Dien Bien Phu

Dien Bien Phu is located about thirty kilometers from the Tay Tang boarder passing and is basically the last stop going west before crossing into Laos, on my way over to Laos I decided to spend one day here in order to break up the twenty hours of bus rides involved.

My exploration here started on the south side of town where the jungle is dotted with several French Military relics from the first Indochina War. There aren't really any signs describing where to go around here so you can kind of just wander around the jungle until you bump into something important. One of the pieces of artillery which I found was surrounded by piles of mud and getting up to it to take a picture was a bit of a challenge, I'm not sure if it was even meant to be on display however it added a bit of adventure to the morning.

French tank

Xin Chai @ Sapa

Cat Cat is a village right down the hill from Sapa which is a bit fake and pretty much inundated with tourists, however, if you continue on the same road another couple kilometers you arrive at a much more interesting place called Xin Chai. In between a couple of rainy days, I had one day of sun, so I took advantage of the opportunity and had a taxi drop me off here for some exploration.

Xin Chai

Hmong dude playing music

Nanshan @ Urümqi

With lakes, mountains, caves, and forests, Urumqi is famous for being surrounded by natural beauty in all directions. Awaking with the determination to explore this, I shrugged off my beer hangover from the night before and managed to get to the bus station. Due to some gap in the departure schedule, the ticket I ended up with wasn't to where I'd asked, but the girl at the counter looked pretty confident that I would be satisfied. An hour and a half later I got off at the last stop, where it was difficult to understand what the proper route was, there were just a couple of shacks around and two roads diverging from a fork. I picked a road, and after walking along it rather unconfidently for a bit, I was approached by a random Kazak guy.

Wandering away from the bus stop

Dallah Tsunami Village @ Yangon

To access Dallah, all you need to do is hop onto a ferry across from the Strand hotel, after about 10 minutes you'll be on the south side of the Yangon river surrounded by trishaws and motorbikes fighting for your attention. Dallah is far too big to walk, so you have no choice to but to negotiate a deal with someone if you want to see the whole area.

View of the Dallah side of the river from the ferry

Exiting the ferry

Mingaladon Bazaar Station @ Yangon

Advertised on blogs as the cheapest and easiest way to see how real Yangonian's live, The Circular Train takes you from Yangon Central Railway Station all the way up and around the international airport and back. I hopped on with little knowledge about my sight seeing options along the way, and by the time I actually found a map that listed the stop names, we had already passed the few I recognized.

Yangon Central Train Station

Everyone had to switch platforms

Panglao Island

Compared to Boracay, Pangloa island has been much less transformed by tourism. Although it's still absolutely a tourist location, it's a bit grittier and there's still evidence of the local culture all around. At night time it gets dark enough here that you can look up and spot the dense band of starts which forms the milky way, something I forgot existed after living in Beijing for a year.

Diving boat?

Some goats south of the main beach

North Beach @ Boracay

On my second day I decided to cross over to the north east side of the island. After about a 20 minute walk passing through the center road I hit the north beach. On this side of the island the main business is diving, which can thrive if the wind direction causes the other-side of the island to become to choppy. Other then that I noticed lots of locals, some fixing up boats, some walking the beach and others playing around doing back-flips in the sand. I eventually found a restaurant which I stopped into for a tuna belly dinner. I enjoyed a glass of wine here as I ate my dinner, and after the amount of mosquito attention I attracted I'd say the mosquitoes enjoy alcoholic blood.

Boat repair shop

Back Road

Driving to and from camp we normally we fit 5 in a van plus a driver but yesterday we fit 6, this was a mistake. There was a crazy traffic jam on the road through the jungle which we normally take to camp and after about 25 minutes sitting in the same spot the AC started straining and the passengers became unruly. The drivers solution was to turn around and take the back road to the camp.

different advertising strategies are used in India

Bouncing Around South Mumbai

My taxi driver got clipped by a dump truck today and a 20 minute argument ensued on the side of marine drive in South Mumbai. After this, I was practically pushed into a hand craft shop so the driver could get some sort of a kickback for bringing me there. When I politely tried to explain that I would maybe come back at a later time to purchase something, the owner got upset and went on a rant. He explained in detail how his father left and said he would come back and then was run over by a bus in front of him. As I made an effort to flee the shop I was cursed at.

Slums and Cricket

After yesterdays experience getting stranded with no cab to take me home, I decided to keep my exploring local today.  I found that as soon as got off of the main road and ventured into the slum I started getting weird looks. I managed to see a couple of goats, one guy was carrying a goat like it was his baby and another guy was chasing his goat that had gotten off the leash.

Outside the slum