With over 1000 teak posts to support it’s span, a walk over the bridge was quite a stroll. It’s over a kilometer in length, and during the dry season (when this image was taken) the outer shore’s are transformed into vegetable gardens, with water only flowing around the middle region of the bridge.

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

The Sunset Over U Bein Bridge Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Then there’s the king of all overloaded vehicles. The infamous images of the ridiculous and no doubt extremely dangerous, overloaded trains leaving Bangladeshi railway stations. As the passengers head home to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

Over the years, I’ve also done my fair share of travelling aboard these types of vehicles. Yes it looks like fun, but believe me it’s not. After the first 30 minutes the novelty quickly begins to wear off. As you really start to get a little annoyed with the situation. Beginning to jostle with others on board for a favourable place to put your limbs.

Numbness soon begins to set in, and the amount of times I’ve suffered the ‘pins and needles’ whilst being shoehorned into a truck or van is countless. After 8-10 hours of this type of transport and you seriously start to mentally suffer.

Yes It Looks Like Fun, But After 30 Minutes The Novelty Wears Off

Recently on a trip to Myanmar we visited the magnificent Pagodas of Bagan, and were lucky enough to have our visit marry up with the ‘Ananda Pagoda Festival’, held in January of each year.

The festival brought many people into the small town of Old Bagan. Some would arrive by bullock cart and others by bicycle, but the vast majority would arrive in extremely overloaded vehicles as seen in the images in this post.

It was during the proceeding days of the festival that I captured many images of some insanely overloaded vehicles. As drivers would shuttle people back and forth to the surrounding villages on jeeps, trucks and scooters.

As you can see, this jeep in this article is seriously overcrowded. To the point where the driver would have a hard time seeing through the windscreen. Let alone the stress put on the chassis from the excessive weight of the people (not to mention the enormous fuel bill as well).

During The Festival We Spotted Many Insanely Overloaded Vehicles

 I’ve tried my best to count the people on the Jeep with the different angles in these images. I’ve come up with an answer of somewhere in the vicinity of 26 to 30 people.

As the trucks and cars cruised by, my mate Tony would capture their attention and get the people to wave at us (I’ll post some more of these images over the coming weeks and months), but as with Burmese people in general. They driver was more than happy to stop his vehicle for me to take some photos. Somewhat proud of the number of people he had managed to squeeze into it.

Everyone was still smiling (obviously the journey had just begun…), and as the vehicle got closer you could then make out not only the massive amount of people squashed aboard, but also many bags and goods that were strapped to the sides.

Your Thoughts and Comments?

How many people can you count aboard? What about other parts of the world, where else have you seen vehicles loaded as heavily as this? I’m also curious to hear from anyone who’s ever witnessed the overloaded trains of Bangladesh. It’s something I’d love to photograph.

Krasnoyarsk is a major city and transport hub, on the Trans Siberian railway. Located in central Russia, and with a population of around 1 million people. The city is famous for its great architecture, but also has a heavy industry element to it as well.

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

Patrolling The Krasnoyarsk Railway Station Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

For the traveler during this portion of the day. You’re either heading back to your guest house or hotel for a bit of a nap. Or, kicking back in a local restaurant whilst knocking back a cold drink or two, but there’s another way to beat Yangon’s stifling midday sun.

Many Great Transit Systems Have A Circle or Loop Line

Buying a ticket for the Yangon Circle Line. I'm afraid that a foreigner will have to pay far more than the local commuter.

Many of the worlds great cities have an expansive metro system, and a handful of these have what is commonly referred to as a ‘Circle, or Loop Line’. A rail link that uses a ring formation around the individual city. With a variety of stations or stops that circumference either the inner or outer metro areas.

The likes of Moscow, London, Paris and Beijing are all famous for this type of transit system, and you can also throw Yangon into the mix as well.

Head on down to platforms 6 & 7 at the Yangon Central Railway Station, and pay the one US dollar fare (far less than the cost of a local fare I might add) for a complete trip around Yangon’s circle line.

In total the journey will take approximately 3 hours (yes it’s not your average rapid transit system!) and will see you through the hottest part of the day.

