Temples, an’ stuff…

Yeah, that’s the title.

Had no idea what to do the first full day I had in Bangkok, so following my tried and tested tradition of “walking around for a while”, off I went.

I love these overhead cables, and I’ve no idea why. They go everywhere. Also, bus. I took a route from my hostel around and down to a river that, on the map, looked like it had some interesting things to see on the way. First thing was a huge fort I came across.

Couldn’t go inside or anything, but I had a walk around the outside. After that I ended up going slightly off track and walking through road after road of street markets selling little amulets and charms, and then pretty much everything else. So many unidentifiable foodstuffs that might’ve been delicious, they certainly looked it, but I wasn’t going to risk it.

I ended up coming to a temple called Wat Po (or Pho, depending on where you look). Had really no idea what it was, but since the entry fee was 100 baht, I wasn’t too bothered about having a look. Suddenly, a face.

SOON

The temple actually turned out to house a pretty famous statue, the Reclining Buddha. Here’re a couple of proper pictures as well. For a size frame of reference, that fence is shoulder height.

The temple complex, all 20 aches of it, was incredible pretty and a joy to walk around. Somehow I managed to enter through the non-main entrance (har har, children) so the first while I was walking around the place was seemingly deserted. Then I hit crowds, which was a shame, but I was pretty much done by then. Oh, and Thai statues sometimes wear top hats. Because classy.

After the temple I started walking back to the hostel, as I’d been walking for six hours in the sun so I figured a rest was due. On the way I came across a large alleyway / small street with some more awesome wires, and a huge temple in the background, which I felt kinda felt summed up Bangkok for me completely. Even has the obligatory tuk-tuk.

Bangkok…

 

So I’m away again. I landed in Bangkok a couple of days ago. It’s very, very warm. Thank FSM for air-con.

Bangkok airport is awesome. Well, no, it’s just a regular airport, but it does have some awesome things in it. Firstly, please observe not only escalators that’re stairs, not only escalators that’re conveyor belts, not only escalators that’re sloping, but ALL OF THE ABOVE AT ONCE.

I took a train from the airport to, well, a train station somewhere. Apparently this was the closest place to where I was staying to then get a taxi from. Waving down a taxi driver who spoke and read enough English to understand the address I was going to was a challenge in the middle of rush hour traffic, but I got one in the end.

The next thing that struck me about Bangkok’s dealing with traffic was the incredible traffic lights. They have timers on them to tell you how long the red light has left until it changes, and the same for the green. I’m sure this isn’t exclusive to Bangkok, but it’s the first time I’ve noticed it anywhere. It also really reduces the frustration of sitting waiting at a red light if you know when it’s gonna change, even if that is in three minutes.

I arrived at my hostel and checked in, made my way up to my room and crashed out on the bed after something like 20 hours of travelling. The plane journeys were not conducive to sleeping, so that didn’t really happen.

Since my body now had no idea what time it was, it being about 8pm local time and 2pm English time, it was kinda hungry. It’d been many hour since I last ate on the first plane journey, so kinda understandable. Now, see, I’m not a huge fan of eating food if I don’t know what it is. This made getting food here somewhat of a challenge. I wandered the streets for a while until I found something that resembled something I recognised and got a dish of that. Turned out to be delicious.

So, that was my first day in Bangkok. Onwards (and a fight with jet lag)!

 

Well… I wanted to know…

I had the following conversation with a friend and fellow traveller who’s spent the last few months in South East Asia.

THESE THINGS ARE OF IMPORTANT CONCERN, ALL RIGHT?

Me: I have a very pressing question for you.

Friend: yep?

Me: What’re the toilets like in Thailand? Are they those weird things you just have to squat over on the floor? And do they have TP?

Friend: 50% are squat toilets and rarely toilet paper

Me: ‘The fuck do you clean up with?

Friend: you carry your own in your bag
they have a hose too
hose yourself down
it’s fun!

Me: This seems woefully impractical.

Friend: i actually prefer them
you get used to it :)

Me: But, like… how do you not soak all your clothing while you’re cleaning?

Friend: you do sometimes
LOL
but not often
the water comes out in a very thin straight line LOL

Me: See above RE woefully impractical. -_-

Friend: a lot of places will have a toilet but no flush
so you have to fill up a bucket of water

Me: Well, that I’m fine with.

