surely all lead to an experience “worthy of a song”, as the Klingons would say.

It was explained to me that there was no way that I could go into the camel market and buy a camel for myself as I would just get ripped off, and the same would happen when it came to me to buy the other supplies that I would need for the trip.  It was also explained to me that it would be nearly impossible for me as a foreigner to just walk up to some strange Tauregs, and ask them if I could just tag along on their next trip to Timbuktu.  Another aspect I had to take into consideration was that as a tourist I would stick out like dog’s balls.  I would attract the attention of the local security forces and would probably end up in jail, as what I wanted to do was considered illegal from a Moroccan point of view. The Moroccan government didn’t want foreigners going into a country that they were in the process of stealing.
 
Then came the time to talk about money.  I was told to pay $300 US to get things organised and that I should get ready to leave in about a week’s time.  Normally I don’t pay upfront for anything, but I figured I had to trust these guys at some stage.  If I didn’t pay the money upfront, and they were crooks, there was a good chance I would be taken out into the desert to be killed and robbed while I slept.  This was of particular concern, considering that I would be traveling illegally and incognito.  If I paid the money upfront, and they ripped me off I’d only be a little poorer, but I’d still be alive.  So I paid them the money and arranged to meet them in a week’s time.  I had to go back to Tarrazout, which is up near Agadir to get the rest of my stuff that I had left in storage, with Louasin.
 
Needless to say, I got ripped off.

The pavement was too narrow and I couldn’t get far enough away from the building without having cars in the foreground so I stitched four images together.

About 50kms northeast of Mexico City are the amazing pyramids of Teotihuacán.

I didn’t visit Teotihuacán back in 1983 when I first went to Mexico because in my mind I thought they’d just be some kind of lame tourist trap. I used to have an elitist head space back then about travelling. I used to make a distinction between “tourism’ and “travelling”. In short I thought that tourism was for weak-minded lightweights and that travelling was somehow purer. Ah… the arrogance of youth. Now that I’m older, I see all travelling that’s not done for business, visiting family or to get to safety, as essentially tourism. Just going to places to have a look see.

I now wince when I hear someone declare with emphasis that are travellers.

Au contraire!

I “travelled” for 11 years straight which included probably over a 100, 000 kilometres hitch hiking and sleeping rough and when I look back I don’t feel that it could be described as anything more than tourism. I just didn’t have enough money most of the time to make it comfortable and that fact doesn’t turn it into “travelling”.

As a matter of fact, I’ve stopped staying at backpackers hostels when I do go abroad because I know it’s socially unacceptable to maim people bragging about what legends they are because have been “travelling” for a whole six months. I also feel it’s better for everyone that I remove myself from the temptation of perpetrating a little ultra violence when I hear some wanker ask a fellow backpacker, “how long have you been travelling for?”, so they can establish some kind of “I’ve been travelling longer than you” hierarchy. It’s a good thing that I didn’t meet myself when I was younger or I might not be writing this post.

Now with my little rant over, I will tell you a little about Teotihuacán. My wife and I took one of the cheap local buses from the Terminal Norte in Mexico City which turned out to be a good thing because it stopped at various little towns along the way and musicians would get on a play for tips. It was very atmospheric and muy sympatico.

If you ever go to Teotihuacán make sure you take a hat, some sun screen and water. There is very little shade and it can get very hot.

As you walk along the main avenue of the ruins, the charmingly named Calzada de los Muertos (road of the dead) you will see one small pyramid type platform after the other on either side in a row leading to the big pyramids at the end.

It wasn’t until I had visited Teotihuacán that I found out that the largest pyramid in the world (Cheops) might be in Egypt but the next two largest ones were in Mexico. Even though I’ve been to Mexico twice now, it still amazes me how many big pyramids there are in that country. I almost think that fact is being kept from the world, but then I realize it’s just my own ignorance.

 At the end of the Calzada de los Muertos the second largest pyramid at Teotihuacán known as the “Pyramid of the Moon”

and to it’s left is the larger (third largest in the world) pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun. My wife and walked up the stairs to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

 It was pretty steep (not as steep as Tikal but much longer) and long but the view at the top is wonderful.

On the Pyramid of the Moon’s right is the Placio de los Jaguares which is quite different to the rest of the complex. It’s a nice place to sit a while in the shade and get some respite from the hawkers.

The Placio de los Jaguares is one of the few places in the whole complex where you can still see some of the old painted decoration.

 It must’ve been an amazingly colourful place. Almost psychedelic.

Not much is known about the people who built Teotihuacán as it is thought that it was started in the first century AD and abandoned by the eigth century.

Remember if you go there, that the hawkers are probably the descendents of the people who built the place and they have a right to be there and to eek out a living somehow. Don’t get annoyed at their constant attentions, just say no, thanking them politely (no gracias) and walk away if you don’t want to buy anything from them.

To western eyes, Hindu temples look very colourful and exotic. So different from the European influenced churches we are used to looking at.

