Let's do South & East Asia - 01 - Introduction, Maps, Trip Details, Area Info
Jan 3, 2022 11:38:44 #
INTRODUCTION
ASIA - What an enormity of landmass and population combined with impressive diversity of cultures and languages! No other continent is as large, nor a culturally diverse as Asia, ranging from the Arab world at the continent's western edge through the sparsely inhabited taiga in the north of the continent, steppes and nomadic tribes of Central Asia, the mountain and valley dwellers in earth's highest mountain regions, the population masses in India, China and South-East Asia, to the peninsulas and islands in the Far East and ending finally at the shores of the great Pacific Ocean with its multi-cultural, multi-ethnic island fringes.
Asia has been close to my heart for most of my life. As a youngster, I was intrigued by the cultural mix I saw in published articles and, checking out a globe or a world map, by the mountains, deserts, immense cities, contorted shorelines and the many islands and island nations fringing this continent. Over the decades, that fascination has turned into multiple exposures: I lived eight years in its confines - 3 years on a continuous traveling job an an international bank auditor ("Inspectors" we were called at that time) covering the area from Pakistan in the east through the Malay and Indonesian archipelago all the way over to Japan and living out of the suitcase, having in effect no abode. At the end of this term I got married in Hong Kong to Susan, my wife of now 50+ years. After an 8-year interlude in Canada, we were again stationed for five years in Hong Kong, and I enjoyed visiting and working in a few Asian location off and on even when subsequently stationed in North America. When not working out there, we often chose a corner of this vast continent to explore on our annual vacation/exploration trips, and I am happy to say that for the area east of the Arab world and west of the Pacific Island nations, I missed thus far visiting only handful of countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Papua New Guinea and North Korea - and there is hope for the center 3 countries yet).
I already posted three series on Asia here on UHH, actually my very first series was on the "Stans" of Central Asia, followed by Iran, both posted in 2016. Then in the summer of 2020 I posted a series on the Arabian Peninsula with Oman and Abu Dhabi/Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
We undertook the trip I am going to cover in this major series eight years ago, in the fall of 2013. It really covered four distinct phases which we cobbled together touching four countries and lasted 46 days- given that long duration you can see that I was by then retired. I will present these sections chronologically the way we visited them. We started out in CHINA's southwestern SICHUAN province. While we visited China many times before, Sichuan was still unknown to us, except for the reputation and appreciation of its fiery food. Susan being Chinese of course had a deeper knowledge and had been yearning to visit the mystical Jiuzhaigou (Nine Villages) Valley - the name reflects the fact that 9 Tibetan villages are strewn along this Y shaped set of valleys, famous for the inordinately blue waters displayed by some of its lakes. Sichuan is also well-known for its Giant Panda research station which we also visited in the vicinity of the sacred Mount Emei.
After a few days rest in Hong Kong, we headed for our next destination: The quite reclusive MYANMAR, formerly known as Burma. In the middle part of the last decade, it had finally opened up under the guiding hands of the perennial freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, the military junta had somewhat retreated and it looked possible and positive to visit this marvelous country. We set foot in Myanmar at a very opportune, peaceful and progressive moment when its future looked bright, unfortunately in early 2021 the military sized power again and rules anew with a iron fist.
For our third country visit, we headed to THAILAND, with just a brief stay in its capital city Bangkok before continuing overland to visit the NORTHERN CITIES of Thailand, mainly Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, but also Ayutthaya, Sukhothai and smaller towns and villages on the way, including Mae Sai in Thailand's Golden Triangle area famed for its opium production at the northernmost corner of Thailand bordering Laos and Myanmar.
