Sunset over the Chao Phraya River, Bang Sue, Bangkok
The Chao Phraya is Thailand’s major river flowing 372 km from the confluence of the Ping and Nan rivers through Bangkok and into the Gulf of Thailand.
In Bangkok the Chap Phraya is a transport artery for a network of river buses, cross-river ferries, and water taxis. The river buses are cheap and are an excellent way for tourists to see Bangkok.
According to wikiyoyage the prices currently are around 30 Baht (roughly one US Dollar) and there are a confusingly large number of different boat lines:
The Photos app that comes bundled with MacOs periodically produces slideshows. Normally, these are themed around places or dates. One caught my eye though – it was called ‘Golden Hour’ and included photos I’d taken from many places. Usually, photos taken around sunset are better because the quality of light is better.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to export it so it could be edited. I had to re-create it manually using iMovie. This is the result I call it Global Golden Hour: Sunsets around the world.
The soundtrack is “In Memory of a Free Festival Part 2” by David Bowie which I thought was appropriate. All rights remain with the original artist blah, blah blah, no profit is being made, blah blah, fair use, blah blah.
The extinct volcanoes of Pingdingshan, Xilin Gol, Nei Menggu
平顶山, 锡林郭勒盟，内蒙古
Pingdingshan in Xilingol League in Inner Mongolia has a very distinctive landscape. There are many extinct volcanoes from a time when this was the sea floor. This photo was taken in early October and the lush green grasslands had already faded to their winter brown. Even so you can see a flock of sheep in the foreground.
The interactive map is a new feature which I’ll maybe use again now that I know how to do it.
Well, I stand up next to a mountain Chop it down with the edge of my hand Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island Might even raise just a little sand
Whether Hendrix did actually visit Annapurna is moot , but it’s a nice story.
“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books”
The cliche that a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step is misleading. Before I took that first step on my 5,150 mile journey* I felt like I had run a marathon. The list of tasks to be completed seemed endless at first. Obtaining a CELTA qualification and quitting my awful job was the easy part. Sorting through a lifetime’s accumulation of bits and pieces and miscellaneous crap, throwing away what was not required and putting the rest into storage was hard. Everything had to be moved, as much as possible was recycled. The St Gemma’s Hospice and St George’s Crypt charity shops both accepted a lot of my stuff hopefully, they will make some money from them.
Getting my house into a good condition where it could be rented out was even harder. Planning my journey was fun but getting the tickets and visas was less so.
A Citycabs black and white taxi
Before I left I managed to fit in a day at Headingley to watch a county cricket match between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire with Percy, Chris and Cousin Martin. Yorkshire had a bad day at the crease but went on to win the match. A sunny day , the sound of leather on willow, good company, good food and plenty of ale – life doesn’t get much better than this.
The last few days were hectic but on August 7th at 13:00 British Summer Time I found myself standing outside my house waiting for a taxi that would take me on the first part of my journey.
* That’s as the crow flies the actual distance travelled was much greater.
I’ve recently finished reading The Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman, about their epic motorbike ride from London to New York via Magadan in Eastern Russia. and empathised with this sentiment:
“I thought back to the day a month or so earlier when we had been in Mongolia. It was mid-afternoon and we were riding through a beautiful valley. I pulled over and got off my bike. Charley, ahead of me, stopped too. He swung his bike around and rode back towards me. Before he even arrived, I could feel it coming off him: why are we stopping? We’re not getting petrol, we’re not stopping to eat: why are we stopping?
I walked away from Charley, I didn’t want to tell him that I had stopped because we’d passed the place. The place we’d fantasised about months before we’d even set off from London. A place with a river of cool, white water and a field nearby to pitch our tents. The place we were going to stop at in the middle of an afternoon so that we could cool our sweaty feet in the river while catching fish that we’d cook that evening on an open fire under a star-speckled sky.
I’d seen that river half an hour earlier. There was no question at all that it was the place. A beautiful big white river and nobody for hundreds of miles. And we had ridden straight past it.”
A Wadworth pub in the picturesque Cotswold village of Great Tew. once beloved now inhabited by the uber rich and inherited under dubious circumstances.
Update: Unfortunately, the more gruesome and macabre exhibits have been removed. It’s understandable but regrettable when history is censored like this. We live in a new puritanical age.
Nice commercial site about Stonehenge, complete with a timeline and some good photos.
From the site:
“There is no documented purpose for this monument but it has been referred to as a burial place, a calendar, and a place of worship and sacrifice. While new research has ruled out some earlier theories, there is still no solid confirmation on the original purpose of this monument. One thing is for sure, knowing the time period that this monument was built and the lack of technology puzzles the mind and creates a worldwide fascination. If you have plans to visit England, no visit is complete without a visit to Stonehenge. The construction and purpose of this monument are still unsure by researchers, but when you walk onto this ground, you will experience a step back in the past. Some visitors find the experience majestic, celestial, or spiritual when they first encounter Stonehenge.”
In the footsteps of Joseph Rock is the journey of Sydney blogger Michael, following the footsteps of ‘bad-tempered and imperious’ Joseph Rock, who travelled through western Sichuan and the Tibet borderlands in the 1920s to reach Minya Konka, once thought to be the world’s highest mountain.
The writing is superb but the genius is in the photography, placing side-by-side Rock’s photos with Michael’s own equivalents taken 70 years later.”
