The Places We've Been - Pictures from Abroad and Travelogues

[ingmarnicebbmt]

Hello fellow DCF members, and welcome to our new thread,

"The Places We've Been."

The purpose of this thread is to serve as a place for you to post pictures of locations that you have been to,  and to give you the opportunity to discuss these locations, and the cultures and customs you observed.

In order to differentiate this thread from "Life Through The Lens", we ask that you follow the below rules:

1.  Pictures should be posted in "sets."
What I mean is this:  If you have one photo of a sunset you took while on vacation in Italy, that pic would fit in the "Life Through The Lens" thread.  However, if it is one of multiple pics of a trip through Italy, then post it here with your other Italy pics.

2.  This is not being set up as a chat thread.  While we do expect there to be discussion of the pics, the pictures should be the focus of the thread. 

3.  While we understand that a number of pics are taken of Brokies on travels, pictures of Brokies should not be in this thread.   They would belong in the "Gatherings" thread.

4.  The pictures posted do not need to be recent pics.  Any pics from any trips you have taken, regardless of the year, are welcome to be posted here.


Also, please remember that any images posted should conform to the forum rules.  No nudity, and all images should be 200KBs or smaller, with dimensions of 480 X 640.

Thank you!


 

[ingmarnicebbmt]

During last December and early January, Mr S and I have travelled to Myanmar.

This was an extremely fascinating experience. Not only because this is a beautiful, exotic country with lovely, innocent people still unspoiled by mass tourism, and with lots of important historic sites to ofer.
But also because the first signs of democracy just started to bloom exactly before we got there. Hillary Clinton had visited the country and shown her support barely days before our arrival. People wanted to talk openly about politics and the future, and wanted to be photographed in front of posters with Aung San Suuu Kyi, the legendary Peace Nobel Prize winner and symbol figure of the democratic opposition, as well as her father, who is a sort of historical hero in Burma.
While we were there, trade unions and political parties were admitted, something unheard of in past decades. Prisoners were being freed.
There was a sense of happiness and optimism all over the place, and you could feel the enthusiasm, the energy and the wish of the people to build a new future.
So in a certain way this wasn't a conventional trip at all.

We had to travel with a group, since individual travel is still quite difficult, and you need military permits to get to certain places.
The people we were travelling with were - luckily - very nice and fond of individual initiatives.
So we visited most of the sites on our own or in really small groups - there was no force to participate at organized sightseeing at all.

[ingmarnicebbmt]

One highlight of our journey was a trip to the famous Inlé Lake in Central Eastern Myanmar.

It's a huge beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, and the inhabitants build floating markets on and around it.

The fishermen have developped an unique way of rowing and steering their pirogues, which is called one-leg or one-knee-rowing. You'll see it for yourselves on the following pics.

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A little boy with his catch.

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