Thailand

These photos were mostly taken in Ayuthaya, Bangkok and Phimai.

Laos

I haven’t finished working on all my photos of Laos yet, but here are a few I’ve chosen that I really like. They were taken in Vientiane and Luang Prabang.

Vietnam

A couple of my favourites from Vietnam.

Temples of Laos, Thailand & Vietnam in Black & White was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been a bit quiet lately, mainly due to work and stuff but on a recent trip to San Francisco and Silicon Valley I managed to sneak out and get some decent photos. Enjoy!

San Francisco Spring was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Spring in Yosemite was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Could we get the bill please?”, I asked the waiter while motioning in the air the universal sign for “the bill”.

“Si, signor”, he nodded and then promptly asked us, “Vuoi il caffè?”. Hearing the word “caffè”, I knew he was offering us coffee.

“On second thoughts, si”, I answered him. “Uno caffè”. Margarét hadn’t quite yet gotten used to the powerful taste of Italian espresso just yet and ordering cappuccino any time after 11:30am outside of the tourist areas results 99% of the time in a dirty look and an espresso anyway.

The midday sun blazed down upon us as the put-puts of mopeds interrupted the silence of the quiet side-street and Piazza San Francisco. The coffee was strong and bitter and just enough to be knocked back in two sips. “Could we get the bill please”, I motioned yet again to the waiter as he came back to collect the empty cup and saucer.

“Si signor”, and he ducked back into the restaurant. He was dressed imacculately. Imagine Manuel from Fawlty Towers in his sixties, dressed in a white cotton, collared shirt and black waist coat. Rather overdressed for a quiet streetside trattoria.

Five minutes passed by before he emerged, this time carrying a gigantic silver bowl. He placed it down in the middle of the table in front of us. Nuts. It was filled with hazelnuts. Still in the shell. We cracked a few open with the supplied nutcracker and ate them. This time the owner of the restaurant walked by. “The bill please!”, making an even more pronounced gesticulation with my arm.

“Uno momento”, he replied and ducked off back into the restaurant. Perhaps this time we would be lucky and he would actually understand us. He re-emerged carrying a tray of tiny glasses filled with a clear liquid. He placed them down in front of us. This was starting to get a bit worrying.

The drink was bitter and tasted of herbs with a kick like a mule. My whole body shuddered as it slid down the back of my throat. At this point, I smsed my friend Guido and asked him what we should do. Every time we asked for the bill, they would bring us something totally unexpected. “Just go pay inside”, was his response and it worked.

Welcome to Rome. Loud, busy & very, very old. It is beyond cliché. Narrow streets. Gigantic cathedrals. Sidewalk restaurants. It would take a lifetime to take it all in. To be more precise Romans say it takes two lifetimes. It is at first, bewildering. Our first encounter with this city, was Roma Termini — the central train station. It is here that thousands of people arrive and depart the capital every day. It is the third most visited city in Europe and the 11th most visited city in the world. Suffice it to say, it is jam-packed with people, cars and tourists, only to be exacerbated further, on this occasion, by being the week before Easter.

Our apartment was located in the neighbourhood of Prati, about a 10 minute walk from the Vatican City and about a 25 minute walk from most of the main historical sites.

On our first morning, we woke up fairly early and went for a run along the Tiber River. This was most probably the highlight of our visit. It was a Sunday and the air was crisp and chilly. The city was dead quiet. There were no cars, no people, no tourists. We zig-zagged our way down tiny alleys and passed small piazzas (squares). The cobbles Rome is famous for clinking under our feet. Eventually we popped out of an alley where a massive road opened up and a gigantic, white structure stood before us. “That looks like the wedding cake!”, Margaret exclaimed. Wedding cake indeed, it was the monument to Victor Emmanuel and Italy’s tribute to unification. We headed down the road, passed what looked to be a park filled with colossal, ancient Roman columns — some standing, some lying on the ground. Further on down and a few more alleys later, we came upon the Spanish steps, completely devoid of people. At first, we weren’t sure what it was, as all the photos normally show it completely engulfed in people and flowers. Neither of which were present at this time. On the hill, above the steps, we got our first proper view of Rome with the light-blue dome of the Vatican in the background and tolling of church bells coming from the church tower above our heads.

We continued on into the gardens of the Villa Borghese, one of Rome’s biggest parks. Throughout the gardens — and Rome for that matter — you are constantly reminded of the presence of ancient Rome. The mark of the Roman legion (SPQR) on the manhole covers. The heavily eroded water fountains. The odd column or piece of stonework. A partial or entire marble statue of a Roman god. There is so much history here it is boggles the mind.

