Author Archives: shutterbugjj

I took a 12 hour river cruise up the Irrawaddy River from Bagan, Myanmar to Mandalay, Myanmar. For $37 US I got breakfast and lunch and a very enjoyable trip. The seats were very comfortable and lots of room for your legs. Much better than any economy flight I have ever had. A/C in the below deck and beer on the upper deck.

Below deck.

Beer above deck.

The captain

Baby water buffalo and mom

There are many shifting sandbars on this river. This barge is stuck on one of them and 4 tugboats are trying to get it unstuck.

This butterfly flew next to the boat for about 5 minutes.

Stupa next to river

Dredging for gold

Need water. Just bring your oxcart down to the river and fill up.

Demonstration of how to put on and tie the local mens wear. Very similar to Bhutan mens wear.

Natural sunblock made from grinding the bark of small logs on a grinding stone with a little water added.

Luxury boat

They remind me of home.

Life on the river

Getting close to Mandalay

About $7 US

Flight from Mandalay to Tachileik, Myanmar on the border of Thailand where I am now.

Getting to Laos (where I am headed next) is not an easy matter from Myanmar. First I have to fly from Mandalay to Tachileik. No overland allowed at the moment. Then I have to walk across a bridge and go through customs on both sides. Then a Tuk Tuk to the border of Laos. Cross another bridge by mandatory bus. More customs, then a taxi to the harbor for the 2 day trip on the Mekong River in Laos to Luang Prabang, Laos.

The hotel where I am staying at the moment on the border of Myanmar and Thailand, is something else. Nobody speaks English. They do not accept debit or credit cards. Although I am still in Myanmar, they do not accept Myanmar money. Only Thai money or US. The menu is not in English. So I order by looking at the pictures! The internet is slower than snail mail. And I’m not sure if I am in an amusement park or a hotel. Photos of this will be posted tomorrow, maybe. Depending on the snail internet.

Between the 9th and 13th centuries the Bagan area flourished. There were approximately 200,000 people living here. And 10,000 Stupas, Pagodas and monasteries. Now there are approximately 2200 of these left. Some were destroyed by invading armies and some by earthquakes. Over the years restoration has been attempted but not done very well. Hence it is not a Unesco World Heritage site yet. Most of the archeological sites are within a 40 square mile area. And they are everywhere. And very beautifully designed and built.

The view from my room.

The restaurant view.

The Bagan valley.

Sunrise with hot air balloons. $300 each person for about a one hour flight.

Beautiful stupas at sunrise.

Sunset on the Areyarwady River.

Off to Mandalay by boat tomorrow.

I’m not sure why they would allow anyone to purchase a flight ticket that had an onward connecting flight. When they knew that I would have to go through Thailand exiting customs, pick up my bag, take it to the departure counter, go through security check and then to Myanmar customs. All within one hour because my flight back to Bangkok was delayed by half an hour. Thankfully the airline agent met me when I got off the plane and had printed out directions, gates and aisles that I would need to get to to reach my next plane. After almost running through the airport from one end to the other, I made it. I was the last to board. For a 1 1/2 hour flight to Yangon.

This Pagoda (same as a Stupa or Chedi) is in the center of the city with traffic circling it. And there are little shops surrounding the base! A little strange for a holy site.

These guys make 7 cents for each bag they carry from the boat. They pick up a bag and a long stick at the boat. When they get to the truck they exchange the long stick for a short smaller stick. At the end of the day or whenever the boat is emptied, they exchange all of the small sticks for money.

Intricate wood carving.All of the previous photos are from the Sandawshin Kyaik Khauk Pagoda outside of the city.

The Pagoda on this island was built in the 1st Century.

Nuts from a palm tree. They have a jelly like seed inside. Not much flavor but not a bad taste.

This was originally a viewing platform that a king had made so that he could watch boat competitions. There are no more boat competitions so now it is a restaurant. The side view of it is used on Myanmar beer.

One of the entrances to Shwedagon Pagoda. All of the following photos are from this Pagoda.

Shwedagon Pagoda in the center of Yangon. It is being recovered in gold leaf. So it’s not so photogenic at the moment. All of the scaffolding is bamboo which is stronger than steel and lighter. And some of it is covered in bamboo mats to protect the workers from the sun. Originally built in 588 BC, it has been enlarged many times over the years. At the very top there is a large diamond, 76 Carats. Along with 4,351 other diamonds, jewels and gold. The upper portion alone weighs 5 tons.

