SouthEast Asia
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Life Lessons Learned While Traveling Through Asia
One of the things that is so great about traveling is that you get exposed to vastly different people than you’re used to. While I as living in Malaysia, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with so many more people than I had while growing up in my small town in Southern Utah. Sure, I’d lived in Virginia for two years and Oklahoma for four years and had visited several other states, but most of the people I’d interacted with had been American. There would be the random British person, a smattering of Hispanic people or an occasional Chinese person, but 99% of the people I’d interacted with in…
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Photo Essay: Sunset From A Forgotten Monastery
On our first day in Bagan, Myanmar, we spent a lot of time riding our bikes from temple to temple. We thought it was the best experience ever and didn’t think there was anything that could surpass it. But then we were talking to a shop keeper at one of the tourist stalls in front of Ananda Temple and he said that we should come back there at sunset. Well, why?, we asked. We’d already seen the temple in the daylight. Why would we want to come see it in the dark? That’s when he told us that we could get a wonderful view of the sunset from the top of…
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Sunset at Shwe Sandaw Pagoda
Shwe Sandaw Pagoda was built in Bagan, Myanmar, in 1057 AD by King Anawrahta. It consists of five levels of red brick and a large stupa that is topped with a golden umbrella. The white color you see on the temple now wasn’t always there. Up until 1957, Shwe Sandaw Pagoda had retained most of its original design, aside from aging, minor repairs and upkeep. But in 1957, the Pagoda Trustees decided to renovate and modernize the temple by adding plaster embellishments and limewash on the upper half of the temple. When full-scale restorations began in the 1990’s, they restored the plaster and limewash finish instead of removing it to make it…
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Yangon’s Circle Train: A Journey in Photos
When I was googling things to do in Yangon, I realized that I wanted to do something more than just run around looking at temples. We did that a lot in Thailand and Cambodia and we would be doing that in Bagan, so I decided that I wanted to switch things up a bit and do something more cultural. When I came across the Circle Train, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. The Circle Train in Yangon isn’t exactly a tourist destination. This train is what locals use to get from Yangon, the capitol, to other outlying villages. There’s nothing fancy or touristy about it. Nobody sings,…
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Kuan Yin Shrine and the Legend of Miao Shan
The Kuan Yin Shrine in Bangkok is dedicated to a Goddess whose tragic story exemplifies the virtues of kindness, compassion, sacrifice and forgiveness.