Friend: and hold it over your head
and chuck it in
there was one in phi phi that took 20 mins to flush everytime!
You had to have so much force or it just filled up and overflowed
this is a fun conversation to have over breakfast! :D

Me: Haha, sorry ’bout that.

Friend: but really, the toilets are fine
barely even an issue, and after the first couple of times yo get used to it

Me: Thanks for the info. I was perplexed.

Friend: not anywhere near as bad as china where you didnt even have cubicles and everyone would poo into a giant trough looking at each other
LOL

Me: …

Friend: seriously
it was horrific
my british reservedness did not cope well

Me: I imagine not!

Stage two, oh yeahhh…

After an unexpectedly lengthened stay at home, today I booked my flight to Thailand. I fly out from London on May 8th, stop over briefly in Delhi, and then finally touch down in Bangkok the day after. Woo.

I anticipate this part of the trip being more difficult for a variety of reasons.

For a start, I wasn’t too intimidated by Europe or (obviously) America and the potential language barriers because English is pretty prevalent in Europe wherever you go, and somewhat prevalent depending on where you go in the US… Anyway. This is not the case in SE Asia so much. I can point and, you know, speak loudly and stuff, but that’ll only get you so far.

Secondly, this is a much more alien and less developed part of the world than Europe and the US, for the most part. Now that doesn’t really bother me, as such, but it adds to the intimidation when being thrown into that alone. I actually knew an acquaintance who’s been out there for a little while who I was going to meet up with for a day or two to act as a buffer, kinda, but that’s fallen through as they have to move on elsewhere. A friend from school who I previously travelled the US with was gonna be coming out on holiday and meeting up for a brief amount of time too, but other commitments have led that to fall through also. Neither of these were remotely solid plans, outlines and sketches of ideas at best, and I wasn’t relying on them, so it looks like I’ll be travelling alone again. Cool.

And C, I actually have people (other than family) at home that I’m going to be sad to leave behind and miss an awful lot this time.

I repacked my backpack today, and managed to cut out a whole load of stuff from the packing list that I took last time. The benefit of experience and being able to confidently say “I never used that!” while throwing a roll of duct tape over my shoulder (though I’m actually still taking that because, well, you never know.) My pack can now be comfortably lifted with one arm, rather than being the two-hand-requiring monstrosity that it was before. I am aiming to get it down to airport carry-on luggage size if I can, but I reckon I’m aiming a bit off the mark with that, sadly.

There are no solid plans other than “land in Bangkok” so far. There are lots of interesting little counties sprinkled around Thailand in easy reach, so I’m going to try and add to my collection of one-for-each-country bracelets (left to right: Croatia, Italy, Greece, Bosnia, Tunisia, France, Slovenia, and America).

And on that note, I’m going to head to bed. Expect more updates soon. Oh, and I’ll still be keeping up with my duties over at Two Photos a Day, so do keep checking for awesome pictures every day!

Plitvice Lakes, Croatia…

While I was in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb, I saw some leaflets for tours to a national park a few hours away. I spoke to the lovely girl who ran the hostel I was staying in and she very highly recommended I spend one of my few days in town visiting the Plitvice Lakes national park. So I did.

Plitvice Lakes at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere

France on foot…

The first three stops (two if you don’t include the day in León) of my trip were spent in southern(ish) France, in Clermont-Ferrand and Grenoble specifically. Slightly off the normal touristy beaten path, they presented some excellent photographic opportunities. Check out the gallery linked below.

France on Foot at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere

Pictures from Tunisia…

I had a quiet afternoon, so I went through and re-mastered some of the pictures I took on my trip to Tunisia a few years ago. Take a look at the gallery.

Tunisia at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere

London in Monochrome…

Does it count as travel if it’s in your own country? I think it does, even when the UK is tiny comparatively speaking.

I went to London for a few days with a friend. We had no plans for what to do at all, so we spent the time walking around anywhere that looked or sounded interesting, sitting on the Underground, and being jostled by rush hour crowds.