Reclining Buddha.

Peace child.

Selfie anyone! Not for me, I would rather look at a large tourist with a beard.

Zay. My driver while I have been in Yangon. $40 for 8 hrs and anywhere I wanted to go. And we discussed options. Very helpful and very nice.

I leave today for Bagan in the north of Myanmar.

After a 6.5 hour trip in a bus, I am in Sukhothai. The bus trip wasn’t too bad. It had A/C and more leg room than most economy seats on a plane. And it stopped part way through the trip for an included buffet meal. All for only $10! Amazing.

The hotel where I am staying. The Ruen Thai Hotel. I think it is an old hotel that has been mondernized. My room has shutters that cover the windows. No glass at all. So if you have the A/C on and the shutters closed to keep the cool in. There is no natural light coming in. It’s a nice room. With antique furniture and a marble bathroom. $36 a night.

Fit for a king?

This is how you lock the door. Seems to work fine. The windows lock the same way.

All of the rooms face the pool.

Instead of watch dogs they have watch rabbits. This one is on a break.

Sukhothai is a city in it’s own right. It is also home to the Sukhothai Historical Park. Designated a Unesco World Heritage site. Built in the 1200’s. Some of the Buddha images have been restored in the past. It has been well thought out as a tourist attraction. There are bicycles to rent, an electric bus you can hop off and on, small personal electric vehicles for rent and information accessible by cel phone for each major site. The walled city is approximately 4 square miles. Hence the need for transportation of some kind to get around.

A closer representation of an Indian stupa (“Chedi” in Thailand) than later Thai examples.

Before restoration.

After restoration in the 1850’s.

Pre wedding photos of the bride and groom.

Rental car.

Or maybe a bicycle or two. Or 500!

This stupa was originally Hindu and was later modified to include Buddhist iconography.

In all of these sites these pillars would have supported a wooden roof and sides. Making them either a monastery learning area or a worship center.

Thermoplastic kettle truck. It appears to me that this newly striped road was completely done with hand liners. And they do the layout the same way as I saw in Bhutan.  Lay a rope down and follow it. Skip lengths appear to be marked with chalk. And all of their line work is amazingly straight and all curves are smooth.

Metal incased reflective marker.    And a leaf!

No need to translate.

I am flying to Myanmar tomorrow via Bangkok. More to come in a couple of days.

I’m back to my normal traveling self after leaving the dreadful place they call Bangkok. Just my opinion of course. Away from the high prices and all of the traffic.

I am in Ayutthaya which used to be the capitol of Thailand from the 13th century to the 17th when it was destroyed by the Burmese who invaded. In it’s hey day it has been described as being more opulent and visited more than Paris or London at the time. There are mainly ruins left now and a tourist trade has built up around this area to accommodate visitors. All of the structures were built out of bricks and then covered in stucco and then either painted or covered in gold leaf.

This is Thailand’s largest ancient Buddha. A historical chronicle states that this gilded stucco image was made in AD 1344.

Whats left of a row of Buddhas in a temple complex.

Reclining Buddha.

Flower offerings.

River dinning cruise.

Nope. Not Teslas but cost less and are cute.

Brand new $3500 Tuktuk.

The relics (what’s left behind after cremation) are kept in these. These 3 are from a very beloved king and his 2 sons from the 14th century.

Bees.

This is a well known image of Buddha with a Banyon tree growing around it.

Only a striper would even notice!

The Old Palace Resort where I am staying. $23 a night. Peaceful, family owned and run. A very delightful place. Meals are all about $4.

I leave here tomorrow headed north west towards Myanmar.

I am off on another adventure for a month to South East Asia. I will be visiting Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos and Cambodia. Today the 18th of January was my first day out on the town, so to speak. After recuperating from my 15 hour flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong in a very cramped seat and then a short flight of 3 hours to Bangkok, I am ready to start my journey. I arrived here at 2am in the morning after a delayed flight from SFO (thank you very much Trump!) and another delayed flight from Hong Kong. I can’t say that Trump had anything to do with the second delayed flight but somehow I think he did. My room here is very nice but expensive. I had booked this room 30 days in advance (cheaper) for $120 a night. Because of my late arrival I added another night. For $240!!!! Ouch! Just wait….it gets better. After 6.5 hours of visiting Buddhist sites I am not a happy camper at the moment. I will explain mixed in with photos so that I don’t bore you all with my rant.