What’s great about Rome, is you can pick a favourite artist and then track down his paintings in the side chapels of various churches. One of my absolute favourite artists is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, or Caravaggio for short. If you ever have time I can highly recommend watching the BBC Panorama episode: Who Killed Caravaggio. His paintings are dotted all over Rome and tracking them down is fairly easy if you have the inclination. What’s even more rewarding is seeing them in the chapels of their patrons rather than a stuffy art gallery, especially when you are the only people in the church. The works he produced still hold a spell over their viewers, moreso for me, than most of the other artists I saw in Rome.

Highlights of Rome were the Forum Romanum, with its enormous columns and arches — a remnant of the power and glory of ancient Rome. The Trevi Fountain was beautiful, albeit inundated with visitors. St Peter’s and Vatican is stunning from the outside, but we found the museum to be a bit of a let down — the Sistine Chapel, as amazing as it is, was just too overcrowded. To be fair however, we were here during Holy Week. I really, really loved visiting the crypt at the Santa Maria Concezione dei Cappuccini — the resting place of over 4000 friars — whose bones are arranged in a decorative fashion on the walls and shelves of the crypt. A macabre and beautiful sight.

Despite visiting the Forum Romanum, the Colosseum and the Vatican, the Pantheon with its Oculus was my favourite building. If not for the sheer size of it, then for its age. It’s unsupported, concrete dome is still the world’s largest and is nearly two thousand years old. The power and scale of Ancient Rome, for me, is embodied in this building. Today it is used as a Catholic church but it was built during the time of Jesus as a Roman temple by Marcus Agrippa for his own private use. It has also seen continuous use since then and is beautifully preserved.

Our five days in Rome were ultimately too short to see everything we wanted to, so in order to ensure return we tossed a coin into the Trevi fountain on our last day before moving on to picturesque Todi and beautiful Umbria.

Rome — Statues, Churches & Cobbled Piazzas was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’d thought I’d follow up my last black and white post with a colourful set of photos of Rome. (One of the best pizza’s we’ve had so far. This was a selection of three and it just so happened to match the Italian flag, purely by coincidence. In Rome, most of the pizza is sold by the slice, and you can choose how big you want it to be at this place as they charge you by weight.)

Some of the ruins of the Forum Romanum. The Forum Romanum was the heart and seat of power of ancient Rome. Today it is but a collection of ruins, but even the ruins give an insight into the size and beauty of the buildings.

The gate into Ancient Rome. These buildings are positively huge.

Rome in Colour was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Margarét and I are back on the road again. This time we’re in Italy and before I start getting into the writing mode, I’d thought I’d post a few photos.

Italy is an incredibly colourful country, but it is also textured like no other. I think it has a lot to do with the various civilizations that have lived here, which have built one up upon another for centuries. I love the way black and white photography accentuates textures, so I thought I’d make this a black and white themed post.

Enjoy!

Italy in Black & White was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

About this time last year I posted some sunset photos that I had taken at a location just outside of Witsand in South Africa. We were lucky enough to be able return this year over the long weekend.

A 90 second exposure, taken with my brand new Lee Big Stopper. A learning curve in patience and intuition, but definitely worth the effort. Thank goodness we had three amazing sunsets in a row, this shot was taken on the third.

The conditions couldn’t have been better for this location. A beautiful sunset, low tide and no wind.

A different take on a subject I photographed last year. I was surprised to see this structure of driftwood was still standing intact.

The sunset was beginning to fade so I had to put the Big Stopper away as it was taking too long to compose and shoot photos.

Return to the Rockpools was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Travelling is a little like golf. Especially long-term travel. It’s expensive. You walk around in very weird clothing and if you are a beginner, you will find yourself aimlessly searching for something in the bushes a lot. If it starts raining, you either get wet or you learn very quickly to carry an umbrella. Most importantly, you keep striving for that one particular experience that sets your whole body tingling with excitement, that one amazing shot that sets the hairs on the back of your neck on end and ensures you come back for more. Walking the streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter in the late afternoon was one such experience for me. Just about every sense was engaged: the noise of the scooters as they shoot by, the sweat running down your back, the intoxicating smells of spices and the sight of the many Vietnamese preparing for the evening ahead. It’s a heady, concentrated mixture of South East Asia, concocted in one of its most interesting, crowded places. Tingling with delight, I zigzagged my way through the scooter-clogged sidewalks, a stupid grin on my face, passed men overloading their scooters with ridiculously huge cargo and women cutting up roast duck and suckling pig, businessessmen sitting on tiny, plastic garden furniture sharing unrecognizable plates of delicious snacks washed down with their fifth, six, seventh glass of Bia Hoi.

