The Southeast Asia Travel Specialists Since 1999
Poy Sang Long is a traditional Shan festival where boys are ordained before entering a monastery as novice monks. The ceremony is a time-honoured, ‘rite of passage’ with some boys perhaps only spending a token week or two as novices and others going on to spend years – or even a lifetime – as Buddhist monks. While the majority of…
Cambodia – Street Photography by Jeff Perigois. Getting those picturesque photographs of Cambodia’s sublime landscapes or spectacular, atmospheric shots of jungle-clad temple ruins is a relatively straightforward task. You’ll need someone to ensure you get to the right place at the right time then hope for a fortuitous monk to stroll past the stone carvings or an old ox-cart to…
A few photos from a recent Cambodia street photography tour of Phnom Penh lead by Jeff, (Jean Francois) Perigois. Jeff is a long term resident of Cambodia’s capital so can lead you down a few back alleys you’d certainly never find – or dare to go down – yourselves and his great rapport with locals provides obvious advantages for street,…
The sprawling city of Rangoon, or Yangon, is no longer Burma’s official capital but is still the nation’s largest and most important city by far and very much its commercial, cultural, historic and geographical centre. Rangoon is congested, hectic, noisy, grimy, frequently smelly; pavements are obstacle courses, street lighting is to say the least erratic and much of its wonderful…
Rangoon’s magnificent and iconic Shwedagon Pagoda is Yangon City’s best-known tourist destination and indeed Burma’s single most prestigious religious site. If you only see one temple in the country then you’d better make it this one! The sprawling Shwedagon Pagoda complex is considered to date originally from the Mon period some 1,500 years ago but has been updated, repaired and…
The Yangon or Rangoon circular line trains leave from the City’s Central Station describing a 30-mile loop through the inner city and suburbs before returning to its point of departure some 3 hours later. The train is scheduled hourly and alternates between clockwise and anti-clockwise circumnavigations and the price is a couple of hundred kyat for the round trip. Now…
Bagan sunsets and sunrises. The harsh light of Bagan can make temple photography during the middle of the day somewhat hard work and for your more atmospheric and photogenic opportunities, you’ll be restricted to those relatively short early morning and late afternoon times. Don’t worry during the intervening period there are more manageable village and rural life subjects since villages,…
Photographing Bagan – a few tips. Estimates of the precise figure vary but suffice to say there is the best part of 2,000 temples, pagodas, stupas, chedis and monasteries scattered across the wide plain between the Irrawaddy to the east and the range of low hills to the west. Differences between the categories of religious sites can also be somewhat…
Burma When’s the best time to go? A frequently asked question but not an easily answered one and at the risk of doing some unapologetic fence-sitting we’d say every season has its pros and cons. Broadly speaking Burma’s climate falls into 3 general seasons: rainy, dry cool and dry hot, though of course in such a large and geographically varied…
The Padaung people of Burma, more commonly known as the ‘Long-Neck Karen’, live in Kayah State in northeastern Burma and though the provincial capital Loikaw is now officially open for tourism it’s still very difficult to get to so your most likely contact with them would be at one of their lakeside souvenir stalls at Inle. The pros and cons…
The somewhat remote, Irrawaddy Delta town of Pathein is actually officially the 5th largest ‘city’ in Burma – which makes it slightly smaller than Moulmein (Mawlamyine) – yet even fewer tourists ever make it down to this super-friendly and fascinating river port than visit Mon State’s picturesque capital. Pathein is the Delta’s commercial hub and the riverside area and central…
So, Inle Lake, U Bein Bridge, Bagan and Shwedagon Pagoda are the spots to get your iconic Burma travel photos but it’s well worth thinking outside the box in terms of your Burma itinerary since some of the lesser-known destinations can often be the most rewarding both in photographic and non-photographic terms. Kengtung Shan State being a case in point…
First off, when we say photo sharing we mean with the subjects of your images, not just Grannie, mum, your mate in the pub or whoever else you share it with on social media. Most people, whether in Southeast Asia or elsewhere, enjoy seeing photos of themselves. When taking people photos then the first thing to do is to show…
Now portrait photography in Burma does amount to pretty much the same as taking people photographs anywhere else but with a few subtle differences so, here’s a brief run down. You have two basic strategies: either ask permission for a close-up shot or discreet shots with zooms. If you have a guide with you it’s easy to ask politely though hand…
No, would be our easy answer as with regards photographing local people in Burma! Increasingly in Burma’s tourist hotspots, you will see local people posing for photographs in return for money and to our minds, this is a habit that shouldn’t be encouraged. If you don’t want your photo taken then suffice to say so; we don’t feel it should…
A selection of Wi’s Burma photographs taken on her smartphone shows you don’t need a great camera to take great pix – just a good eye and the right place at the right time we guess. There are some awesome Burma photos here but the post is a bit of an excuse really to let everyone know that you can…
A superb set of Martin’s Burma Photographs we gratefully received from him taken on our recent Discover Burma tour, “….quite unlike any land you know about”. Glad you enjoyed the trip Martin and thanks very much for the photos. All pics by Martin with captions and additional text from All Points East. Rangoon’s circular train describes a large loop through…
Having inexplicably suffered a detached retina whilst watching Barbie VDO’s with an 8-year-old, (no the doctor didn’t believe us either), we’ve not taken any new photos in while. A trawl through some catalogued images seemed to turn up an inordinate amount of bridges of Southeast Asia photos so for no reason whatsoever other than a plea for un-inspiration to be…
Gary Latham Cambodia photographs; a superb selection of Cambodia images taken by travel photographer Gary Latham on his recent Images of Indochina photographic tour of Vietnam and Cambodia. So, without further a-do…..all images by Gary and comments by All Points East. (Please note that for the purposes of speed and space the images’ resolution have been reduced so apologies for…
Portraits of Burma is a short selection of photographs by Wi, taken on her recent Discover Burma tour, “…quite unlike any land you know about”. (A quote from Kipling of course!) So, in no particular order and without further ado… The ubiquitous pink-clad Buddhist nuns are a sight that you won’t see elsewhere in Southeast Asia despite Burma sharing its…