The view from my room with smog in the background.

I bought a small pocket camera just before I left so that I didn’t have to always take my heavy camera with me. Little did I know that it was date stamping all of the photos I took. It is fixed now but all of the photos from this camera taken today have date stamps. This is the first of many small annoyances of my day.

Canal behind hotel that leads to the river that the hotel sits on.

The white elephant in the room.

Door man and hostess. I asked if they had my size in his outfit and they said no. Imagine that!

Gold plated stupa.

Wise old clay man.

Probably shouldn’t mess around with what ever this is.

Reclining Buddha. This is the posture he took just before his passing.

I have read that it is solid gold. But I also read that it is gold plated. It weighs 5 tons so I doubt that it is solid gold. But who knows….maybe.

I don’t like crowds. I don’t like being part of a tour group. So I hired a taxi to take me to all of the sites that I wanted to see. 350 Baht ($11) an hour. Reasonable compared to the tourist group prices. Since I didn’t have a phone to call him he would drop me off and pick me up at an agreed time. After the first two stops and thousands, I mean thousands of people, tourists and children, I asked if there was a place I could rest and get a beer at. In Thailand you can only buy alcohol between the hours of 11am and 2pm plus another time in the afternoon that I don’t have a clue to as to what it is. So he stops at a shop 10 minutes before 11am. He doesn’t drink so he didn’t realize it was too early to buy beer. So we head to the next stop. This is where we become friends. He parks blocking part of the road (it’s okay in Thailand for a short while), leaves the car running with the AC on and goes and buys me a beer! And I can sit in the car away from the crowds relax and enjoy a reasonably priced beer. He says that most taxi drivers don’t do this. I agree they don’t. And thank him. Oh I forgot to mention that he doesn’t speak English. He’s got two phones on the dash. One we speak into and it translates out loud and the other one is a regular phone. Some of the translations don’t work so well so I get a couple of laughs from that.

This was my lunch. Looks good I agree. And it tasted good. And the price was based on how much it weighed. Which I should have asked what the approximate price would be. But I didn’t. River shrimp and they tasted like lobster. Luckily I only ate a third of them so that I could have two more meals. You may ask “how much did it cost?” $140 US dollars! I will repeat it $140 US dollars!!! That ended my day immediately. I was tired and had had enough of all the crowds. My taxi bill for the day was half of what it cost for my lunch! Looks like I will be eating “cup of noodles” for the rest of the trip.

I leave Bangkok tomorrow headed for 12th century Buddhist ruins. And my room only costs $25 a night. And I’m sure I can find some Top Ramen to eat. Hopefully the gloomy weather that is here isn’t there. I am not very pleased with any of the photos I have taken so far.

I have had a couple of photos that I have meant to post in the past and haven’t done it. Below are some of them.

Canyonlands NP Utah, USA from my campsite at the Needles Outpost campground.

Me and my campsite at the Needles Outpost campground just before it started raining.

Small thunderstorm in Nevada on my way back to California.

Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range on my way to Mono Lake in  California.

Mono Lake California on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

This is where I live. What you are looking at is the confluence of the Mokelumne River (on the left) and the San Joaquin River (aka Stockton deep water channel). This area is part of the 1000 mile Sacramento Delta watershed. The levees constricting the rivers were built in the late 1800’s by mostly Chinese people after they finished building the railway across the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I live below the waterline just to the right of the center of this photo.

The Manor (or manure if you ask my friend Jannus).

Old hydro electric power plant.

They will be here soon.

It’s time to leave the fjord and head to Oslo for an overnight stay and then on to Tallinn Estonia.

As the weather people predicted it’s raining today. Good for waterfalls and dry grass but not so good for tourists. Like me.