As soon as the train enters the station, board as quickly as you can. Try for a seat next to an open window to allow that soothing breeze to whisk through your hair. If your lucky enough to get a window, you’ll also have a great location to watch the commotion that takes place at each of the 38 stations along the route. The whistle will sound, and with a quick and sudden jolt (or three) you’ll be off and running.

As a foreigner, don’t forget to bring at least one passport along with you. The Myanmar government is certainly one for bureaucracy and red tape and you’ll need it to purchase your tickets.

The Yangon Circle Line Is A Short But Fascinating Journey

Passangers hurriedly get on and off at the various stations enroute.

It’s a short but fascinating train voyage, as the rickety old diesel drawn carriages jolt and sway there way along the old and barely functional narrow gauge rails.

Slowly but surely you will circumference the city, but for those that enjoy the finer things in life. You’re going to be out of luck on this particular journey.

You’ll need to be prepared to travel in ordinary (3rd) class. After the first hour or so, the hard and well worn wooden slatted seats can get a little rough on the rear end.

Although to be able to watch the local people go about there daily business, you’ll definitely be glad you made the effort. The circle line trip is just a great way to fill in a half day whilst the Yangon heat is searing the tarmac on the streets.

The route generally makes its way through outer lying villages (and even the odd market place) of greater Yangon.

As the train chugs its way into each station, a frenzy of people will hurriedly get on and off (some while the train is still moving). While others ply the length of the platform selling all manner of food and goods to those already on board.

On This Train Journey You Are Bound To Make Many New Friends

Along the way, you are bound to make many new friends. As many of the passengers will be quite curious towards a foreigner being aboard their train.

You’ll be offered a warm smile from the thanaka painted cheeks of many of the teenagers. A frenetic wave from a young child, along with the friendly but inquisitive stare of the many adults aboard the train.

Of course, there’s always that infamous smile consisting of red beetle nut stained teeth. A vision that will become very common place to you whilst you travel within Myanmar’s borders.

The Yangon circle line trip is something that I highly recommend for anyone heading to Myanmar’s TRUE capital. An enjoyable way to get a feel for the every day lives and routines of many of the cities 4.5 million inhabitants.

Your Thought And Comments?

Have you ridden the narrow gauge rails of Yangon’s Circle line before? Why don’t you tell us about your experience. Maybe there’s other great circle lines in other cities that I’ve missed above. Can you name any more, or does your home city have one?

Inle Lake is one of the most visited places in Myanmar, and for good reason (although at times I felt it was a little too touristy). The lake which only spans 13.5km (7 miles) at it’s longest point, is crowned by the small town of Nyaungshwe on it’s norther shores. With many small villages scattered at various locations to the south.

The whole region seemed to be quite self sufficient, and you’ll find anything from textile workers to black smiths at many of the small villages dotting its shores. A visit it Myanmar without gracing the waters of Inle Lake, I believe would be incomplete.

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

A Graceful Paddle On Inle Lake Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Over the proceeding weeks and months, I’ll be having plenty to say about these destinations (especially Myanmar – One of the best countries I’ve traveled too in the last 10 years). As well as bringing you the best of my photography from the journey.

The trip was great and went pretty (no car accidents on this one) well to plan for the first 4 weeks, but then morphed itself into somewhat of a stuff up. You see, due to the hectic schedule on the home front. Juggling 50 hour work weeks, a seven day a week training schedule for my up and coming marathon, and of course updates to this blog. I somehow forgot to get our Vietnam visa.

To be quite honest, the thought never even crossed my mind. All my efforts were concentrated on the Myanmar phase of our travels. Myanmar was the sole reason for taking this trip, and a layover in Singapore and a week in both Laos and Vietnam were purely bonuses due to their close proximity to Myanmar.

All My Effort Was On The Myanmar Phase of The Trip

So there we were in the Vientiane airport. Ready for our short flight to Luang Prabang, when Liza began flipping through the mass of stamps and visas in her passport. She pointed out the old Vietnamese visa from 2006, and asked the question. ‘Do we still need a visa for Vietnam?’ My heart began to race a little, and then came a long pause. ‘Ummm…I’m not sure. Maybe we can get it on arrival?’

