The temples in Luang Prabang are some of the most beautiful anywhere. Yes, Thailand has some amazing temples, but these are different. They are smaller, and more intricately decorated.

Luang Prabang is without a doubt the cultural highlight of Laos. The old part of the city is beautiful and there are good reasons why is has been heritage protected.

I believe it has the most beautiful temples of South East Asia - they are not the largest or even the oldest, but the amount of details that has been put into them is absolutely stunning.



In addition to this there are a lot of other very interesting things to see in and do in the city, which I will cover in later posts.

The city itself is situated between two rivers where one of them is the Mekong which is still fairly busy with slow boats and ferries (The chinese are building a large bridge across the river north of the city)





The section between the two rivers form the city itself which consist of four parallel streets each about a kilometer long.



Everything within the city itself can be covered on foot and in the evening the main streets are blocked for card and reserved for pedestrians.

The place is dominated by a big hill with a small temple and stuba on top. It is very popular with tourists to climb the hill around sunset. And there is a great view of the mountains from the top.







There are some things that have changed in the city since I was there the last time. The most noticeable is the amount of tourists and fine hotels - and here it is really the more wealthy middle aged Europeans you see. The main street of the old city is full of modern western European influenced restaurants, souvenir and antique stores.



Fortunately you don't have to travel further that to the parallel streets to fine more low key Laos places to eat.

Also, last time I visited, I stayed in a small guest house near the city centre called Tanoy Guest House. When I stayed here I became good friends with the family and the place was named after the oldest daughter who's name was Tanoy.

The place is still there and apart from a larger fence it looks pretty much unchanged.

The 'secret' war in the 60's and 70's had a major impact on the country. A massive amount of bombs were dropped by mostly the Americans in mostly the Northern and Eastern part of the country. This was partly an internal civil war but also to stop the North Vietnamese using the country as a supply route.

To get an insight into this was I can highly recommend the books by Christoper Robbins called 'The Ravens' and 'Air America'.

The impact today is that un-exploded ordnance (mines, cluster bombs etc.) is covering large parts of the country and that every year lots of people including children gets injured or killed.

It is also very noticable, especially in the Hmong villages that there is no presence of old men. This is because most of these were killed either during the war where especially they took heavy casualties despite the American support or through 'education' camps after the war.

Last time I went to Laos I went to Plains of Jars which was one of the most heavily bombed areas and the debris was everywhere. We weren't going there on this trip, but to give the family and friends an insight into the history and the dangers to present people we visited the COPE organisation in Vientiane.

Here is Aiden in front of an unexploded (disarmed) clusterbomb. Looks just like a ball and tempting for kids to play with.



These were dropped from canisters on aircraft with several hundred in each load. It is estimated that 1/3 of these didn't explode on impact.
 


This map shows the areas most effected.



If you look for the bombs they you see them everywhere - mostly disarmed and used as fence posts.



There is also remains of anti aircraft guns such as this one in Luang Prabang. The barrel had been removed but everything else still worked on it and they could turn it by rotating the handles, much to the amusement of the kids. During the war kids only a little older than our kids would have been fighting at the front lines.

One thing that I love taking photos of on my travels are People.



A lot of the photos of the people of my travels are in the other posts, but here is a selection that didn't really fit into the other stories.

This is an old woman sitting doing preparing food or doing her handicraft outside her house while observing the street life.



Someone was shooting a wedding, I used the opportunity to snap a photo of my own.



A woman bathing in the Mekong



A girl posing for her boyfriend on top of the hill at Luang Prabang



A woman walking down the street



Another woman doing handicraft outside her shop

The fishing along the rivers in Laos are still very traditional.

It is the circular throw out nets, fish traps and people foraging along the river banks to collect river seaweed and snails for eating.



In most places they still use dugout canoes for the fishing.





In the various town you see people sitting repairing their fishing nets.










Kim told us that when she was a little girl she used to help the family repair the fishing nets, but that she's forgotten how to do it.



One of the delicacies in Loang Prabang is the local riverweed. We saw multiple people collecting it and also sitting cleaning it.

Some of the other highlights for the kids in Vang Vieng was the gym at our hotel. The local guys used it to train for kick boxing and the kids felt inspired.






