Without an H

Photography from south-east Asia by Jon Sanwell

Posts from the ‘burma’ category

Streets of Yangon III

150215-064-edited

In a few weeks, I’m heading back to Myanmar, this time for just over a month. I’m looking forward to seeing parts of the country that I didn’t have time to explore earlier in the year, but I’m also really excited about spending time in Yangon again. Although I spent a fair amount of time there on my first trip, I feel that there’s a lot more still to see and experience.

Thinking about my return trip has made me look again through the pictures from my first visit, and I found quite a few that I liked, but which I hadn’t posted before – so I thought it was time for a third and final installment in my Streets of Yangon series. These pictures were all taken in Yangon in February and March of this year.

150215-093-edited

150215-136-edited

150215-091-edited

150215-061-edited

150215-279-edited

150215-420-edited

150217-109-edited-2

yangon-portraits

150217-215-edited

150217-250-edited-2

150305-060-edited

150217-286-edited

150218-005-edited

150304-011-edited

150304-015-edited

150304-044-edited

150304-067-edited

150305-069-edited

Shwedagon Paya

150215-472-edited

Some images of Yangon’s beautiful Shwedagon Paya at nightfall. These were taken back in February during a three week trip to Myanmar. I was so taken in by Yangon’s people and streetlife that in my earlier posts I neglected to include any pictures of the city’s most iconic sight.

150215-453-edited
150215-478-edited
150215-525-edited
150215-533-edited
150215-545-edited

Streets of Mandalay

150223-086-edited

Mandalay is a slightly odd city, full of history, but a little neglected in the present day. Flat, laid out in straight lines and right angles, and with no obvious centre, it’s not immediately appealing in the same way as Yangon, but there’s plenty to see if you wander round the right corner. I enjoyed walking and driving around on my rented motorbike, exploring the markets and streets.

The men in the picture above are playing chinlone, a kind of keepy-uppy game played with a ball made from rattan. It’s a common sight in open spaces throughout Myanmar.

150227-110-edited

150223-113-edited

150223-117-edited

150227-230-edited

150224-226-edited

150225-215-edited

150225-298-edited

150227-142-edited

150227-152-edited

150227-215-edited

Untitled-1

150227-233-edited

150227-239-edited

150227-266-edited

150227-294-edited

150227-304-edited

150227-394-edited

The buddha factory

mandalay-buddha-factory-4

Wandering around the southern part of Mandalay’s central grid, looking for a pagoda that I never found, I came across a row of workshops where buddha statues were being made. The air was thick with dust as workmen used circular saws to cut away extraneous rock and reveal the buddha figures hidden within. Women cleaned and polished and provided the finishing touches. Half-finished statues, their bodies perfectly crafted but their heads still unformed, clustered together in the morning sun. Others, victims of some error or flaw, lay abandoned amid piles of rubble. In other workshops, craftsmen busied themselves with making gold-plated ornaments, such as the conical htis that sit on top of Burmese pagodas.

mandalay-buddha-factory-11

mandalay-buddha-factory-12

mandalay-buddha-factory-3

mandalay-buddha-factory-6

mandalay-buddha-factory-7

mandalay-buddha-factory-8

mandalay-buddha-factory-9

mandalay-buddha-factory-10

mandalay-buddha-factory-13

mandalay-buddha-factory-2

mandalay-buddha-factory-1

mandalay-buddha-factory-5

mandalay-buddha-factory-14

mandalay-buddha-factory-15

Fruit ‘n’ veg

150223-152-edited

So, what first caught my eye in Mandalay? The historic citadel? The teak wood monasteries? The temples on Mandalay Hill? Nope. A fruit and vegetable market near my hotel, particularly the bananas and onions.

I’m still in the process of updating this site. If you have a moment, check out the new look galleries here, now showing as large-size slideshows.

150223-163-edited

150223-065-edited

150223-055-edited

A morning in Nyaung U

150221-002-edited

Nyaung U is the nearest town to the Bagan temple complex. It’s a surprisingly low-key place, considering its location close to Myanmar’s biggest tourist attraction, but I suspect that in five or ten years time it will be as busy and built up as Siem Reap in Cambodia. For now though, the town’s hotels and restaurants haven’t yet completely taken over, and Nyaung U remains a fairly unassuming place, not spectacular by any means, but not without charm. I spent a morning taking a break from temple spotting to wander around the market and take a few portraits of living, breathing people, rather than buddha statues.

On another note, I’ve just given this site a bit of a makeover. After three and a half years with the same theme, I thought it was time for a change, so I’ve switched to the Photographer theme. The biggest difference is the colour scheme, now white, or white-ish, instead of black. The homepage slideshow is much improved too, with much bigger images. The widgets, those little buttons and menus that help readers to search and navigate the site, no longer appear at the bottom of very page, but can be found on the right hand side of the About page. I’ll probably be making a few more tweaks over the next couple of weeks, but I’m pleased with the new look. I was aiming for something simple, elegant and unpretentious, with the pictures centre-stage, and I think that’s what this theme provides. Let me know what you think – comments and suggestions are always much appreciated.

150221-018-edited

150221-024-edited

150221-039-edited

150221-059-edited

150221-063-edited

150221-066-edited

150221-097-edited

150221-112-edited

150221-126-edited

150221-132-edited

150221-139-edited

150221-147-edited

150221-157-edited

150221-195-edited

150221-208-edited

150221-166-edited

Three days in Bagan

150220-173-edited

There’s such an overwhelming number of temples in Bagan that it’s difficult to know where to begin. I spent my days rattling along on my rented electric bike, stopping whenever I saw anything that I thought might be interesting, which was quite often. Some temple sites are little more than piles of rubble; many others are well preserved or have been carefully restored; some, thankfully only a minority, seem to have received so much restoration work that they are almost entirely new.

Bagan is rapidly becoming one of the most photographed sites in south-east Asia, so much so that it’s difficult to take an original picture. So this collection just shows the recurring textures and images that most appealed to me: gold, stone and brick; sunlight and shadow; faces and hands.

150220-321-edited

150220-278-edited

150220-224-edited

150220-043-edited

bagan-hands-collage

150222-057-edited

150220-030-edited

150220-023-edited

150219-119-edited

150219-004-edited

150221-287-edited

bagan-gold-collage

150221-361-edited

150221-332-edited

150221-284-edited

150221-302-edited

150222-085-edited

On Inle lake

150301-093-editedI spent a restorative couple of days around beautiful Inle lake towards the end of my three weeks in Myanmar. Having spent quite a lot of the trip in the busy cities of Yangon and Mandalay, not to mention living my regular life in Hanoi, I needed some quiet time in the countryside to recharge my batteries. I explored a little by boat and bicycle, but left with the feeling that there was more I could have seen, had I been feeling more energetic. Maybe next time.
150301-104-edited 150301-080-edited 150301-108-edited 150301-149-edited inle-lake-collage 150301-171-edited 150301-195-edited 150301-181-edited 150301-185-edited 150301-208-edited 150302-071-edited 150302-098-edited 150302-100-edited

There’s an unwritten rule that everyone visiting Inle lake has to take at least one photograph of a fisherman posing with his conical net. So here’s mine, taken on an overcast morning shortly after an underwhelming sunrise. There are many better examples of this type of picture elsewhere on the internet, but rules are rules.

150301-031-edited