Morning market, Yuanyang
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018
The embroidered clothing worn by the local women from the Hani and Yi ethnic minorities in Yuanyang is so incredible. I spent a long time at this market watching and admiring how gorgeously dressed the women were.
Yuanyang Rice Terraces
Hunnan Province, China
June 2018
Magic place. Pure magic place. We stayed an extra day because it was magic. I have a purple flower pressed inside my diary that was given to me by a young girl here.
Jinghong, China
May 2018
We crossed into Jinghong, China from Laos on Nico’s bithday. It was an extraordinarily complex journey, involving many bus rides and lots of waiting and not a few moments of confusion. By luck there was an American man who spoke Mandarin on our bus as we crossed the border, and he was heading the same direction as us, and helped us out with exchanging money, buying tickets and ordering lunch. It wasn’t until we said goodbye to him in Jinghong that we really began to realise how different it was going to be travelling in China, compared to the Southeast Asian countries we had come from. No more Google maps (or Google anything), no more Latin alphabet, no English words written or spoken anywhere, no common language. With more luck and the kindness of strangers, we found our booked accommodation, checked in and went out looking for food and a place to have a drink to mark Nico’s birthday. We learned that even ordering food will become quite an adventure. Again, when we looked lost, kind strangers were happy to help us find our way and make telephone calls for us. All this with pointing, gesturing and laughing. How wonderful it is to be able to be lost like that.
The next day in our hotel room, we started trying to devise ways to recognise the Chinese characters, for example, this one looks like an alien with many legs, that one looks like a person kicking a leg out to the side. We used translation apps to find the characters for certain phrases for food and types of meat and drew them in notebooks so we could try to read menus. We learned how to say some simple phrases about ourselves, the usual greetings and how to count to ten.
Luang Namtha, Laos
May 2018
In Luang Namtha we borrowed bicycles for the day and cycled out into the rice fields around town to visit smaller villages. We saw women washing their clothes in the river, we saw where the villagers make their intensely strong whiskey, we cycled at dusk past families burning their rubbish in the rice paddies, we sat in a hut in a field to try to escape the burning sun for a while, we chatted with a teacher in a local school who stopped us as we were going past on our bikes because he wanted to say hello and practice some English. The next day we said goodbye to Laos, and hello to China.
Nong Khiaw, Laos
May 2018
Oh boy I am so behind. Photos from 18 months ago in Asia. Better late than never. Here we go.
We spent a couple of days in Nong Khiaw. It was our experience in small towns in Laos that due to lack of interested people, most of the hikes we would have liked to go on were simply much too expensive for us, because there weren’t enough people to split the costs. So we ended up finding our own non-guided walks to do. In Nong Khiaw we had read that the hike to the top of the mountain in the village was a must do at dawn. So we set our alarm, despite the fact it rained all night, and got up in the dark and hiked up through slippery paths for an hour or two as it gradually got lighter. It was, until that time, the hardest hike I’d ever done. Not only because it was dark and steep and constantly uphill, but also because it was so muddy and slippery and many trees had come down in the storm which required climbing over or under. I was rather proud of myself for managing it. At the top of the mountain, the dawn had already come, and we were higher than the clouds. All we could see was clouds in every direction. Suddenly, some clouds shifted we saw the green peaks of another mountain. We stayed for a few hours at the top as the clouds and fog shifted around, revealing different peaks in all directions, until all the clouds were gone and we had an incredible view of the surrounding mountains, valleys, town and river.
Wurst im Brot, Berlin
Germany
October 2018
Last October, we went out to Gruenewald for a walk in the woods with Kai, Christin and Emily. In very German fashion, the trail ended at an old brick tower with a biergarten surrounding it and views of the river. We sat in the sun and ate wurst and drank wine spritzers and I worried about getting sunburnt but everyone assured me I could begin to relax my extreme vigilence about UV factor in Berlin in Autumn.
Hannover, Germany
October 2018
Somewhere north of Berlin, Germany
August 2018
Late Summer, Kai drove Nico and I and his daughter to a campsite on a lake, about 60 minutes north from the city. Unusual for me, I had no hand in planning the trip and had no idea where we were or what the lake was called. It was very pretty walking along the lake at dusk, and another highlight was making camp stove coffee in the morning and talking for a few hours before we packed up the tent. We haven’t camped since then but I am getting ready to plan some trips soon.
Kreuzberg, Berlin
Germany
October 2018
A local corner bar (called a Kneipe in German) not far from where we live in Kreuzberg. Taken on a cool day back in Autumn, back when I was welcoming a change of season after Australian summer followed by south east Asian and European summer. Now it’s two days from the beginning of Summer and I can hardly wait.
Leipzig, Germany
February 2019
I keep a list on my phone of things I like about Germany. Here’s what I have after 10 months here.