So I thought my trials and tribulations were over with travel in Norway but I was wrong. The only way to get to the bus stop for the next part of my trip was by taxi. Which was fine with me. And it ended up being a Tesla taxi! Even better. My driver on the way up the mountain, the same winding road I was on the other day, casualy mentions to be aware of moose and deer at my bus stop. They frequent the area where the bus stop is. Mind you it is raining pretty hard at the moment. So I ask if there is a bus shelter and he says no. And he says he can’t wait after he drops me off because he has another pickup. I don’t have an umbrella with me so we stop at a small tourist shop on the way. No umbrellas but they do have a plastic bag. Big enough for my head but nothing else! So we get to the “bus stop” (an intersection of 2 roads) and he says this is it. Now I’m looking around and I ask where? He points to the middle of the road and points, there! “The bus stops in the middle of the road when you wave at it”. I ask him are you sure. He replies, yes, I am sure. He then tells me that everyone asks the same question. Remember it’s raining and I only have a small plastic bag for protection. I immediately start thinking of carnivorous moose and deer. And wonder if any of his other passengers have ever been seen again!

Tesla taxi and the “bus stop”. The black spot next to the car.

Remember it’s still raining. He then proceeds to tell me to be aware of lightning! Remember the black spot next to the car he calls the bus stop. Maybe the last passenger? So while we are sitting there he gets a phone call saying that his other ride canceled. So no hurry to get back to town. Whew!!! He says he will wait. We are 30 minutes early and the  bus is 20 minutes late. That would have been 50 minutes in the rain and wind dodging lightning while fending off the moose and deer.

So I pay while we are waiting. 750 Krone ($92 US) for a 30 minute ride, flat rate! Yes Norway is very expensive. My bus trip for 8 hours cost 680 Krone. That cost wasn’t bad at all.

The bus finally shows up and he flashes his lights for it to stop. This is the second bus I see while we are waiting. How would I have known which one to try to stop? On the bus I have a seat reserved and after the person sitting in it gets up, I sit down. Top floor of the bus. View okay, there is a pillar blocking part of the view. Seat pretty comfortable. But then the person sitting in front of me reclines her seat. These are semi reclining seats. And her seat is now in my lap! I now know what a hamburger feels like between two slices of bread. If I recline my seat, which I don’t want to do, it becomes a domino effect and everyone in the same row has to recline their seat or become the other parts of a hamburger like cheese, lettuce, onions, etc. I’ve had more room on a bus in India crowded with people, chickens and small pigs! After about 3 hours of this, someone gets off and I move to another seat. No more hamburger feeling. Room to move and a better view. And the rest of the bus trip was fine.

One of the many rivers in Norway.

As I mentioned in the post before this one. Geiranger is a small town of 250 residents. But because of the influx of all the tourists in the summer (up to 700,000!) it has it’s own bakery, chocolate factory, cheese production and a brewery. It also has small electric “matchbox” vehicles for rent and a Tesla taxi.

2 people can fit in this little vehicle but I saw one go by with 3 in it! And these things compete with all of the buses and camper mini-vans that travel the winding roads here.

I was reading about the history of this area and came across some information on the possibility of a tsunami here. Below is what I found:

“All residents around the Great Fjord in western Norway are aware of the danger coming from the mountains. Storfjorden is one of the most beautiful fjords in Norway. On average 700.000 tourists flock to see this breathtaking fjord, many traveling by cruise ship. However few tourists know that this is the world’s most monitored mountain.

The 900 meter high Åknesfjället looks like a very ordinary mountain. But along the mountain side runs a 700 meters long and up to 30 meters wide crack, each year growing larger by up to 15 centimeters.This crack makes the mountain so unstable that the whole mountainside sooner or later will plunge into the fjord. When the 900 meters mountain section slides down into the 320 meter deep fjord will slide 150 million tons of rock, triggering tsunami wave up to 80 meters high.

Several communities will be completely destroyed. First affected by the disaster will be the village of Hellesylt with more than 250 residents. Six minutes after the landslide sweeps, the industrial town of Stranda will be affected, and after ten minutes the wave will destroy completely the famous tourist resort of Geiranger where many cruise ships arrive during the summer months.”

Who would have even imagined that this could happen. And how did they discover it?

My hotel and the surrounding area.

Beer from the local brewery and very good. They have won many awards. As has the cheese factory.

Now that’s what I call a hamburger!

Waterfall behind hotel.