For instance, there was the gentleman in Covent Garden market wearing a multi-coloured, sequinned hat and a technicolour dreamcoat who was manning a camera stall and shouted at me for daring to point my camera in that general direction saying “It’s not a side show, you know.” Well actually, if you dress like that, you kinda are, but I didn’t even want to take a picture of you – I wanted one of all the antique cameras.

Exploring Leicester Square was entirely underwhelming due to the whole thing being boarded and fenced off because of roadworks (I am yet to be whelmed). Trafalgar Square was slightly more impressive, though I did have the impression that Nelson’s Column would be substantially larger than it was (har har).

One of the pods from the London Eye was missing from the wheel and just kinda… sitting in the waters of the Thames below where it should’ve been attached, so this wasn’t overly confidence-inspiring as to the safety thereof. I’m sure it was fine…

As usual my camera was pretty much attached to my hand and I came away with a few pictures I really like. Take a look at the gallery over at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere.

London in Monochrome gallery

Lithographic Italy…

I was playing around with a lithographic effect in Photoshop and by happenstance tried it on one of my pictures from Italy. It came out really well, so I had the idea to do a whole set of pictures from the various places in Italy I visited using this effect.

After all, while I didn’t necessarily love Italy while I was there (I dunno, perhaps it looked at me funny that day), the place itself is incredibly beautiful all over. I hope the pictures in the gallery give you a feel of that.

Lithographic Italy gallery at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere

Another nother look at Bosnia…

Sorry. This really should’ve gone in the previous post but I didn’t wanna update it again.

The reason the above picture is in the gallery I just posted may not be abundantly obvious, as on its own it’s not particularly noteworthy. To me it is, for a couple of different reasons.

Firstly from a historical viewpoint – that tower block was one of the ones used by Serbian snipers to camp out in and shoot people while they went about their business in Mostar. That makes it damn interesting, in my book. The tower was shelled during the war and is pretty much destroyed inside and out. That’s why it stood abandoned ever since.

Which is the second reason it’s noteworthy. I, in my infinite wisdom, heard the story of this tower and was told where it was and immediately thought “I shall climb that thing.” And I did. On my own, at dusk, with about a thousand pounds of camera equipment with me, miles from the hostel, with no one knowing where I was. So that ranks pretty highly on the list of stupid stuff I’ve done so far.

As you can see, the inside of the place was literally left for dead after the war and so it’s a complete shambles. This made it a pleasure to stroll through.

It only struck me after I’d actually entered the tower that it might be a good place for local homeless people / criminals / gangs of feral youths to congregate and harass the passing public. At this point I was one or two floors up and hadn’t heard anyone, so I discarded this as a worry for a later time.

Speaking of climbing floors, the stairs were concrete, with cracks in them and no railings or walls at all. Open stairwells to both the outside of the building and the ground below. Good fun to climb. I was determined to make it to the top to check out the view though, as the owner of the hostel I was staying in told me it had wonderful views at sunset.

I did make it to the top, although at that point the wisdom in waiting around for my only source of light to fade and then having to climb back down started to dawn on me. At the top were huge walls that I couldn’t scale to get a view from the highest point anyway, so you’ll have to make do with a picture from about a third of the way up.

At one point there must have been elevators in the building – either that or they needed the huge shafts for ‘worker incentive’ or some such.

As I made my way back down from the roof one of two things happened. Either I started to go slightly mental and started hearing things, or some people entered the tower and were making some noise a few floors below me. This, on the whole, did not thrill me. I didn’t want to make my way down the main stairs that I’d climbed to get to the roof in case there were roving bands of miscreants in the building, so I started looking for alternate routes of egress.

I was in a broken down tower block with no doors, windows, and certainly no emergency exits (unless I could, you know, fly. Or bounce.)

I frantically (and it was frantically, at this point) started running around the floor I was on making as little noise as possible, looking for another way down. I eventually found a tiny little staircase at the back of the building so I started making my way down that way. It was covered in debris, so doing this while attempting to make the noise of a ninja walking on a cloud was a challenge.

Upon reaching the ground, I immediately and with most haste got my ass back out onto the street, and started to make my way back to the hostel. So, that was my tower climbing adventure. Probably ranks in the top three of damn stupid things I’ve done for a decent photograph, but in retrospect it was a lot of fun and definitely worth it.