https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaohsiung_Main_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaohsiung_Metro
Eventually the high speed line from Taipei will terminate here and the are preparing the station for this. It looks very promising so far. I also had to include the video taken in the entrance to the metro station. Trippy stuff.
These GIFs of the pools at Angkor Wat were taken using the ‘Live’ option on my iPhone. They can be saved as GIFs although this does increase the file size (about 15MB), please be patient and let them load.
Mekong Cruise
A lovely day for a relaxing cruise and travel on the mighty Mekong River, all you have to do is lie back put your feet up and watch the world go by. Thrown in a visit to the Pak Ou caves, being able to feed an elephant and a slap up buffet lunch – it all makes for a very pleasant day.
The Chao Phraya is Thailand’s major river flowing 372 km from the confluence of the Ping and Nan rivers through Bangkok and into the Gulf of Thailand.
In Bangkok the Chap Phraya is a transport artery for a network of river buses, cross-river ferries, and water taxis. The river buses are cheap and are an excellent way for tourists to see Bangkok.
According to wikiyoyage the prices currently are around 30 Baht (roughly one US Dollar) and there are a confusingly large number of different boat lines:
The photograph was taken in November 2018.
The Photos app that comes bundled with MacOs periodically produces slideshows. Normally, these are themed around places or dates. One caught my eye though – it was called ‘Golden Hour’ and included photos I’d taken from many places. Usually, photos taken around sunset are better because the quality of light is better.
Sunsets from
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to export it so it could be edited. I had to re-create it manually using iMovie. This is the result I call it Global Golden Hour: Sunsets around the world.
The soundtrack is “In Memory of a Free Festival Part 2” by David Bowie which I thought was appropriate. All rights remain with the original artist blah, blah blah, no profit is being made, blah blah, fair use, blah blah.
Click here to open in a new browser window
平顶山, 锡林郭勒盟，内蒙古
Pingdingshan in Xilingol League in Inner Mongolia has a very distinctive landscape. There are many extinct volcanoes from a time when this was the sea floor. This photo was taken in early October and the lush green grasslands had already faded to their winter brown. Even so you can see a flock of sheep in the foreground.
The interactive map is a new feature which I’ll maybe use again now that I know how to do it.
For tourist info click here
Well, I stand up next to a mountain
Chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island
Might even raise just a little sand
Whether Hendrix did actually visit Annapurna is moot , but it’s a nice story.
– Seneca
“You’ll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you’re lucky then the god’s a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me”
Sultan Abdul Samad Building, Kuala Lumpur
Ferry from Tsim Sha Tsui to Hong Kong Island, May 2018
Well, sir, there’s nothing on earth
Like a genuine, bona fide
Electrified, six-car monorail
But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken
Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken…
Monorail!
http://www.nolligan.co.uk/SU/2008/03/15/265/
http://www.nolligan.co.uk/SU/2006/06/16/637/
http://www.nolligan.co.uk/SU/2008/06/21/db-bahn-travelservice-query-page/
Also all pages fixed as far back as May 2011
6 years to go…
“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books”
C.S. Lewis
Beijing West Railway Station – built 1996
https://www.irishmirror.ie/whats-on/arts-culture-news/roscommon-best-county-ireland-gaa-8457417
‘It’s all godamn beach-break!’
…visit a generic shop
Tianjin Metro Line 3 opened on October 1st. It’s 22.3 km long and has 23 stations.
The station shown above is next to the Zhou Enlai/ Deng Yingchao memorial and the Water Park.
The River Suck – much prettier than it sounds:
Yes – I DID make this video.
The cliche that a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step is misleading. Before I took that first step on my 5,150 mile journey* I felt like I had run a marathon. The list of tasks to be completed seemed endless at first. Obtaining a CELTA qualification and quitting my awful job was the easy part. Sorting through a lifetime’s accumulation of bits and pieces and miscellaneous crap, throwing away what was not required and putting the rest into storage was hard. Everything had to be moved, as much as possible was recycled. The St Gemma’s Hospice and St George’s Crypt charity shops both accepted a lot of my stuff hopefully, they will make some money from them.
Getting my house into a good condition where it could be rented out was even harder. Planning my journey was fun but getting the tickets and visas was less so.
A Citycabs black and white taxi
Before I left I managed to fit in a day at Headingley to watch a county cricket match between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire with Percy, Chris and Cousin Martin. Yorkshire had a bad day at the crease but went on to win the match. A sunny day , the sound of leather on willow, good company, good food and plenty of ale – life doesn’t get much better than this.
The last few days were hectic but on August 7th at 13:00 British Summer Time I found myself standing outside my house waiting for a taxi that would take me on the first part of my journey.
* That’s as the crow flies the actual distance travelled was much greater.
John Mock and Kimberley ONeil have 30 years of experience of trekking in the Hindu Kush and other mountain ranges. If you like mountains then I’d recommend this site as it lists a lot of resources.
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?newrequest=yes&protocol=http:
The ultimate searchable online European Train Time Table, all countries included, available in 9 languages.
Planning a journey from Manchester to Zagreb, Narvik to Madrid, Brindisi to Gdansk?
– look no further.
A classic example of German efficiency.
Wunderbar!
Some mature category Library Porn for you, just look at those racks…
Duke Humfrey Reading Room, Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK
By Diliff – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
This is a UK stub
http://www.box-set.co.uk/Ewan-McGregor-Long-Way-Round-6B3UE6.html
I’ve recently finished reading The Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman, about their epic motorbike ride from London to New York via Magadan in Eastern Russia. and empathised with this sentiment:
“I thought back to the day a month or so earlier when we had been in Mongolia. It was mid-afternoon and we were riding through a beautiful valley. I pulled over and got off my bike. Charley, ahead of me, stopped too. He swung his bike around and rode back towards me. Before he even arrived, I could feel it coming off him: why are we stopping? We’re not getting petrol, we’re not stopping to eat: why are we stopping?
I walked away from Charley, I didn’t want to tell him that I had stopped because we’d passed the place. The place we’d fantasised about months before we’d even set off from London. A place with a river of cool, white water and a field nearby to pitch our tents. The place we were going to stop at in the middle of an afternoon so that we could cool our sweaty feet in the river while catching fish that we’d cook that evening on an open fire under a star-speckled sky.
I’d seen that river half an hour earlier. There was no question at all that it was the place. A beautiful big white river and nobody for hundreds of miles. And we had ridden straight past it.”
Click the link below for a bigger picture of a Mongolian river much like the one Ewan McGregor must have seen.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050109133932/http://www.jts88.com/mongolia/Photos/largeimages/river.jpg
Update 2022:
…having been to Mongolia I can confirm that it is has spectacular landscapes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/monsoon-railway.shtml
Update: – No longer on iPlayer , but it is on Youtube (resolution 480 so just about watchable)
Information is still present on the BBC website though
Fascinating BBC television documentary about the Indian Railways which brought back memories of my trek across India and Nepal many years ago.
http://www.raf-upper-heyford.org/Falkland_Arms.jpg
https://www.falklandarms.co.uk
A Wadworth pub in the picturesque Cotswold village of Great Tew. once beloved now inhabited by the uber rich and inherited under dubious circumstances.
