Northern Vietnam
October 30, 2011 at 9:29 pm | Posted in Asia, culture, heritage sites, outdoors | Leave a commentTags: Cat Ba Island, Halong Bay, Hanoi, hill tribes, Sapa, trekking, Vietnam
video courtesy of Jonathan
Cruising Halong
August 21, 2011 at 1:17 pm | Posted in Asia, heritage sites, outdoors | 1 CommentTags: cave, floating village, Halong Bay, kayaking
I’m experimenting with adding slideshows. Unfortunately there aren’t many good options for wordpress.
Thailand in 11
March 12, 2011 at 4:15 pm | Posted in Asia, culture, heritage sites, miscellaneous, outdoors | Leave a commentTags: bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Koh Panghan, Thailand, Tiger Temple, washing elephants
I was lucky enough to spend the 2011 Chinese New Year in Thailand (thank you David and Kathy) with some good company. So here’s the top 11, in no particular order, of my experiences.
1. Playing with, washing and feeding young tigers at the Tiger Temple, Kanchanaburi.
2. Riding bareback and washing an elephant in the river at Maha Muang Singh, Kanchanaburi.
3. Eating delicious, fresh Thai food everyday.
4. Enjoying the facilities at our luxurious hotel in Bangkok.
5. Meeting (my name-sake doppelganger) Rosanna Bird.
6. Scootering around and exploring Koh Panghan.
7. Riding a long-tail boat through residential canals in Bangkok.
8. Swinging through the trees near Bangkok with Flight of the Gibbon.
9. Seeing old, broken buddhas amidst the ruins in Ayutthaya…
10. …and comparing them to more well-kept buddhas.
11. Relaxing island style – beach, massage and a fresh daily catch.
Macau: a day from Hong Kong
September 4, 2010 at 8:33 pm | Posted in Asia, heritage sites | Leave a commentTags: macau
Handed back by Portugal in 1999, Macau’s the most recent addition to China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ approach. From Hong Kong it’s easy enough to make a day trip and, like Hong Kong, it’s bursting with people and buildings, all fighting for space (this is, after all, the most densely populated place in the world).
But unlike Hong Kong, there’s a more exotic feel to it. Perhaps it’s the theatrical-looking casinos or the European architecture.
Maybe it’s the crowded tourist streets, with signs in Chinese and Portuguese, selling tasty snacks and tourist tat.
Possibly it’s the general feeling of decadence mixed with decay; Catholic ruins, rusting balconies and peeling paint.
Understandable in such a humid climate, but for me also a visual metaphor of the widening gap between the rich and the poor (higher apparently than mainland China due to the influx of cheap imported labour). Whilst the economy continues to grow and tourist numbers increase (the profits of which already make up 50% of the country’s GDP), this is something that is easily forgotten whilst strolling through the streets of Macau and chomping Portuguese egg tarts.
Hong Kong Days: Seascape
September 2, 2010 at 9:41 pm | Posted in Asia, culture, heritage sites, outdoors | Leave a commentTags: chinese pink dolphin, lantau, tai o
You’re never very far from the water in Hong Kong. Though the excellent subway system could take you anywhere you would want to go, it’s more fun to catch a ride on a boat. It’s noisy, smoky, choppy and gives a great new perspective from which to enjoy the city.
One very pleasant trip I made was to Lantau Island. Depending on your viewpoint, the main attraction here is either the Tian Tan Buddha or Disneyland (or perhaps they’re not that different after all, since both provide ample photo opportunities and a chance to gorge on exclusive foods – I only visited the former, so I can’t really compare).
Like the tall buildings of Hong Kong Island, the sculptures at the temple took shape through the mist; sometimes startlingly clear, sometimes shrouded to the point of invisibility. Dragons undulated like fish through water, incense clouds wafted in waves. Here, Hong Kong was all about the sky.
But for me the best place was the small fishing village of Tai O. The houses are built along the waterline, balancing on mussel-encrusted stilts and with entrances for visitors coming by both land and sea. 
There were also cats everywhere!
As soon as we got off the bus in Tai O, we were asked if we wanted a short boat tour up the river and then out to sea to view pink dolphins. When I asked, the cheery vendor said we had a high chance of seeing the dolphins as all the other boats that day had seen them. I was very sceptical, but happy enough to spend US$2 for twenty minutes on the boat, whether or not dolphins were guaranteed.
The sun came out to light up the thundery clouds and the little boat bounced across the waves, turning to view the land from which we’d just come. And then, suddenly, there were dolphins.
It was so unexpected, so close to the boat, I couldn’t quite believe it. I left Tai O with a magical sort of energy, feeling privileged to have seen something which up until this point I hadn’t even known existed, but for which I had shown up at just the right time.
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