On our final stage we spend a couple of weeks in HONG KONG, which of course was very well known to us. My wife Susan was born here and we got married here in 1971. While I worked on my Asian tour from 1968-1971, I often stayed in Hong Kong; then we also lived here from 1979 to 1984 and have since returned many times - it is one of our "home towns" that we always enjoy revisiting.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: Just about all photos in this series were taken with my cropped-sensor Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 18-200 mm lens. A few, mainly food pictures were taken with my small Canon PowerShot pocket camera. At that time I shot the pictures in jpeg and used the rather basic Picasa software for minimal processing which did not include level and perspective adjustments. Thus the picture quality both from the equipment as well as from the recording and post processing angles will be less than stellar renditions, but I do hope that you will see past some possible inadequacies and enjoy the scenes and objects presented. Obviously, I would process many of these shots quite differently today. I did contemplate adjusting them for this presentation but realized that this would be an enormous job, so decided to leave the images as I originally processed them. I will also include some pictures of lesser quality if I find them to cover a special interest or insight. - BTW, this was my last trip using this rig, the following year (2014) I upgraded to the full-frame Nikon D610, commenced to shoot in raw and started to process in Lightroom.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
TODAY'S POST:
This is my organizational starter page: Over the years I have developed a layout that presents all the maps, information and title samples in this introductory page, and I will provide a link to this page on the subsequent post for ease of reference and orientation. Thus the "real picture stories" will start in tomorrow's post.
Thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoyed today's starter set and invite you to drop in whenever your time allows, or even follow the entire series as it unfolds over the coming months. I recommend viewing the downloads and look forward to and enjoy your comments and questions.
.
ASIA - What an enormity of landmass and population combined with impressive diversity of cultures and languages! No other continent is as large, nor a culturally diverse as Asia, ranging from the Arab world at the continent's western edge through the sparsely inhabited taiga in the north of the continent, steppes and nomadic tribes of Central Asia, the mountain and valley dwellers in earth's highest mountain regions, the population masses in India, China and South-East Asia, to the peninsulas and islands in the Far East and ending finally at the shores of the great Pacific Ocean with its multi-cultural, multi-ethnic island fringes.
Asia has been close to my heart for most of my life. As a youngster, I was intrigued by the cultural mix I saw in published articles and, checking out a globe or a world map, by the mountains, deserts, immense cities, contorted shorelines and the many islands and island nations fringing this continent. Over the decades, that fascination has turned into multiple exposures: I lived eight years in its confines - 3 years on a continuous traveling job an an international bank auditor ("Inspectors" we were called at that time) covering the area from Pakistan in the east through the Malay and Indonesian archipelago all the way over to Japan and living out of the suitcase, having in effect no abode. At the end of this term I got married in Hong Kong to Susan, my wife of now 50+ years. After an 8-year interlude in Canada, we were again stationed for five years in Hong Kong, and I enjoyed visiting and working in a few Asian location off and on even when subsequently stationed in North America. When not working out there, we often chose a corner of this vast continent to explore on our annual vacation/exploration trips, and I am happy to say that for the area east of the Arab world and west of the Pacific Island nations, I missed thus far visiting only handful of countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Papua New Guinea and North Korea - and there is hope for the center 3 countries yet).
I already posted three series on Asia here on UHH, actually my very first series was on the "Stans" of Central Asia, followed by Iran, both posted in 2016. Then in the summer of 2020 I posted a series on the Arabian Peninsula with Oman and Abu Dhabi/Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
We undertook the trip I am going to cover in this major series eight years ago, in the fall of 2013. It really covered four distinct phases which we cobbled together touching four countries and lasted 46 days- given that long duration you can see that I was by then retired. I will present these sections chronologically the way we visited them. We started out in CHINA's southwestern SICHUAN province. While we visited China many times before, Sichuan was still unknown to us, except for the reputation and appreciation of its fiery food. Susan being Chinese of course had a deeper knowledge and had been yearning to visit the mystical Jiuzhaigou (Nine Villages) Valley - the name reflects the fact that 9 Tibetan villages are strewn along this Y shaped set of valleys, famous for the inordinately blue waters displayed by some of its lakes. Sichuan is also well-known for its Giant Panda research station which we also visited in the vicinity of the sacred Mount Emei.
