Tagaytay Flowers

Cindy and I were invited to go to a wonderful restaurant called Marsha Adams in Tagaytay. While there, waiting to be seated, we wandered around the garden. I took the opportunity to play a bit with my macro lens and take some photos of flowers in the garden.
 

Lunch was delightful as well as the company.

Tagaytay, Manila and Corrigedor

A couple of weeks ago, one of my daughter Ygrayne and her friend were visiting us in Manila. We took a few trips around the capitol area and down south towards Batangas. First we visited the Taal Volcano at Tagaytay. Fortunately we left around 8 in the morning, and arrived at the Taal lake by 10, we were on the boat across to the volcano island by 10:30. It is funny, because as you approach the lake from Tagaytay, there is an outcrop on the right side of the island which looks like a volcano crater/cone. I immediately assumed that was where we would go. Upon arriving in the boat, I realized that that is just one of the eruption points on the island, but that the main volcano is more central to the island. Once we arrived on the Island, both the girls had decided to ride the horses up, but I wanted to walk. So we set off. The horses set off at a faster pace than I expected. They got to the top in about 30 minutes. It took me 45 or so. It is a pretty direct climb up, though not too far. We had been sold face masks, which weren't really necessary, but would have been useful if the weather was a bit hotter and drier, or if the wind were blowing more. I used mine a couple of times on the way down when the horses were stirring up the dust and manure and the wind was blowing. Once I got to the top, I had a cold Buko (Coconut) juice, but the girls just wanted water. We looked around for about 20 minutes, and headed back down. Ygrayne rode down, I walked down with her friend. Along the way we met someone who was walking up near the steam vents by the side of the path. We were trying to see if we could capture a good picture, without any luck. He stuck his hand down on a vent, and then jumped back saying "it's hot". I told him not to do that any more as he could burn his hand. Pretty stupid, steam is usually hot. I guess not everyone knows that. After taking the boat back to the mainland, yes I know Luzon is an island, but it seems like mainland when crossing the lake back from the volcano. We got somewhat wet on the way back because the wind had picked up and was creating a bit of chop on the lake. Afterwards we decided to go up to Peoples Park in Tagaytay to get a good view of where we had just been, and have lunch. We got there and it was totally ensconsed in a cloud. So the view wasn't so great, but we did have lunch there. After visiting People's Park, we headed for Batangas and the resort. We stayed at Vivere Azure. It was a bit overpriced. They claim to be a 5 star but are more like 3+. The best part is that they have a coral reef right off the beach, so you can go snorkeling any time. The bad part about this is having to negotiate the beach without getting scraped up on the rocks as Ygrayne did. We enjoyed our stay there though, especially the sunsets. A couple of days after the resort, and before they had to leave, we took a 1 day trip to Corregidor. This is the fortified island at the entrance to Manila bay where MacArthur spent his time before having to be evacuated to Australia. The president of the Philippines was here at the beginning of WWII as well. It was subsequently taken by the Japanese, and then retaken by the Americans towards the end of the war. It is an interesting historical place to visit. The tour takes you to various batteries, war memorials, the lighthouse, and just around what is actually a beautiful island. We were fed lunch there, and on our tour bus, there was a group of 4 people taking group photos at each location, mostly jumping in the air. We were all pretty tired by the end of the day, and rested on the boat trip back. Here is one fun photo taken through one of the large gun barrels... More can be found on my flickr.

Inlay Lake and Thaunggyi Hot Air Balloons

The second part of our trip to Myanmar was centered around Inlay Lake and the Thaunggyi Hot Air Balloon Festival. After arriving in Heho, we had about a 1 hour ride to get to the lake. On the way we stopped at a delightful little umbrella shop, which makes not only the umbrellas from bamboo and paper, but also makes the paper from the bark of Mulberry trees.

Inlay Lake itself is the second largest lake in Myanmar, with many villages on it's edge, and even on the lake itself. It is also a large agricultural region as there are floating gardens on the lake. Many acres of tomatoes are grown there and the tomato salad is delicious. We took longtail boats to reach our resort, after a delicious lunch, somewhere on the lake. The resort itself was back between the floating gardens, and isolated from the main part of the lake. This was especially nice because the last several hundred meters they didn't allow any motors on the boats, only legrowing.

We saw fishermen several times, using regular nets, plus these net traps, which they put big end down on the bottom of the lake vertically and then poked inside with a sharp stick to scare the fish into the net.
We also saw them collecting lake grass from the bottom of the lake, which they use as fertilizer for the floating gardens. They would wind the plants around the poles like spaghetti, and pull it from the bottom into the boat. One morning we visited a local market, and our guide Ti showed the ladies how to apply Tanaka ( a mixture of sandalwood paste ) to their faces.

From there we walked up to a temple, and saw the local sights along the way.

I bought some really good peanut brittle here:

We also visited some weavers on the lake, there was a whole village of them. Some were spinning, others dyeing, and others weaving.


