Kala Ghoda 2014

A three month break is just too long.

I got out of the habit of taking pictures, or I got too precious about it. The light is wrong, it's too busy, it's too quiet, it's too early or too late. One way or the other I spent too long not taking pictures and complaining about not taking pictures. So Kala Ghoda Arts Festival came around and Saturday morning found me waiting for it to open so I could get in before it got too crowded.

Here are a few images:

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 Incredulous India

 Bollywood Mover

More soon.

Jantar Mantar, Jaipur

Jai Singh's amazing stone astronomical observatory built in the early 18th Century and a perfect blue sky.

BBC Radio 4 did an excellent programme on this place if you want to find out more about it. In Our Time, Jantar Mantar.

Mandalay in Myanmar

Mandalay in Myanmar, some of hundreds of pictures taken:

At a monastry in Mandalay, 1,500 monks queue for their main meal in silence

At a ceremony where novice monks enter the monastery for a short period









Mandalay is one of the centres of Buddha image creation, both bronze and marble










Lots of colonial buildings but I'll leave you with the Post Office which is typically British and was also typically closed when we wanted to use it.

Thre are more, many, many, many more on Flickr, feel free to click through to them. I'll post pictures from Inlay, Bagan and Yangon very soon.

Things that happen in Vietnam

After any amount of time living in a country most things start to seem normal, which indeed they are.

Dozing on the morning school run:


Dressing for sightseeing:


Getting comfy in the airport, note the matching fake Clark's sandals:


Moving large pieces of equipment around during lunch service:

All perfectly normal.

Street Food Images, Saigon

Dong Du, District 1, this area is a tourist hotspot and high end stores and hawkers selling fakes abound but side by side to street restaurants and temporary tables.


Banh Mi Mackerel, this brightly branded sandwich cart off Hai Bai Trung has caught my eye for a while but this is the first time I've been anywhere near it with a camera and with enough time to wait for a break in the traffic to capture it.

Rotten Narrow Table Ox Depository revisited

It'a been a while since I blogged some random images of things that tickle me so I'll rectify that now. I still haven't eaten here but at least I now know that oop-la is fried egg.



Building is everywhere, sites are usually surrounded by drab green corrugated steel walls but this one near Pham Ngu Lau is particularly colourful.




Everything becomes normal after a while, see how normal five big boxes on a motorbike look.

But neatly packaged incense is pretty eyecatching.



And these guys are soon to become an extinct breed as the city authorities are banning them in the near future. If you want the thrill of an exhaust packed trip through traffic on a cyclo in HCM you'd better get a move on.



Finally, we bought ourselves a motorbike, well a scooter really, it has elements of a Barbie Bike about it but it's not a

Piaggio Super Best Fairy. I would have been tempted just by the name.

Laos

We had an amazing trip to Loas flying into Vientiane from Saigon via Cambodia. We liked it so much that we left a lot unseen as it's fairly obvious we're going to go back.



The architecture and statues are stunning, I filled two memory cards on the camera. If you want to see them all (and frankly I can't think of a better way of spending four hours than looking at someone elses holiday pictures) click on any of the pictures to go to Flickr.

Food is fresh and tasty, there are a lot of higher end restaurants in Vientiane and Luang Prabang but we honestly didn't have one bad meal no matter where we ate. Well, there was the weird sweet curry in Vientiane but that was par for the course because it was Stephens birthday and he always gets a dodgy curry on that day.


There were men in santa hats.


Around every corner was a classic image.


Honest Tourist Attraction notices



and we even found a bar dimly lit enough to feel seedy





The lasting memory though has to be spending two days with elephants. More on that in a later post. Meanwhile here's my elephant having a snack.

Random Images

Just a few shots around town.


Backpackers' (Pham Ngu Lao and the surrounds) is full of bars, restaurants and deliciously tacky giftware shops as well as hotels and guest houses. It's not the most high class end of town but there are few things that draw us back. The Mumtaz restaurant, of which more in a later posting, and Le Pub's gin and tonics. Last night we shared our drinks with some friends, the focus might be off a little but that's understandable under the circumstances.



High on a wall, and a little earlier in the day I saw this image in the same part of town. I've always had a mildly voyeuristic side and love peeking in at other peoples' windows.



Elsewhere Saigon's Premier Woolly Hat outlet continues to puzzle me, I understand it gets a bit colder in Hanoi but surely not THAT cold.



There are many tall, thin, brightly coloured buildings in the city, this hotel may not be the tallest, thinnest and brightest but it has to be in the running for the title. (On Nguyen Trai)