Also, one evening we spotted someone launching wishing lanterns. We asked where they came from and through a lot of pointing we found a local shop keeper selling them.

We bought one and launched it an the kids loved the experience.




Also, one of the trees at the hotel had two little monkeys staying there most of the day. The kids loved standing there shouting profanities at them.

At Vang Vieng we did do some water sports.

Again we were extremely lucky kayaking a section of the river back to Vang Vieng and having the entire river to ourselves.




The three kids were all in a kayak with our guide sitting on top of their life jackets - fortunately they can all swim.



Kim and I was in one Kayak and Sacha and Mavis in another.





Just where we started out there was a rapid with water flowing over a large boulder but with plenty of flat water on the sides. Kim was little impressed when I headed straight into the rapids and with perfect skills paddled us through them...her being soaked and the kayak being full of water may have had something to do with it.



She's later said that the kayaking trip was one of her favourite and most fun activities on the trip, so maybe she was somewhat impressed with my brilliant paddling skills!!







Along the river are still some of the remains of the bars and zip lines - but all very quiet now.



Approaching Vang Vieng we went past some really scenic locations with bungalows etc.









The experience at the end got and all thumbs up!





Another water activity that Mavis and I did was tubing through one of the caves. You essentially sit in an inflated car tyre and then pull yourself along a rope inside a cave. It was fun for the kids, however this place was packed with Koreans trying to do the same thing.

Aiden initially didn't want to go, but I am proud that he eventually managed to get the courage to do so.



We also went to one of the lagoons. There are a number of them and some of them are very popular. We organised with a driver to drive us to one of the less popular ones. It was still scenic and it had platforms of the trees to jump from and you could see why some travelers would have killed themselves jumping off them.







There were also a couple of rafts which reminded me of the first time I went to Laos and paddles across a local river on a raft. It got on one of them in the lagoon and the whole thing literally sunk under me - I only just managed to get off in time before getting soaked.

The second one was able to hold my weight and I took the boys for a little paddle.

At one of the caves in Laos there is this amazing Buddha statue inside the cave.

I couldn't help but notice how beautiful the diffused light was falling onto the statue itself and through the entrance to the cave. We were there all by ourselves and I asked Kim to sit and offer a little prayer in the ray of light coming in through the cave.

I didn't bring a tripod with me to Laos, so everything had to be shot handheld which was tricky as there wasn't much light there.

In Vang Vieng we also went to some caves. Again we were the only ones there - I don't know if this was just because no one else were interested or because we went there at a time when everyone else were doing other activities.

The caves are in fairly pristine condition, they are dark, moist and other than descending a makeshift ladder walking through them gives a feeling of exploring the caves for the very first time.





Some passages were really narrow






And other parts of the caves were massive.










Overall the caves are beautiful and again it was amazing having them to ourselves.

In 2004 Australia was being drawn into the war in Iraq. A lot of Australians were opposed to the war, but the politicians wouldn't listen.

On a nice sunny day several hundred thousand people gathered around Hyde park in the middle of the city to demonstrate and express their opinions against Australia entering into the war.

I was of the belief that the war was a mistake in the first place and was totally unjustified, so I was decided to join the demonstrations and at the same time see if I could take a few photos.

Click here to see more photos from: The 2004 Anti War demonstrations/Slideshow

Andy and Tink had their first baby...a little (and very hairy) girl names Mia.

This was also one of those periods where I was checking out what it would be like to have a beard.

My grandad passed away in 2003.

He was getting old and was getting tired of living so he decided to end it.

With EDI I went on a field trip to visit one of the big containerships in Botany Bay.

It was facinating to see the size of those ships.

I celebrated Christmas and New Year with my parents in Thailand.

We spent the time in the Northern Part of Thailand in the Golden Triangle around Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai.

We rented a car for a couple of days and got to see a lot including all the hill tribes that still to this day live in this part of Thailand.




Click here to see more photos from: Thailand/Slideshow

In 2003 Kenneth got married to Anica. I was asked to be the best man by Kenneth.

The wedding took place at a homestead in Sofala three hours drive west of Sydney.

It was a wonderful weekend surrounded by wonderful people.



