Who Is This Monk? Odd Selfies Show Up in a Traveler's Photo Stream
By Billie Cohen
After finding his iPod Touch in a restaurant, a monk in Laos has been posting photos to Scott Herder’s iCloud. Herder is now trying to track down his new photo friend. (Photo: Scott Herder/Instagram)
Ever since traveler Scott Herder shared the strange news that a monk had been living inside his phone, travelers (and travel media) have been hooked by his story. It’s one of those random and happy coincidences that globetrotters eat up — the ones that make the world seem smaller, happier, more whimsical, and much more friendly.
Herder, a travel writer and photographer, has been exploring the world and blogging about it on his site BoboandChichi, and during his time in Southeast Asia a few months ago, he accidentally left his iPod Touch on the table when he left a restaurant. He moved on, got a new device, and chalked up the loss to unfortunate things that happen on the road. However, a few months later, as he started to arrive in areas with Wi-Fi access, he began to see some unexpected photos popping up on his phone’s photo library: a monk taking selfies.
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Turns out, when Herder loss his iPod Touch, someone else picked it up and started to take photos of himself and his friends with it. Since the mysterious monk never logged out of Herder’s iCloud, Herder could see every photo that was uploaded. At this point, there have been more than 350.
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Just this morning, the story took a new twist when Herder posted his own selfie to their shared photo stream, holding a sign that says, “Hi I’m Scott, what’s your name?”, which he also shared on Instagram.
Herder posted his own photo this morning, in an attempt to “meet” the monk. (Photo: BoboandChichi/Instagram)
If past similar stories are any indication, Scott and his monk are about to become fast friends. That’s what happened earlier this year to Buzzfeed writer Matt Stopera, whose iPhone was stolen in New York’s East Village and ended up in China, in the hands of a man who also started to post a lot of photos of himself, not realizing the phone he’d purchased had been stolen. When Stopera finally connected with “Bro Orange” (as he dubbed the Chinese man after series of selfies taken in an orange grove) through the magic of the iCloud, they quickly became friends (and social media celebrities). Stopera ended up being invited to China to meet his new photo pal and was treated like a celebrity when he arrived.
Since Herder just posted his invitation to connect with his monk friend, we’re eager to see what happens next.
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