I truly wanted to bottle up this place, this moment, this experience so that I could take tiny peeks at it on those cold, wet, winter’s evenings in Cape Town. To feel the intense heat of the Vietnamese summer envelope me. To tiptoe over the slick, wet tiles of the pavement. To taste the divine soups. To be consumed by the alien and strange, yet amazing surroundings. To hear myself say once again: “What the heck is that?”

Hanoi’s Old Quarter is a bit more claustrophobic, a bit more cramped, a bit more chaotic than anywhere else we had been in Vietnam. The density of businesses, restaurants and hotels is amazing. The sidewalks are clogged with parked motorbikes, leaving little room to walk apart from in the road. There is a magnificent array of sights to see in the city, but I think its biggest attraction is to wonder the maze of streets, stopping when hungry for a snack or a drink and then continuing on. That’s not to say you shouldn’t visit Uncle Ho’s mausoleum (we didn’t as the queues to get in zigzagged up and down several large city blocks in the midday heat) or the botanical gardens, or the many, many museums. They are generally quite interesting, if not bizarre, and the ones indoors offer welcome respite from the midday heat.

Like it’s southern counterpart Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi has an incredible variety of places to eat. We sampled numerous dishes, from grilled pigeon to deep fried, succulent frog’s legs to snail soup. We even tucked into a coconut-basted skewer of chicken feet. But by far our favourite meal was Bun Cha, which consists of pork meatballs and slices of pork grilled over an open flame and served in a sweet, clear broth of sliced daikon and rice noodles. The fried spring rolls we had on the side were unanimously the best we’d had in Vietnam too. The place we ate it in was arguably one of the most filthy. The once white tiled floor was covered in used up tissues and beer cans. The alley alongside the restaurant was used as the kitchen. But it was packed to the hilt with hungry diners, 2 hours after lunch time.

Later that evening we spotted a spit-roasted dog on the side of the road, served as a beer snack. It was a sight that left me in a weird mood, deep down it felt shocking but logically it is no different to eating a pig or a cow or a rabbit. I guess some things would take a bit more to get used to.

Cruising the back alleys of Hanoi, there are even the remnants of a B-52 bomber that crashed into a tiny lake. It’s been left intact since the Vietnam/American war. A gruesome reminder that this now thriving metropolis was under siege from one of the most intense air bombardments in history. In a twisted sense of capitalistic fate, small cafés have popped up alongside the lake to entice tourists in.

Hanoi couldn’t be more different than Saigon. Where Saigon sported glinting malls loaded with French and Italian designer boutiques along wide open boulevards, Hanoi’s densely populated alleys and one way streets felt a lot more chaotic and a lot less westernized. The people speak less English and on just about every street corner there is a reminder of the American/Vietnam conflict. There is even a gigantic statue of Lenin. Somebody still held in rather high esteem by the Vietnamese government and a sight you wouldn’t see in many other places in the world.

While Ho Chi Minh City has a generous sprinkling of coffee shops, Hanoi’s Old Quarter is a beer snack mecca. Libby and I ended up one evening, drinking Bia Hoi (fresh beer) on the street sharing a table with a Nigerian soccer player and his Ghanaian manager, eating unidentifiable fried snacks and talking about the state of the Vietnamese soccer scene and Nigerian cuisine. I wish I had a photo of my astonishment when the Ghanaian started teasing the waitress in fluent Vietnamese. He had been there for only 3 years.

On our last evening, we went all out. After the inevitable evening downpour we cruised the streets until we found an enormous outdoor restaurant. Covered only by an awning from the nearby building. It was absolutely packed to the hilt. The kitchen consisted of 6 giant wok burners and the chefs — who seemed barely 16 years old — were churning out plateful-after-plateful of glistening, fragrant food. We managed to secure a spot in the middle of the crowd of locals and promptly ordered their speciality — pigeon, a plate of prawns and a bowl of deep-fried frogs legs. At the table next to us sat an amazed South African chef and his girlfriend. We must have seemed rather experienced, our battle hardened stomachs ready after the smelly markets in Hué, the backwaters of the Mekong Delta, the river view restaurants of Hoi An and the buzzing sidewalks of Ho Chi Minh City. For our final meal in this beautiful, upside down country, we couldn’t have chosen better.