Click here to see more photos from: Kenneths Wedding/Slideshow

Contents . . .

My photo collection is vast. Many of them are in my albums, others scanned as images here. I have tried to include the best of the best, and will keep doing so. Feel free to explore any of the links - it make take some time to peruse them all...

( We recommend viewing of the photos through MS Explorer )

AUSTRALIA - HOME
Cockatoos at Home	Narrabeen Beach	New car	My Jobs

MY FAMILY
Grandmother's 85th	Grandmother's 80th	Donkey Day Out	My Brother Claus	My Father

2001
New Zealand (Mt Cook)	South-East Asia

2000
Chilli Festival	Ecochallenge Borneo (Sabah)	Sydney Olympics

1999
Thailand (Bangkok)	Laos	Morocco

1998
Port Macquarie	Pete's Bite	New Zealand (Sth Island)	Denmark

Created: 11 Aug 2001 Last Updated: 21-jan-05

My mum and dad spent some time in Sydney over christmas and New Year.

While they were here I raught my dad how to absail.



And for Christmas I gave my parents some tickets for the Sydney Harbour bridge walk (they gave Arumi a ticket too).

My brother passed away in the end of 2002. He had been suffering badly from his disease for almost a decade and eventually it got the better of him.

I still miss him a lot even though we weren't close when he was alive....but I still feel him close to me to this day!



I still light a candle for him once in a while.



His two biggest wishes in life was to become a professional tennis player...he was a pretty damn good player and I never played against him because I didn't have a chance.



His second biggest wish was to get himself a girlfriend. This is one of the last photos that was taken of him.



I still blame the psychiatric system in Denmark for what happened. They were too focused on treating his disease with medication and never paid any attention on teaching him to live with his disease and provide quality in life.


I still love him very much and I really miss him. I also regret that I wasn't there more for him.



He always looked after me and he has never hurt anyone.





This is the last family photo that was taken.



I would appreciate if you click here to see some of the photos from my brothers life: May he not be forgotten

On the 4th of June 2010 my grandmother (on my dads side) passed away being 90 years old. She had a stroke about a months ago and was unconscious for a long time.



She did regain a bit of conscious to the point where she could nod and recognise people.

After this her condition deteriorated but her being such a tough woman she was hanging on in there.

Eventually she couldn't hand on any longer and passed away. She was the last one of my grandparents and she was burried on the 10th June, 3 days after my son was born, so unfortunately they never got a chance to meet.

Tonight is my GCC break day (Only 11,000 steps today compared to over 20,000 yesterday). I celebrated this with a glass of wine...and then I though why stop there.I could take a cool photo as I was pouring the glass (my second).




I did do a bit of playing around but I found that it worked best if the flash was able to burn out some of the details and illuminate the wine from behind.

Flash was positioned on the floor (glass on a chopping board on a chair) @ 1/4 power...the background is a white wall.

The wine is a Southern Sisters 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot...not a bad drop for an everyday wine.

I did another photo session with little bob. He was going "More, More...." and Mummy was going "Not again!".

Anyway, had the chance for a couple more creative shots.







Not sure if I like the reflection in this shot...so I may have to re-do it.

Here is another GCC photo

I am currently participating in the GCC (Global Corporate Challenge). This is a team event where each participant has to do more than 10,000 steps per day using a pedometer (step counter) for the next 16 weeks. I will when convenient take my camera with me an try and do something creative.

This was day one where I walked to a meeting in North Sydney over the Sydney harbour bridge. When I got home I did some tilt shift effect to it so make it more toy like:

It is now week 35 and the baby is expected within the next 5 weeks (hopefully at week 40). Kim is getting pretty big and yesterday I used the opportunity to take a couple of photos of her belly (and a worried dad)...evidence below.



I alto tried to take a couple of nice ones as well as some artistic ones.




I would have taken a lot more, but even though the baby was saying "More, More..." the mummy ran out of patience...maybe I'll get another chance during the week to take some more.

Some time ago I saw a photo of a kiwifruit and wanted to see if I could do something similar. It took a bit of experimenting, but eventually I got there. First a thin slice of kiwifruit (I chose to keep the skin on for effect), a couple of toothpicks to lift it off the surface and then one toothpick to hold it upright.

