Boat in the Lagoon

TG-4, f6.3, 1/1000, ISO 200, RAW, 100mm

Lang Co View

GR, f8.0, 1/1000, ISO 100, RAW

Going Fishing

TG-4, f4.9, 1/250, ISO 400, RAW, 100mm

Hue to Da Nang Road Trip

Driving between Hue and Da nang is a normal occurrence for me and it feels almost like commuting at times.

It's always fun and quite scenic despite the long stretches on the main AH1 highway.

Still, having company and being a tour guide is more fun so when a friend asked to join me till Lang Co I said yes.

Since we had enough time and there was no rush to get to Da Nang, I decided to stop off on some of the more scenic places and take the mountain passes instead of the tunnels.
The main highlight being the Bach Ma temple, it's always a very scenic spot no matter the weather.

The ride was almost completely dry with only two very heavy showers, one before Lang Co and one just after the Hai Van pass but the rain coat kept me relatively dry.

Women in the Lagoon

TG-4, f4.0, 1/800, ISO 200, RAW, 40mm

Lake View

TG-4, f 4.0, 1/1000, ISO 100, RAW, 43 mm

Reflection

TG-4, f5.0, 1/1000, ISO 160, RAW, 61mm

The Net

TG-4, f6.3, 1/1000, ISO 160, RAW, 100mm

House on the Water

GR, f8.0, 1/500, ISO 100, RAW

Smoke and Clouds

GR, f8.0, 1/400, ISO 100, RAW

Lake View

X Play, f2.8, 1/1578, ISO 50, JPG

From Hue to Kuala Lumpur

It was again time for a trip out of Vietnam and back to Kuala Lumpur. I set off in the morning on my motorbike to Da Nang.

I left quite early to have plenty of time to get there but to my surprise the tunnels they have been working on were all finished so this cut down the time to get to Lang Co considerably.

In Da Nang I even had time to chill a bit and have breakfast and coffee before heading to the airport.

After arriving in Kuala Lumpur and making the long trip to the city from the airport, I was about to head for dinner when it started pouring.

I decided to just take money and my Olympus TG-4 with me and head out anyway, it was nice and I got some nice photos.

It's nice not to have to worry about the camera with the TG-4, sure the GR would have offered much better image quality but the TG-4 just works and I don't have to care about it too much.

Boat on West Lake

OPO, f2.0, 1/3720, ISO 100, JPG

Day 40 - Lotus Lake and Cijin Island

Woke up in the morning to head to Zuoying and walk around the Lotus Lake, this got recommended and the temples and pagodas looked very nice in photos.

The temples built on to the lake looked great, especially from a distance but from close up  found them a bit kitschy in a way and they reminded me of fun fair attractions where you walk through the mouth of a tiger or dragon to get to your ride.

It was very interesting to see and quite a departure from other temples I have seen in China or Japan but I was not quite sure what to make of it. I could not shake the feeling that they looked fake and a bit commercial rather than being proper temples.

There is also nothing much to see around the lake otherwise and there are not even a lot of shops or cafes nearby, especially at the north end of the lake.
So after walking all around the lake and seeing all temples, I figured I had seen enough and headed back to Kaoshiung to take the ferry to Cijin Island before it got too late.

Cijin Island was very nice with the market, lots of nice seafood restaurants, the sea and people out and about. It is certainly worth seeing and I should have gotten there earlier as the lighthouse was already closed by the time I got up there. I still managed to find my way in the darkness from the lighthouse to the fort, which provided a great view over the island and Kaoshiung. So despite t being late, I would say the view from there is worth going up even after dark.

Once I took in the view and some long exposure photos, I headed back to Kaoshiung and had a nice ice dessert before taking some more pictures at the Dome of Light (I really like the colours there).

Tomorrow morning, I will be heading back to Taipei for a few days before taking the ferry back to Xiamen.

As you would have noticed, keeping my blog up to date (or even close to that) proves quite a challenge and with me being around so much, I hardly have time to sort through pictures and internet access is also patchy when I do have time to post.

Day 30 - Around the West Lake

After getting to see a bit of Hangzhou yesterday, I was looking forward to have the whole day to explore and walk around the lake. There are some scenes scattered around the lake with poetic names so I figured I try to see how many I find.

Unfortunately the weather was not in as good a mood as I was and it was pretty bad for photography with a grey sky, haze and very flat light. I guess I can't go through all my trip with sunshine and blue skies so it had to change at some point. It's a shame it had to change here as it is a great location for photography but I have to make the most of it.

Just after getting to the lake it started raining a bit and it kept starting and stopping all throughout the day. This did not really help with the light but at least it provided my with more subjects for my next #people with umbrellas' book. :)

Since the light was bad and all pictures of the landscape or the poetically names places around the lake turned out a bit flat and boring, I decided to make people the focus of this post.

It took me a lot longer to walk around the lake due to some stops to enjoy the scenery and to take pictures so by the time it got dark, I just about managed to complete the round. Since I was not hungry, I decided to take some long exposure shots as these would work even with a cloudy sky.

While waiting around for the camera to record and finish writing my 120 second exposures, I noticed bats flying around so I had an idea. Now, if you always wanted to know whether you can take pictures of bats flying at night with the GR but were afraid to ask, here's your answer.

Yes, it is actually possible to take pictures of flying bats at night with the GR thanks to the Snap AF and fast flash sync speed at 1/3000 of a second. Now, it's not the ideal camera for night time bat photography and you would ideally like a but of a longer lens for this but in an emergency (should it exist), it will do a decent job. You will get strange looks though if you're standing around and take flash pictures of apparently nothing at seeming random intervals with the flash, so be warned.

After satisfying my bat photography quote and even trying the GXR with Jupiter-8 lens, which was held back by the flash sync speed of only 1/160, I went to grab dinner and afterwards for a walk around to take some proper pictures.

Tomorrow will be my last half day in Hangzhou before heading to Shanghai, to meet a Ricoh photographer and blog follower, and finally getting to Suzhou late in the evening.
I just hope the weather will improve in the morning.