When I was in France I visited the famous Chartres Cathedral and listened to John James (the world renowned expert on Chartres) give a lecture about it. One of the facts that I found very interesting was that the old Gothic churches used to be painted in bright life-like colours just like the Hindu and Buddhist temples are painted nowadays. Apparently researchers have found traces of paint on the old cathedral’s stonework and there are also ancient accounting records still in existence of the of the painting work that was done.

Anyone who has looked at more than a few of my posts will know that I like bright rich colours and I find it a bit sad that the old churches aren’t painted any more (it got too expensive). I’d love to see an old Gothic church painted up like how they did it in the old days. The medieval age was a lot more colourful than I think that many people of today, would imagine.

I was struck by the abrupt transition from the hotel grounds to the rest of the landscape.

The concourse to the departure gates at Bangkok International Airport looks a lttle like a futuristic version of Monstro’s (the whale in Disney’s film of Pinocchio) insides.

When I was younger (about 10 years old) and I saw street scene pictures of older buildings in places like Europe, I used wonder why the structures weren’t better maintained. I couldn’t understand why the paint was allowed to flake off or why the rendering over the brickwork wasn’t repaired. I used to think, “Oh they must be too poor”.

When I got a little older (mid teens) I remember thinking to myself that Europe was still recovering from WWII and that perhaps the economies still hadn’t recovered enough for people to fix up their houses. Now that I’m older I find that I like the interesting textures and colours that are formed as a building starts to weather and show it’s age. I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes the patina of age on buildings as there is now an industry that is based on reproducing faux surfaces so that the new can be imbued with a bit more character.

I’ve notice that in first world countries like the US or here in Australia that many people like to surround themselves with earthier textures. Things like coarse hand-woven cloth, terracotta tiles and lime washed or distressed wood. I guess it’s a reaction to the smoother more linear surfaces that one sees in newer cities.

As Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) once said

“All over the country the latest and most scientific methods of mass-production are being utilised to turn out a stream of old oak beams, leaded window-panes and small discs of bottle glass, all structural devices which our ancestors lost no time in abandoning as soon as an increase in wealth and knowledge enabled them to do so.”

Conversely, I’ve noticed that in places like Morocco or Mexico that the locals are sick to death of hand made objects and want things that are more refined.  A sure way to let a Moroccan merchant know that you are a clueless clown that can be separated from their money easily is to wear anything that smacks of ”home spun”, hand-woven”, “natural dyes” or the like. If one looks at the average Moroccan in the rural areas, one will notice that even the poorest people wear clothing made from finely woven materials. No self respecting Moroccan would be caught dead in what they would feel was coarse badly made clothing. The corollary is that if you wear coarser clothing you must be very poor or stupid.  Since, from a Moroccan perspective, foreigners are rich, any foreigner wearing coarsely woven material must be stupid and doesn’t know what quality is and therefore can be sold any old piece of crap.

I remember once back in the early 80s, when I was first in Mexico, I was standing in line to see a movie. I was just dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and I noticed that all the locals were dressed up in their finest clothing. Obviously going to the movies was a much bigger deal to them than me. It occurred to me that the locals were still trying to reach some kind of “escape velocity” from poverty so they could live the life they saw in movies or on TV. Where as many people in the more developed world are seeking an escape from the “plasticness” of their lives by surrounding themselves with more “natural” textures.

So what’s all this got to do with the picture above?

If you look at the light fitting on your right you will notice that there is a line of lighter coloured material that goes straight down from the base of the obviously new (faux) coach light where the wiring has been put in. This begs the question, why not repair the cement rendering over the exposed brick while you’re covering over the wiring for the light with cement? It would’ve been a small thing to do and it’s not like the cement or the local labour for that matter, are very expensive (in comparison to the light).

I suspect the reason why the brickwork was left uncovered is because San Christobal de las Casas makes a fair bit of it’s income from tourists who come to see the quaint old houses with their “picturesque decay” and the locals with their “hand made and woven” clothes.

For years, the developed western world has been pumping a consumerist message into the rest of the world.  Trouble is that the rest of the world now wants the first world life style that is so costly in terms of the earth’s resources and pollution.

Malaysia is a classic case in point, as it’s economy grows and the standard of living rises, it’s population aspires to live the dream sold to them by the west.

The first image (above) is of the billboards making up the facade of the building housing Mc Donald’s in Bukit Bintang (the very centre of Kuala Lumpur). On the surface things look fairly normal to a western eye but directly behind the Mc Donald’s is a mass of air-conditioners.

As the developing countries get more affluent, they too, just like the developed west, will want to be more comfortable, and I think we all know where that’s going to end when consumption of energy and resources doubles or even triples.

I’ve always thought it was extremely hypocritical that the west has been trying to tell the rest of the world not to pollute when we are the worst offenders. To add insult to injury, we keep on glamorising consumption.

I love the discordant colour combinations one sees in Sapa, Vietnam

 and it would seem that the local Zao people do also.