After a few days rest in Hong Kong, we headed for our next destination: The quite reclusive MYANMAR, formerly known as Burma. In the middle part of the last decade, it had finally opened up under the guiding hands of the perennial freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, the military junta had somewhat retreated and it looked possible and positive to visit this marvelous country. We set foot in Myanmar at a very opportune, peaceful and progressive moment when its future looked bright, unfortunately in early 2021 the military sized power again and rules anew with a iron fist.
For our third country visit, we headed to THAILAND, with just a brief stay in its capital city Bangkok before continuing overland to visit the NORTHERN CITIES of Thailand, mainly Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, but also Ayutthaya, Sukhothai and smaller towns and villages on the way, including Mae Sai in Thailand's Golden Triangle area famed for its opium production at the northernmost corner of Thailand bordering Laos and Myanmar.
On our final stage we spend a couple of weeks in HONG KONG, which of course was very well known to us. My wife Susan was born here and we got married here in 1971. While I worked on my Asian tour from 1968-1971, I often stayed in Hong Kong; then we also lived here from 1979 to 1984 and have since returned many times - it is one of our "home towns" that we always enjoy revisiting.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: Just about all photos in this series were taken with my cropped-sensor Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 18-200 mm lens. A few, mainly food pictures were taken with my small Canon PowerShot pocket camera. At that time I shot the pictures in jpeg and used the rather basic Picasa software for minimal processing which did not include level and perspective adjustments. Thus the picture quality both from the equipment as well as from the recording and post processing angles will be less than stellar renditions, but I do hope that you will see past some possible inadequacies and enjoy the scenes and objects presented. Obviously, I would process many of these shots quite differently today. I did contemplate adjusting them for this presentation but realized that this would be an enormous job, so decided to leave the images as I originally processed them. I will also include some pictures of lesser quality if I find them to cover a special interest or insight. - BTW, this was my last trip using this rig, the following year (2014) I upgraded to the full-frame Nikon D610, commenced to shoot in raw and started to process in Lightroom.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
TODAY'S POST:
This is my organizational starter page: Over the years I have developed a layout that presents all the maps, information and title samples in this introductory page, and I will provide a link to this page on the subsequent post for ease of reference and orientation. Thus the "real picture stories" will start in tomorrow's post.
Thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoyed today's starter set and invite you to drop in whenever your time allows, or even follow the entire series as it unfolds over the coming months. I recommend viewing the downloads and look forward to and enjoy your comments and questions.
.
1 - Main title for the 4-country series set on sunset wave reflections on the large Inle Lake in south/east central Myanmar
(Download)
2 - Map of South & East Asia covering the entire trip with the flights: Vancouver - Chengdu - Hong Kong - Yangon - Bangkok - Hong Kong - Vancouver
(Download)
3 - Title page for the China/Sichuan part set on an "impressionistic" rendition of the green and yellow tree trunks in and the reflections on the deep blue waters of the Five Flower Lake - Ni Hao means Hello/How are you in Mandarin Chinese
(Download)
4 - Map of our travels within Sichuan: First up to the Jiuzhaigou valley with various towns en-route, then to Emeishan monastery and the Giant Buddha statue at Leshan, and finally a look at the Giant Panda Base and Sichuan's capital city of Chengdu
(Download)
5 - Title page for the Myanmar (formerly Burma) part of the trip, set on an image of sunset light reflecting on overhead clouds in Mandalay - Mingalaba is the formal Burmese greeting
(Download)
6 - Map of our travels by internal flights within Myanmar, covering its largest city and former capital Yangon, then the archaeological zone at the ancient capital Bagan, the vibrant city of Mandalay and finally the natural splendor of Inle Lake
