Who doesn’t like Top Ten lists? Or top five, or top three. We certainly whiled away many quiet moments in our year putting together idle lists of our favourite and least favourite things that we had encountered on the way. I’m putting them in the blog to help us remember all this stuff, and also » » »
Posts Tagged ‘temples’
10 August 2011
List mania
Tags: accommodation, adventure, food, hiking, markets, snorkelling, temples, transport, wildlife
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14 June 2011
Sacred valley day
12th June 2011 Well today didn’t start too promisingly. Another group tour, although this one is part of our Peru itinerary and the main purpose is to get us from Cusco to Ollantaytambo. Nevertheless, I had been looking forward to being given some context into the Inca sites along the way. So imagine my joy » » »
14 June 2011
Bad trip
11th June 2011 Sorry, this blog includes expletives Today we went on a guided tour of the main sites around Cusco and I was able to reinforce all my prejudices against group guided tours. The tour included the Cathedral, the Temple of the Sun (which we had already visited), and three Inca sites near Cusco » » »
26 February 2011
Images of Bali
We leave Bali exhausted from difficult driving, exhilarated by lovely countryside, full of good spicy food and delighted by the coral reefs. Within the four weeks we have actually explored pretty much every corner of the island, though of course not in great depth. So this is a round-up of stray images from all over. » » »
9 February 2011
Wandering by car
6th February 2011 We left our hotel by 9am this morning, and didn’t get back until 6:30pm. I reckon we probably spent a total of 3.5 hours exploring a temple, having lunch and visiting a lake which means I spent about six hours driving. Given that I used less than half a tank of fuel » » »
31 December 2010
Temple exploring
The Angkorian temples of Cambodia are wonderfully photogenic, and there are hundreds of pictures from all angles in our library. This gallery is just a handful to give some more idea of what can be seen there. Related Images:
Tags: temples
26 December 2010
Banteay Srei
26th December 2010 Banteay Srei is the name of the last temple we’ve seen in Cambodia. Again, it is a pleasant surprise to find that it has a different character again compared with those we’ve seen before. This temple is smaller, but the sandstone is a desert orange and the whole place is covered in » » »
26 December 2010
Wat fun!
Responsibility for this gallery rests squarely with Mr Sim. Our guide had a real passion for the silly tourist photograph, and after telling us all about the history of the temple we were walking around he would say “now come this way, we can take a funny photo…” It would have been poor sport to » » »
26 December 2010
Temples of Angkor
24th December 2010 Today we took ourselves around another set of temples on bicycle, self-guided. This is always going to be our absolute favourite way; self-guided, at our own pace, deciding for ourselves what is worth a look and what we’ll skip. Nine hours later and we’ve explored another four Angkorian temples pretty thoroughly. The » » »
Tags: temples
26 December 2010
Mr Sim spells it out
23rd December 2010 If you are looking for a guide around the Angkor temples we can entirely recommend Mr Sim Sophaektra – his English is good, he knows everything and he’s cool. We were lucky to get him at short notice, as tomorrow he has to travel over 100kms back to his village for a » » »
23 December 2010
Battambang
Though it doesn’t have anything to compare with Angkor Wat, there’s endless interest in touring around Battambang and its surroundings. Plus of course the town has a really cool name. Related Images:
21 December 2010
Just nosin’ around
21th December 2010 Feeling energetic, we rose early and borrowed a couple of bikes to cycle off in search of a temple called Ek Phnom, downstream along the river from Battambang. The road started out winding through the suburbs of Cambodia’s second city. This is a very misleading sentence. Despite being the second city, Battambang » » »
15 December 2010
Muay Thai
6th December 2010 Why would I go to a kickboxing match in Bangkok when I’ve never been remotely interested in going to a boxing match in England? In part I suppose the oriental martial arts have a lot more “cool” attached to them than good ol’ Marquess of Queensbury rules. I like martial arts films » » »
4 December 2010
Evoking Ayutthaya
Travel writing includes a lot of deception by ommission, probably not often intentional. I happen to have read a short piece by someone about visiting Ayutthaya – the ruins of the old capital of Thailand – and this also happens to be what we did today. We also did pretty much what he did, which » » »
28 November 2010
Theme of laid-back
It’s night-time at Cave Lodge, the lights are surrounded by swarms of incredibly stupid flying bugs and a huge gecko just jumped from the lampshade to the table with a thud like a dropped bag of sugar. So what have we been up to since Loy Krathong? We spent four days in Chiang Mai eventually, » » »
18 November 2010
Temple details
I love all the little details that abound in the strange mix of Hindu and Buddhist temples around Nepal. There’s no captions or commentary attached to these pictures, they’re just for browsing through (who knows, one day I might find time to add some witty quips!). Related Images:
Tags: architecture, temples
1 November 2010
Bhaktapur
Bhaktapur feels like what Kathmandu may have been 30 years ago. Parts of the city still feel positively mediaeval. We like it. Related Images:
17 October 2010
Debating monks
Buddhist monks enjoy debating, and in some monasteries they get very animated about it. The standing monk asks a question, and the seated monk has to answer – they get a virtual slapping if they don’t get it right. I think questions like “when was the Battle of Hastings?” and “what was Chairman Mao’s favourite » » »
16 October 2010
Tibet
Tibet is a strange mixture – a land on the roof of the world, unlike any other place we’ve seen, yet with the trappings of modern China seeping in all the time. Impressions that stick with me… The scent of yak butter candles in dark monasteries, with worshippers jostling to donate money to their preferred » » »
14 October 2010
Seven days in Tibet
Written by Maureen Day One An early start from Kathmandu in order to reach the Chinese border before it is closed. After an hour our driver finds he’s left some important documents, so we go back to Kathmandu to find his brother with the docs on the roadside. The road to the border is the » » »
7 October 2010
Kathmandu in pics
So here are the pictures hard-won from the streets of Kathmandu. Despite the hard work, it is a city full of arresting sights. Related Images:
7 October 2010
Kathmandu goes BEEP
Sight-seeing in Kathmandu is an endurance sport. The whole city is clogged with motorbikes, pedestrians, tiny Suzuki taxis and other random obstacles, which might be okay if the roads weren’t barely one lane wide with shops and street pedlars spilling out onto them. Crossing a road is like walking across the dodgems ride at a » » »