Away from the peaceful, relaxing lake, we visited Thaunggy, a local town on the hillside, for their balloon festival. I can only describe it as one of the most insane, chatotic, and thrilling events I've been to. The event has two parts, daytime when they launch large paper hot air balloons in a competition, and nighttime when the balloons are more traditional round, but have fireworks attached to them. We didn't stay for the nighttime as we heard it is a bit of a drunken revelry, and rather unsafe compared to the daytime. During the daytime, in a field about the size of 2-3 football fields, surrounded by food, gambling and other booths, plus a carnival with rides, they launch balloons and are judged on them. The balloons have to look realistic, fly well, and the teams have to work well together. Sometimes they fly really well, like this canary (btw if you click on the picture to enlarge it you will see the 1/2 meter long wick and flames to keep the balloon flying).

There were all sorts of shapes, leopards, cows, tapirs, elephants...
They would dance and sing while the team was sending up the balloon, and even more so if it went up successfully. There were thousands of people on and around the field, and sometimes there were several balloons going up at the same time. Once in a while they weren't so successful.

This tapir didn't make it that far...
Some others went up fairly far before catching on fire, and one came flaming down on some of the food booths. We had to constantly be looking over our shoulders to make sure that nothing dangerous would land on us while we were watching the one in front of us being prepared for flight. These guys were getting ready to put a flaming torch under their balloon to fill it up prior to lighting the wick and sending it off. If you can imagine how crazy this all was, just imagine adding dark, drunkenness, and fireworks (ie rockets etc) being launched from unmanned balloons and you will understand why we didn't stay for the night.

Only too soon we had to leave again after 3 delightful days on the lake.

Here's the final sunset from our hotel veranda.

Myanmar part 1

Looking at my last post, it's been way too long. I planned, and started writing a post about our move to the Philippines, but that will have to wait.

Early November we, Cindy and I, went to Myanmar with Eyes on Asia. It was a great trip for the two of us because it was designed for photographers, so no-one got upset if you moved a little slowly to take some pictures. There were eight of us all in all, just a nice size. Two from the Maldives, one from Singapore, one from Switzerland living in Singapore, one from Germany living in Singapore, one from Australia, and the two of us. Cindy and I flew a day early to Singapore, and then left early the next morning to join the group. Two of the others were on the plane as well. The rest were already waiting in Yangon.

So after a lunch at Sharkeys, highly recommended, we set off for two pagodas. The first I don't remember the name, I should have written it down. It was a bit more relaxed than the big one , and there were interesting activities going on around it. One room had about 8 weavers working, and people spinning as well.

The second pagoda we went to was Shwedagon, the main pagoda in Yangon. We stayed there for a couple of hours, and took pictures in the late afternoon and early evening light.

We only stayed in Yangon one night, as we were headed to Bagan (or) the next morning for 3 days of photography amidst over two thousand temples. We spent the night at the Savoy hotel, which was a nice, older, more of a 'boutique hotel'.

It seemed to be our fate to get up early many times during this trip, this was the 2nd of 3 mornings in a row we had to get up at 5:15. We caught an early flight to Bagan. I found it interesting that we had to show our passports when going from one city to another within the country, not as identification to get on the plane, but to internal immigration control officers. I will admit that I had been a bit apprehensive about going to this country, but all in all, this was the only thing we saw which was in any way indicative of the political situation in the country.

In Bagan, we of course visited many temples, taking horse carts, and busses around to get to them. The horse carts were nicer in a way because we were able to go on roads the busses couldn't and we went at a slower pace and could stop and get off when we wanted to. We were two persons to a cart, and at a couple of times we ran into a whole lot of other carts. Tourism is increasing. We went early mornings two days, one on a balloon ride, and the other to see the monks going around town.
Here are a few photos from our balloon trip.

Getting the balloons full of hot air and ready to go. The basket could hold 12 plus the captain.


Taking off in the pre-dawn light.


View of another balloon after sunrise, about 3/4ths of the way into our one hour ride. I was surprised at how warm I was in the basket, but then since that flame was only a few feet above us when it was on, we would get warm.


Another view of one of the balloons, and many of the temples in the distance. As I mentioned already, there are over 2000 of them. There certainly isn't time to see them all. Some are in very good shape, others damaged by earthquakes, weather etc.
Many of them are over 2000 years old as well.

I'm not necessarily keeping our days in order. We visited the Shwezigon pagoda in Bagan, where I caught this group of musicians as they strode around the temple.

We took pictures of temples at sunset (here you see Muha, the master of Silhouettes).



And this was our guide. He was very helpful as he knew a lot about the history and culture of the place, as well as having been a photographer himself, he understood what we wanted and where the light would be good etc. He just didn't like to be in the photos.

One day we went to see the young monks go around town, I felt a bit like one of the paparazzi, but it was fun none the less. Cindy managed to lose us as we had to move fast to keep up with the monks, but fortunately she found us again not too much later.


There are many more photos on my flickr

We also visited a 100 year old photo studio, and since lacquer-ware comes from this area, also a factory.


I'd love to go back and visit the wonderful people again. Everyone was very warm, friendly, and open-hearted. This must be the result of the Buddhist influence on the people.




Unfortunately at the end of three days it was time to move on to our next location. Inlay Lake. But more about that next time.