April has not been a great month weatherwise. Last week we had huge winds and thunderstorms and our internet was down for 2 days. Then it just rained a lot. Today the wind is up again, though not as badly as before.

In a lull we went down to walk along the beach at Cantone. Usually the sea there is as flat as a board. Instead, that day you could ( Read more... )

After my morning walk, L and I went out to lunch with a couple of others at Highway 4 in Hang Tre (Bamboo St). I figured that Highway 4 goes up to the highlands because this is one of those places where you sit cross-legged on the floor (as many of the highland minority restaurants have it, not only here, but in Bangkok, etc). My knees are not good ( Read more... )

I made a small mistake today. The forecast was for 29 and I thought that if I went out walking after 4, it would be starting to cool down. I've lost quite a lot of fitness due to the intense last 3 months at work and didn't plan on a long walk, but even so when I parked the car under Gladesville Bridge at 4.40 it was 31 (88F) and the sun was ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I arrived safely and I was not anywhere near the so-called 'stampede'. I'm not sure precisely what happened, except that the local police and the owners of the island to which bridge leads are disputing responsibility for maintaining traffic flow across the bridge at a reasonable level ( Read more... )

The Vietnamese have a saying that the sound of thunder is the sound of conversation in Heaven. Well, if a god or gods exist, I think He, She, It or They should have made an appearance here...

( Read more... )

Once I'd stopped peering out of the window searching for familiar landmarks as we took off from Hanoi, I settled down to read my book in the brilliant sunshine of 10,000 metres. After about an hour of this everything suddenly fell into shadow. Looking up, I saw that we were passing an immense storm cloud. I spent the next hour watching the passing ( Read more... )

After Maleny I passed through Montville heading, I thought, towards the coast. But on the spur of the moment I took a left down a very steep road to the Baroon Dam. This is a reservoir from which people's drinking water comes, so I was pretty surprised to see houses down by the dam, as well as picnic spots. Apparently you can swim (when it's not ( Read more... )

As auntysocial said the other day, "the moon is a difficult subject". I have taken lots of pictures of the moon in my life, but yesterday, coming out of the railway station just around sunset, I thought I'd give it another try. The fact that the sky was still pretty light meant that the camera's light meter just might not overexpose the moon - and lo there's ( Read more... )

I didn't take a lot of photos in Adelaide. I did walk around a lot, but my camera is quite heavy so there will be only a few shots recording the 5 days I was there ( Read more... )