As it turned out, there was an embassy in Luang Prabang that could issue express visas within minutes for $60. Just our luck that it happened to be the Tete holiday period, and the embassy was closed for 9 days. It’s seems my lack of organization, would now cost us a visit to Hanoi. A city I have wanted to see since our first trip to Vietnam back in 2006.

And now we were in a bit of a conundrum. We had a flight booked to Hanoi that was leaving in 6hrs, and another from Hanoi back to Singapore in a weeks time. So we quickly went back to our hotel to work out a plan of attack.

We found a helpful local travel agent and cancelled our flights (one of which we have been refunded for and the other we at still waiting on a refund) and booked a new flight back to Vientiane and on to Singapore. I suppose in the end it turned out fine. Hanoi will always be there, and there could have been worse places than Luang Prabang and Singapore to wait out a few extra days.

It Seems The More I Travel The Less Organized I Get

It seems that the more I travel, the worse I get at organizing things. To be honset, this is not the only travel stuff up I’ve had of late. I’ve also messed up flights to Samoa due to the international date line. As well as booking flights in the Philippines based on the Australian date system (that being day before month) instead of the American system (month before day).

The problem is, I just don’t seem to get to excited, or worked up about a trip until im on the plane. I usually think down the lines of ‘Oh, I’m off to Burma tomorrow. I’d better book a return flight’. I’m also a little set in my old ways, where you travel to a specific country, and organize any onward visas whilst there (I’m not good at making plans. Even on short trips).

This is fine whilst on the road Indefinitely, or on a longer travels, but on a 5 week trip you need to be organised! So if you see me behind the counter of a travel agents desk one day in the future. Just walk the other way, and save yourself some headaches.

Your Thoughts and Comments?

Have you been in a situation like this before, and had to cancel travel plans a the last minute due to poor forward planing? Come on, be honest. I was….

Note: Stay tuned for lots of content and images on Myanmar (Burma). A fascinating country with many sights, and some of the friendliest people I’ve met in years.

Liza and I seemed to befriend what we feel were the local maffia. These guys would have people running favours for us all over town, as well as taking us on guided tours of the local sights. No mention of payment was ever made. I was waiting for the crunch to pay before we left town, but it never eventuated.

The Ishak Palace is a short drive from the centre of town, and due to the ongoing fighting in eastern Turkey at the time, there were absolutely no tourists in the region. We had the whole place to our selves (and our maffia friends).

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

Ishak Pasha Palace of Doğubeyazıt Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

This image was taken on the other great road of my home state. The ‘Great Alpine Road‘ leading up to Mt Hotham is living proof that Australia is not always beaches and sunshine, as many would believe.

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

Australia It’s Not All Beaches & Sunshine Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

The Spring Snows of Park City Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

The image was taken on what would now be considered a very low grade digital camera (of less quality found in most modern phones), but I ran it through a couple of filters and was very happy with the result and decided to share it with you.

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I believe some of my images are worthy of sale. Traveling the world is an expensive hobby, so If you would like to licence, or purchase a print of this image (or any others in my image of the week series). Then please check out my Color or Black and White image galleries, where you can select an image and be presented with a series of options through the ‘FotoMoto’ service.

The image displayed above, is a reduced and highly compressed JPEG. All licensed images are supplied in full high resolution TIFF format, without watermarks. All prints are also created from these high resolution image files, without watermarks.

Panama Let There Be Light Was Captured Here

Clicking on the map below will open a full screen Google Maps page, in either your desktop or mobile browser. From this map you can view all other images that have been posted in the ‘Image of The Week’ series. Zoom in and take a look around, you never know what you might find….

Creative Commons Licence Details

All photos in the ‘Image of The Week’ series are protected under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence as detailed below. You are free to copy and distribute this reduced quality image as you wish, as long as the image itself is used for non commercial purposes, remains unaltered, and with a link back to this site.

DigiDrift – This Image by Jason Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License