The apartment windows (they open out on two different hinges, one for letting in a small draft and one to open the entire window so you can ventilate your apartment and watch the world outside whilst leaning over the sill)
Wurst
How they put a tree on a construction site to celebrate finishing the walls/foundation
The way they eat bread with toppings for dinner and call it Abend Brot
Kaffee und Kuchen in the afternoons every day if you want to
Only major industrialised nation to commit to phase out nuclear power after Fukushima
The word Feierabend and the act of enjoying Feierabend
No plastic bags
The announcement on the U-Bahn that is so much longer in German (“Bitte achten Sie auf den Abstand zwichen Zug und Bahnsteigkante”) than in English (“Mind the gap”)
Luang Prabang, Laos
May 2018
Luang Prabang, Laos
May 2018
I really felt at home with the palms and flowering trees in Luang Prabang, they reminded me a lot of Queensland, especially the red flame trees and frangipani trees that I love so much.
Luang Prabang, Laos
May 2018
We went on the river by boat and saw Luang Prabang from the water. It was quiet and gentle. We saw people fishing and washing their clothes on the riverbank.
Luang Prabang, Laos
May 2018
Reaching Luang Prabang was an adventure involving several mini buses and a border crossing from Thailand, including a fairly scary drive on bad roads through mountains during a tropical thunderstorm. We arrived late afternoon and shared a moto-taxi into town with other travellers. The light was so golden and dusty as we sped through the streets in the open air. I loved Luang Prabang immediately with it’s big old french colonial houses, brown flowing river and surrounding lush green hills. .
Nan, Thailand
May 2018
Our last stop in Thailand was at Nan, a lovely small town near the border with Laos. My favourite memory from Nan is when we rode bikes at dusk just after a rainstorm and puddles of water reflected the colours and lights of the streets as we flew past.
Chiang Mai, Thailand
May 2018
We spent five days in sleepy-feeling Chiang Mai, eating, seeing live music, walking around the markets, having a wonderful strong massage and learning how to make some Thai dishes using galangal, lemongrass, sticky rice and ginseng.
Lopburi, Thailand
May 2018
We caught the train to Lopburi at dawn, and watched the sun rise out the windows. We walked for a while to find a restaurant open in Lopburi, where we ate soup noodles between other sleepy-eyed people on their way to school or work. At the market we bought sticky coconut rice with corn, tiny crepes filled with shredded durian, bananas and cookies - snacks for the long train ride to Chiang Mai later that day. Then, probably still before 9am, we headed out to look for the monkeys, which is what Lopburi is famous for, because there are so many of them. They sit on cars, climb electrical wires, generally take over the whole town (one came into the restaurant and was given some fruit to eat). They scrunch their wrinkly old man faces and show off their bright pink bums. Baby monkeys cling to the backs of their parent monkeys and generally look adorable. The monkeys could tell Nico had bananas in his bag, and they went pretty nuts over him whenever they had the chance.
Ayutthaya, Thailand
May 2018
We rented bikes for the day to ride between the temples at Ayutthaya, which was the capital of the kingdom from the 1400s to 1700s. Most of the temple ruins are on an island that is also a thriving city, which makes it a very different experience to other temple sites we visited, such as Angkor Wat. We watched the sun set at the last temple and the temperature finally cooled a little for our long ride back to our hostel.
The Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand
May 2018
Where the Kings of Siam have lived until about 100 years ago, and still a working palace (though not the home of the current King). The palace is so incredible, with all the mirrored tiles and painted murals and gold details. The day we visited was about 38 degrees, and I was suffering from a new bout of food poisoning, so I mostly loped around, drenched in sweat with my back aching and no amount of water being enough to make me feel okay.
Chantaburi, Thailand
May 2018
Crossing the border from Cambodia to Thailand was a fun, unplanned journey that worked out perfectly. We got a share taxi from Battambang to the border at Prum, which took about two hours, then (after stopping to eat some fried bananas and rice cakes, and to change our Camdodian riels into Thai baht at a liquor store) we walked across to Thailand and applied for visas. We then jumped on the back of two motorbikes for about five minutes of fast riding, now on the left hand side of the road, and were dropped at a waiting open back minibus with bench seats, which immediately left once we had climbed in back. We were soon joined by a monk and a young man. A storm came and went as we drove through beautiful green mountains. We were then dropped in Chantaburi at the bus station, where we caught a taxi to our hotel overlooking the river.
Chantaburi is peaceful and pretty with a fast river and very old Chinese houses along the riverfront. The shops along the ground level of the houses blend public and private space. Peeking in the open doorways you see people watching tv and eating in their shops, surrounded by shrines, old clocks, incense and pictures of the old King.