20 cm behind the flice I positioned a flash (SB600) firing at 1/64 power. Camera is set at 1/250th sec, f13, ISO 200 @42mm (on Nikon D50)....viola:

Last night we went to the Sydney Opera House to see the ballet Coppelia with The Australian Ballet.

It may be the last time for a while that Kim and I get the chance to go and see a performance together for a while.



It was a great show and I can highly recommend it...the story is nicer and easier to follow than The Nutcracker. Coppelia herself doesn't dance much (she is a doll), the story line if mainly centered around the other characters in the story...no one dies (come on...it is not an opera). It is just a nice love story where the right people get eachother in the end.

Yesterday we went to Chris and Yvonnes wedding. The wedding itself was a traditional catholic wedding held in one of the churches in North Sydney.




Kim was having a bit of a cold so to save herself (and the baby) we decided that I'd go to the wedding ceremony alone representing both of us. Chris asked me if I'd video the ceremony using his new camera...I hope it turned out alright as I'm not all that familiar with taking video. I did manage to take a couple of photos (using my spare hand) during the ceremony.




Later in the evening the reception was held at Wolfies at Circular Quay at the Rocks in Sydney. After resting in the morning Kim was fortunately able to join me at the reception. It was a really nice evening and we got a change to meet some of their friends who'd flown in from the US.






During the evening the photographers did a slideshow with some of the highlights from the wedding.






Needless to say that I was pretty hung over the next morning. I didn't take a lot of photos, but above you see a couple of the ones I did take.

I borrowed some more toy cars from my nephews (A bit more willing this time). This time I wanted to do the shoot entirely using light painting. All the following photos are created using a single LED torch with CTO and blue flash gels in front of it. No photoshopping has been done to any of the photos.

They have all been shot at 15 seconds @ f22. The base is a glass chopping board (the writing on the board shines through in a couple of places).

They also had a snake show at the elephant place.

Some of the snakes were very poisonous such as this monocled cobra.





And the huge king cobra (which kept coming over the safety barrier).



Chong and I volunteered to hold the python.












I wonder how often the snake guy has been bitten by his snakes.

At the place we went riding elephants they had a group of little monkeys that we could hold and feed.

They were chained to their little houses which was a bit cruel, but the kids loved seeing the monkeys up close.










The kids thought it was very funny when one of them grabbed my nose.

One morning we went on an elephant ride with the family.

Kim had been on elephant rides before and is terrified, but she was still brave enough to do it again (She was screaming that she wanted to get off most of the way).






It was an amazing experience for the Kids.









They got to see the big animals up close.

One one of the first days we went to the beach at Kata. The hotel had a shuttle bus to the beach which was an easy 10 minutes walk away.

The beach was actually surprisingly nice with warm water.



About two months ago a sailing boat stranded on the beach during a storm. No one has claimed the boat and a few attempts of lifting it off the beach has failed.



We told the kids that it was a pirate ship, so they wanted to have a closer look.











Kims dad didn't want to go in the water, but decided to keep to his thing with wearing warm clothes in hot humid weather.

This year we traveled to Phuket in Thailand along with Kim's sisters family and her dad.

We had to fly via Bangkok, so we were a bit worried how the kids would handle the long flight (especially Lucas), but everyone handled it reasonably well.

The boys were very excited to be going on a big aeroplane.

 

Once we arrived to Bangkok it was pretty obvious to see that they were very excited.

The only thing that never made it all the way to the hotel was our stroller. We lost it somewhere between Phuket airport and the hotel...but wasn't a big loss and hopefully someone puts it to goo local use.

It is time to renew Aiden passport and like last time there were a lot of outtakes that we could not use, but which were quite funny.

Here is some more photos of my grandma and grandpa on my mothers side.

Here she is with her sisters (my grandma on the far right)



Here is some of her when she was young.






Here is one that I assume was taken in 1969 based on the date of the photo.



I think this one if my grandpa when he was young.



And here is some more.







And here is some family gathering photos.



I think it is her brother on the left. And my cousin Mette on the right.



And this is with my grandparents on my fathers side (left to right bedstefar, mormor, morfar, bedstemor, mum and Claus).

