Hoi An

The heritage seaport trading city of Hoi An has been preserved and is now an UNESCO World Heritage site. To me it was poetry in pictures with so many gorgeous vignettes to capture! We were up early and walked around for an hour before 7am when the streets are not clogged with tourist hordes, but with locals going about their morning shopping and errands.

These are many small business people in Vietnam and food stalls are set up where every there are customers and then moved to another profitable location. Pushbikes and scooters move everything! Above, sugarcane.

These golden flowering trees were everywhere.

A door guardian with his companion on the other side, just as alert!

 A living flower curtain.

Aerial roots curtain the street.

 

 

Halong Bay

Everyone said Halong Bay was beautiful and they were right! We cruised for 2 nights with Paloma and had a great time with the crew and fellow passengers.

The boat was wooden and had a lovely atmosphere. We were also surprised by the good size of the cabin for sleeping and the generous sized bathroom.

Loved the shell basin.

We got to spend time on white, sandy beaches and kayaked to caves and arches.

 

Flowers

These are banana flowers used ornamentally as the bananas don't develop into edible fruit. We have seen them a lot around Sapa.

Mt Fansipan

Going to the roof of Indochina in the newly opened cable car was amazing. The new station buildings still had that 'new' smell and the staff looked very nice in their uniforms.

The cable car is truly a feat of engineering and is the longest one in Asia, built by an Austrian company. The views are super.

Once at the top station, there is still a climb of 300 steps to the summit. Lots of construction going on up here also and just as interesting as the fabulous views.

Cloud rolls in.

Yeah, made it to 3,143 metres.

 

Panda love

The Taipei Zoo, which was established 102 years ago has a Panda enclosure and they were delightful to watch as they ate their snacks and stripped bamboo or rolled around with huge ice blocks that held  a tasty treat in the centre.

The gardens were very tropical and well maintained. We are finding Taipei is clean, people are kind and helpful and the traffic obeys the signals!

These were the colourful doors in the ladies toilets. Aussie and Taiwanese bonding!

And a super message for us all.

Our tour, Cappadocia

We booked into a day tour of the area and had a wonderful introduction to the fascinating history of the region. Cappadocia means 'land of beautiful horses' we discovered. Much of early Christianity is linked to the area and the Goreme Open Air Museum, originally a monastery until the 1920's has super frescos in the original caves and churches carved in the stone.

Photos are not allowed inside. Pigeon eggshells are used as a base for the paintings so the small carved niches are pigeon roosting areas.

 

This tree is hung with many blue glass ornaments, to guard against the 'evil eye' and was a drawcard for tourist photos.

 What an amazing area of natural formations! Everywhere you look you can see these structures in varied shapes and sizes.

 
 

Balloons over Goreme

 Just on dawn the hot air balloons begin their ascent into the clear sky over Goreme. We didn't take a ride as we had just arrived the night before and with a 6 hour time difference......well jetlag is not a nice companion at the best of times!

But we enjoyed watching from our panoramic balcony, as slowly the sunlight hit the tops of the chimneys. An occasional hiss of gas was heard in the still morning air.
 

Life in the freezer- day 8

Have been enjoying meeting the babies of my friends and getting in a few cuddles. The cold outside temperatures mean children are very well wrapped up for trips outdoors and this was the case when my friend Selenge and I went to a snowy mountain park just a short distance from the outer suburbs of Ulaanbaatar. For a short time we left the pollution that settles in the valley over the town behind and breathed in the refreshing mountain air. Birds twittered about the still bare tree branches. The sunshine made the white snowy ground sparkle with a million bits of glitter.
Being a weekday, the area wasn't busy but we saw the tracks of toboggans cascading down the slopes. The walking track had been cut into a frozen waterfall, but we didn't risk walking on this slippery surface with our precious bundle, only her little nose visible from the wrappings. It was a very nice, brief interlude from the regular traffic and streets of Ulaanbaatar.
 

Life in the freezer- day 26

Travelling back to Ulaanbaatar in convoy with 2 other vehicles, we had high hopes of making it back in one day, but were prepared to overnight if needed. Little did we know what the day held in store for us! Views of camel herds were numerous, this herd with a female herder on a blonde camel, on the right side.

A return to Bayunlij for fuel. Our vehicle was petrol, the other two Toyotas diesel. Bob checks his messages with reception in the small soum [town].

And time for a group photo of our hosts and travelling companions.

We travelled through amazingly narrow, rocky gorges and across flat plains.

Lunch was Mongolian style with noodles and mutton, but it was warm and prepared for us by the camp cooks. We ate it once we had gotten back to the bitumen road, which was now a sheet of ice and barely distinguishable from the snow covered countryside.

As the sun set and a rainbow showed it's colours, temperatures dropped even further and the trouble began.

 

 

Life in the freezer- day 24 & 25

Got further south today, where there was much less snow and warmer temperatures. We now think between 0 degrees and minus 7 degrees C are quite OK! How things have changed for this Queensland girl. The landscape was quite dramatic with eroded cliffs and this famous spot looking like the Sphinx. Our long afternoon shadows and Toyota shadow are all part of the atmosphere. 

Got into camp in the dark and was greeted by a warm donga room with ensuite and two new camel hair quilts to keep us warm also. It was much appreciated as I wasn't well nursing an upset stomach.

This was the view of Torom Khon the next day from an elevated picnic spot. Would be lovely in the summertime, but a bit chilly with the breeze and snow patches.

Trees have been planted in this desert landscape and this fountain must work when the water isn't frozen in the pipes.

And this was the view of the surrounding small hills.