(Download)
7 - Title page for the Thailand part of the trip set on an image of Loi Krathong flower floats on the Kok river in Chiang Rai - Sawasdee is the formal Thai greeting
(Download)
8 - Map depicting our overland tour bus route from Bangkok via Ayutthaya, Sukhothai and Phayao to the northern cities of Chiang Rai, a loop drive to Mae Sai with boat ride on the Mekong river and on to Chiang Mai, and a final flight back to Bangkok
(Download)
9 - Title page for Hong Kong set on a view from "The Peak" at the top of Hong Kong island, looking down to the high rise buildings of the Central District and towards Causeway Bay / North Point in the rear - Neih Hou is colloquial Cantonese greeting
(Download)
10 - Map depicting Hong Kong, with the small Hong Kong Island at the bottom, the larger, only recently developing Lantao Island at southwest and the main mass of land of Kowloon & the "New Territories" at the center, bordered by China to the north
(Download)
Jan 3, 2022 11:40:05 #
A - Listing of comparative data for the 4 locations visited, including both Sichuan as a Chinese province as well as the data for entire China
Jan 3, 2022 11:43:20 #
Jan 3, 2022 11:56:20 #
Jan 3, 2022 12:26:57 #
lnl
Loc: SWFL
Oh, wow! Joe, you have been busy gathering another epic journey for us. I am looking forward to it. We’ve visited some of these places and others are just a gleam. Thank you for your time and hard work. Myanmar especially will be interesting, especially as you said, it is no longer possible to visit easily (or probably safely).
Jan 3, 2022 12:28:00 #
JFCoupe
Loc: Kent, Washington
Congratulations on your many travels and exposure to a significant level of other cultures and experiences.
Your intro slides are wonderful.
Your intro slides are wonderful.
Jan 3, 2022 12:45:01 #
Jan 3, 2022 12:57:57 #
Really looking forward to this tour, Joe. I love to read and many of these places have been mentioned in my books. Looking forward to actually seeing them thru your lens.
Jan 3, 2022 12:58:00 #
lnl wrote:
Oh, wow! Joe, you have been busy gathering another epic journey for us. I am looking forward to it. We’ve visited some of these places and others are just a gleam. Thank you for your time and hard work. Myanmar especially will be interesting, especially as you said, it is no longer possible to visit easily (or probably safely).
Thank you very much Ellen, I am happy to see you looking in on my new series again and hope that it will not disappoint you. With the Jiauzhaigou valley in Sichuan and Myanmar I am covering some rather unusual and very interesting areas, the same with the north of Thailand, even though this is better known. Hong Kong of course is very well known, but here also I will be able to present some rather unusual corners, so we are hopefully in for a few very interesting months! Thanks again for your visit - Joe
Jan 3, 2022 13:04:15 #
JFCoupe wrote:
Congratulations on your many travels and exposure to a significant level of other cultures and experiences.
Your intro slides are wonderful.
Your intro slides are wonderful.
Thank you very much JF for looking in on the very start of my new series and your kind comment - I am happy to hear that you like my intro images.
Jan 3, 2022 13:04:39 #
Jan 3, 2022 13:07:26 #
NMGal wrote:
Really looking forward to this tour, Joe. I love to read and many of these places have been mentioned in my books. Looking forward to actually seeing them thru your lens.
Thank you very much Barbara for looking in on my new series, I look forward to having you along on this new series and all your astute observations as you have so many times done on my past travelogues. I hope my images will not disappoint you - have a wonderful day, week and year!
Jan 3, 2022 15:56:01 #
I appreciate the immense amount of time and work this represents, Joe. Bring it on!
Jan 3, 2022 16:11:03 #
UTMike wrote:
I appreciate the immense amount of time and work this represents, Joe. Bring it on!
Thank you very much Mike, I highly value your appreciation - and while it is a lot of work to get going with such a series, it is also a lot of fun to work on such a project - and it sort of lets me relive this great trip - so there is the reward from appreciation of people like you as well as from rekindling many past memories that otherwise would slide into oblivion. I hope you will enjoy the series and thanks again for commenting.
Jan 3, 2022 18:49:01 #
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