Going through some old photos I came across these of my great grand parents (on my mothers side).




I am pretty sure that the little girl on the left is my Mum (So the photos must have been taken around 1943-1944) and the other two girls are her sisters (My Aunties) Eli on the right and Yrsa in the middle.

I assume that the women in the back are their grand parents (my great grands) with the woman on the right being my grandmothers (mormor's) mum and the one on the right being grandad's (morfar'd) mum.


Here is a family photo of what I assume is my grandmothers (mormor's) family. I think it is my grandma in the middle right behind my great grandmother.


I assume this is my great grandparents, but I cannot be certain.




This must be a birthday for my grandmother.


This was taken outside the farm where my mum grew up. It is my grandad (morfar) in the middle on the right and it could be my grandmother (mormor) on the stairs with her mum. The farm is still there today owned by my uncle.






This must be some of the family on my grandads (morfar's) side, so possibly some of his siblings.

A friend asked if I would do a commissioned corporate portrait for professional usage.

I said I was happy to help and on a very rainy day we managed to get the the shoot done. This is the most corporatey of the lot.

I purchased a cheap ring flash and had a bit of a play with it one evening and took the following happy snap photo of Kim.




We are planning a holiday and I am thinking that I might bring it along.

In the evening we booked a sunset cruise on the Zambezi river.





It was a beautiful calm evening and the boat slowly cruised in and out between the river islands within Zimbabwe and Zambia. In the distance there were clouds and rain forming beautiful rainbows.



There were lots of hippos around and we also spotted a couple of crocodiles and other wildlife. This time of the year there weren't any elephants as they don't need to go to the river during the rain season.

One thing about Zimbabwe was that everything is quite expensive for tourists in Victoria falls.

Back in 2008/09 the whole economy collapsed and the local currency was worth less than the paper it was printed on. As a result the entire country started using stable currencies such as US dollars.

In Victoria falls this means that everything is paid for in US dollars and since everything is more or less government controlled they try to milk tourists for as much hard currency as they possibly can.

As a result most tourists stay for a shorter duration as they probably would otherwise which is a pity as the benefits of tourism isn't shared with the rest of the country.

The country also has all the typical African inefficiencies and illogical processes which I experienced back in my days in East Africa, but which greatly annoyed Kim.

She was however greatly amused when I came back after a walk telling her that I had made her an instant billionaire - with the note here held by Aiden with a smug on his face.

During the break we decided to make a trip to South Africa and on the way do a quick detour to the Victoria falls on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The first evening we book dinner at Boma restaurant. Even though it is a bit touristy (everything around the falls are) they promised a buffet dinner with various game meat and dancing/drumming.





On the menu was Mopani worms, Wort Hog, Elan, Guinea Foul and spit Lamb.






Poor little Lucas was so tired that he fell asleep in the car there and slept the whole way through.
Although Aiden was tired he did enjoy the experience (in his silly fashion).



The drumming was very interactive and the dinner guests could join in.



Good start to the trip.

It has been another year and again Merry Christmas 2016.

Following the tradition I have created another family photo for this year. Aiden and Lucas are growing older and also more naughty, so this year we decided to do something different and let the parents have a quiet evening while we let the boys 'hang out' together.

There are some interesting areas around Botany Bay. One of the is the old WWII cannon positions and ammunition bunkers along the coast line to protect against Japanese invasions.

We have been there quite a few time and here are some of the photos from our last walk there.

 

This winter during school holidays I took a day off to look after Aiden. I asked him if he wanted to go canoeing at the Royal National Park about 30 minutes drive from our house.



It was a beautiful sunny morning with not a wind or any other people in the creek.



Afterwards we went down to Wattamolla to have a look at the waterfall and play at the beach.





At Bundeena we had fish and chips for lunch.



He totally crashed on the way home.

One day we went down to Boralee park to take some photos of the boys with Kim. Here are some of them.

During the winter we went for a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Here are some of the photos from the walk.

On fathers day we used the opportunity to do some family photos with the boys as well as Kims dad.

Aiden and Lucas sometimes loves to play with boxes and other items that are in the recycle bin inside.

One morning they had used the boxes to create a farm...not bad!






...and then there is the silliness...