Despite its gruesome history and its poverty, Vietnam is an amazing place. There is an energy and drive in its people to work together that’s helped them claw their way out of a very dark place. That being said, it has many issues that it is grappling with, some as a result of history, others as a result of the pace at which it is growing. From a traveller’s perspective, it is fantastic. The scenery is amazing, the food alone is a reason to visit and the people are warm and welcoming. When I had first considered Vietnam as a place to travel in, I was a bit skeptical. The stories of the scam artists and the chaotic roads put me off immediately, but I am glad I finally decided to take a peek. We will definitely be back soon. Not only to see the parts we missed, but also to dip our grinning faces again into those steaming bowls of pho, and down copious amounts of Vietnamese coffee.

Hanoi & Its Old Quarter was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I can’t help feeling a slight sense of irony as the train rumbled through what was once the DMZ at 5:30am. Passengers barely awake. The coach heavy with the stench of urine and the putrid smell of durian. We pass another military graveyard and monument to the fallen and cross yet another river, a new bridge being built alongside the current. Farmers are already in their rice paddies and fisherman rowing their boats in the rivers. This is an atmospheric, beautiful place no doubt, which makes it hard to imagine the sounds and scenes of battle. The Vietnamese however, don’t seem to dwell on the American/Vietnam war, as much as I had imagined they would. There is very little sign that anything significant had happened in this place apart from the tourist tours and the many old people in the towns missing limbs or younger ones with obvious Agent Orange birth defects.

We had just left Huề, the imperial city. The capital of southern Vietnam for the Nguyen family that ruled Vietnam for nearly 100 years. Over this century, there were in total an astounding 13 kings. The longest ruling king being Tự Đức, who ruled for 36 years. The lives of these kings reads like something out of Game of Thrones. Continously under threat of falling out of favour with the bureaucrats (mandarins) and getting murdered or tiptoeing around the French imperialists, their legacy of elaborate tombs and dilapidated temples still survives today.

Here’s a whirlwind summary of the lives of these emperors:

The first emperor, Gia Long, established his palace at Huề and was said to have had 800 elephants as part of the palace’s defenses. His successor Minh Manh had over 500 concubines where legend has it, he would sleep with five of them each night. Minh Manh is famous for having banned missionaries in Vietnam much to the irritation of the French. Minh Manh’s son, Thiệu Trị, went one step further and imprisoned Spanish and French missionaries which resulted in a military response from France. The French in turn easily defeated the Vietnamese due to their inferior equipment. Thiệu Trị is said to have entombed himself with all of his childless wives.

Tự Đức, the longest ruling king, was the last to rule independently before the French started to exert their control on the country. Impotent due to a bout of smallpox, Tự Đức was considered a great romantic. He was succeeded by his nephew, Dục Đức, who was in power for a mere 3 days before being poisoned by the mandarins. They had considered him unfit to rule due to his debauched antics. Next up: Hiep Hoa, didn’t fare much better and reigned for a total of four months. He was forced to commit suicide by officials after signing over Vietnam to the French as a protectorate.

Hiep Hoa’s successor and youngest son, Kiến Phúc, was just 15 when he inherited the throne and lasted for a total eight months before being poisoned by his adopted mother. Hàm Nghi, the eighth emperor, reigned for one year (1884–1885) before he was exiled to Algeria, where he later died at the ripe old age of 71. Before Hàm Nghi was sent to Algeria, he was kidnapped by the chief mandarin — Tôn Thất Thuyết — and taken to the mountains in an effort to use him as a figurehead for the anti-French revolutionary movement. His successor and brother Đồng Khánh was installed as emperor by the French and was seen as a French sympathiser which did not sit well with the Vietnamese. He reigned for 4 years.

Emperor number 10, Thành Thái, was less amenable to the French and resisted them passively. However, to show that he was friendly with the French he would cut his hair in a western-style and was the first emperor to learn to drive a car. It is said he would often sneak out of the palace to talk to the local people to understand their lives under the French occupation. In order to avoid constant scrutiny from the ever-increasing French spies in the city, he pretended to be insane. Seen as a harmless lunatic, he tried to build up resistance. When the French discovered this, they forced him to abdicate his position on the throne due to insanity. He died in Saigon in 1954 after returning from Reunion Island where he had been exiled previously.

Thành Thái’s son, Duy Tân, came to power at the age of 7 and reigned for 9 years. Following in the footsteps of his father, he too tried to resist the French colonists and was eventually discovered and sent to join his father in exile on Reunion Island. Ironically, he died in a plane crash in 1945, on his way back to Vietnam to oppose Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh army on behalf of the French. Emperor number 12, Khải Định, was very unpopular with the Vietnamese as he was seen as a French sympathiser and used as a puppet figurehead. He suffered poor health and became a drug addict, before dying from tuberculosis in Huề.

