This weeks PhotoFriday theme is Fresh. I include this image partly because it’s taken in a market that was overflowing with fresh fruit, but mainly because it always amuses me. The sleeping lady was, seconds later, woken by her colleague laughing at me taking the picture.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks competition! I’m entry 216.
This weeks PhotoFriday challenge is Destruction. My entry is a US tank left destroyed in Vietnam. I guess it did more than it’s fair share of destruction when operational.
Please vote for my entry in last weeks “Thin” theme. I’m entry 318.
It’s easy to get the wrong impression of Vietnam. Switch on the TV and you find films showing vast areas of land being napalmed. Switch on the radio and you hear Paul Hardcastle. Even in books you see self-immolating monks.
But the place is not all about the Vietnam War (or the American war as they call it). In fact there was little sign of it in the parts that I saw. Insead you see a beautiful, enthusiastic country that’s full of contradictions. You see successful small businesses, you learn that health-care and education is paid-for yet you know the government is officially Communist.
I couldn’t let the inaugural train journey betweeen Beijing and Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, go by without comment. It represents a huge shift for the Tibetans and, while it could bring some positive changes, it’s more likely to bring large numbers of Chinese and a quickening of the pace of the decline of their unique culture.
Wired has a nice article — “Train to the Roof of the World” — that takes a balanced view of the technology and politics. The BBC’s — “First Beijing train reaches Lhasa” — is much shorter if you’re pushed for time!
When I thought of the word “organised” my brain leapt to the word “religion,” hence this picture of a ceremony in Vietnam. It’s a strange mix of a number of popular religions and has a few thousand followers. The theme also works in the sense that the regular columns of worshipers are also very organised.
I assure you: it’s not deliberate. I’d like to go on record and say that I do not plan to only go to obscure — some have even said dangerous — places. I just go where my interests lie.
I’ve been to a couple of Buddhist countries recently (Thailand and Sri Lanka), but they both practise the same kind of Buddhism — called Theravada. I originally thought that they were the less pure form, the Church of England to Tibet’s Catholicism. I went to Tibet to see the “real” Buddhism, however it turns out that, in some ways, the opposite is true (it’s a long story; leave comments!). Tibetan Buddhism (Mahayana) is actually a merger of the traditional Tibetan religion, B?n, with more normal Buddhism.
Sri Lanka (nee Ceylon) is famous for its tea and Arthur C. Clarke, but, as I found out, there’s much more to it than that!
We started in Negombo, a beach resort a few miles away from the airport, moved round to take in the ‘Cultural Triangle’, down to Kandy, Adams Peak and a tea plantation. Finally, we headed to Unawatuna, a beach resort near to Galle (and the England – Sri Lanka test series) and then back to Negombo for the last night. We made plenty of stops along the route.