The last of the Vietnamese emperors, Bảo Đại, died in France in 1997. He was responsible for renaming the country Vietnam. The Japanese ousted the French during World War II and ruled the country through Bảo Đại. He eventually was forced to abdicate in 1945 when the Japanese surrendered, but continued to be chief of state until he was ousted by the prime minister in a fraudulent referendum in 1955 — the number of votes cast against him were higher than the total votes cast. Four of his five children still live in France today.

Much of the Perfume City and the citadel at Huề was destroyed in 1968 by the Americans during the Tet Offensive. It is nonetheless a fascinating place to visit. One can only imagine what it must have been like during the height of the Nguyen dynasty. Efforts are under way by the Vietnamese government to restore the palace, even though, in some parts there is virtually nothing left.

Aside from visiting the citadel, we also made a side trip out to see the fourth emperor Tự Đức’s tomb. Set just outside Huề, the tomb was also used by Tự Đức as a vacation home, where he would spend time hunting, fishing and relaxing in the peaceful surroundings. As strange as it sounds, nobody actually knows where Tự Đức’s body was buried within the complex. Even though there is a place marking his tomb, his body was never found. It is thought that he did this in order to prevent his body from being destroyed or removed by any subsequent rulers.

As we travel through Vietnam, we have noticed that each region has its own food specialities and even its own beer. Huề is no different, and served up one of our most memorable meals which we happened upon by chance in the backstreets of the city. Nem Lui is minced pork wrapped around lemon grass and grilled on an open fire. As with many Vietnamese dishes, it is served with sheets of rice paper, sweet, pickled daikon and carrot and fresh herbs. You then roll the minced pork up in the rice paper along with the pickles and herbs and dip it in a sweet and salty dipping sauce. It is absolutely delicious and is best washed down with an ice cold local Huda beer.

Most tourists take a tour of the DMZ in this area, but our time was running short and we still hadn’t seen any of the north of the country so we decided to head north out of Huề on the train. Partly because our previous train trip to Hoi An was so comfortable and partly because the train is a lot less terrifying than the dodgy roads. And so we found ourselves waiting at the station at 5:00am for our 5:11am train. It appeared exactly on time which is quite a feat, considering it had rattled all the way up the line from Ho Chi Minh City the day before. This train trip proved to be a little less comfortable than the first, since we weren’t able to get our own sleeper cabin and instead booked soft-seats in a compartment full of people. It was no less interesting though and probably more scenic as the windows are larger and easy see out of.

Along the way we passed river-after-river and miles-and-miles of rice paddies, mountains and villages. Our destination was the small town of Ninh Binh and our journey took 9 hours in total. Ninh Binh is the hopping off point for the area known as Tam Cốc (pronounced Tam Cop). Known as the “Hao Long Bay on land”, the rural area is studded with 300m high, limestone karst formations, surrounded by tiny rice, fish and duck farms. It is a spectacular, peaceful place. Getting there from Ninh Binh however, was less than peaceful. Our taxi driver took the long route, as usual, promptly “got lost” and pretty much scared the bejeebers out of anything that moved on the side of the road by blasting his hooter at them. He even tried to scare the piles of freshly cut rice right off of the road, before he ploughed straight through. We did eventually find our hotel and ended the evening off in the pool with beer for me and a round of piña coladas for the girls.

Tam Coc is one of those places where you could probably lose two weeks and not even notice. It is incredibly laid back, the people are very friendly and there is very little to do apart from visiting a few local temples and taking a ride in a sampan down one of the many rivers that wind around the hills. It was exactly what the doctor had ordered after wandering the busy streets of Huề

After soaking up the atmosphere of the countryside for 3 nights, we made our way to Hanoi on the train one last time for our last few days in Vietnam.

Huế — A Tale of 13 Emperors was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was taking photos of the sunset on Llandudno beach when this guy wondered into the frame.

His name is Max (I think). He is very old, super fat but very friendly. He sometimes visits us during yoga classes and has to be gently escorted out. One day I hope to be just like him and retire on the beach, only to watch all the beautiful sunsets, frolick in the sea and make friends with total strangers every day.

This was a tricky photo as Max kept standing up to avoid the incoming waves and I was shooting at a really low shutter speed, but I like the way this photo turned out.

Thanks Max!

Max & Me was originally published in Noodles & Curry on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.