علاء الدي

always less than a thousand words, but oh that it could have been a thousand and one nights. this lamp adorned the entrance to our room - not a cave - in siem reap at the delightful golden banana. i will return to magical siem reap in the future.

ວຽງຈັນ

looking up through buddha at pha that luang, the great golden stupa representing both buddhism and symbolising lao nationalism in its capital vientiane. could've done with a lick of fresh paint if you ask me. no disrespect intended.

serenity now

mossy trees, misty rain, still waters of dove lake, cradle mountain location, not a single person to be in seen, complete natural serenity. these are more than a few of my favourite things.

protect old growth

a grand old dame in the tahune region in south eastern tasmania.

a different study of kamasutra

mands and i are involved in a constant quest to source excellent indian food the world over. we have experienced a great degree of success, and have found the top 3 restaurants abroad in some of the most unlikely places, this photo features the exquisite kamasutra in siem reap. the other 2 were in hoi an, vietnam, and amsterdam, netherlands. nothing like a hot aloo palak and some buttery garlic naan. haven't made it to india yet ironically.

a fairly impressive nightlight

i wonder if everyone else with their bedroom looking out on this sparkling glittering view falls asleep every night with the curtains wide open like we did. i couldn't keep my eyes off it.

2 tall buildings in a single lens

two gleaming towering twin towers of steel dominating the KL vista both day and night from both ground and sky. truly a modern architectural and engineering marvel. our hotel room at the renaissance looked right out onto them for spectacular night views.

just one more

one of my favourite photos from one of my favourite days in our trip to vietnam. dragon on the roof of one of the majestic royal tombs beside the perfume river outside of hue. i promise no more dragons. for now.

stone dragon

a grand dragon bannister on a set of stairs leading up to another vietiane wat, which was chockers full of buddhas. there is a plethora of buddhas and wats in laos. by the end of an extended trip it has you thinking that there is possibly an over-saturation, similar to that of churches and museums in europe. i wonder if there is an equivalent in australia - that has tourists going "oh here we go, another - ".

wooden dragon

i'm 'dragon' out the dragon theme a bit. boom boom. this wooden carving was in the wat which was featured in the previous post. so wat? i just like dragons, and i'm providing some context. that's wat.

unhidden dragons

ornamental wat roofing in vientiane. there were dragons on the roof and (not shown in photo) eaves support struts which were carved to look like elephant head and trunk. mands couldn't see the elephant head and trunk but i am still convinced of it. maybe it's like how some people can't see those stupid magic eye pictures. personally, i could only see them inverted while giving myself a massive headache going cross-eyed. anyway this is not the point. the dragons are obvious and indisputable are they not.

butterfly orgy

i don't know what was in this muddy puddle of water but these laos butterflies were going crazy for it! there was a literal cloud of them above it and they littered the ground as they bustled for pole position, taking little notice of me even when i reached out to touch them. we came across this amazing sight by a natural spring after hiking for hours through the beautiful countryside just outside of luang prabang.

brazilian flutterby

one of the countless stunning butterflies by igauzu falls on the border of argentina and brazil. this is one on the hand of elard, our guide originally from peru. butterflies are cool. i wonder how they got their name?

where's the bird?

i put seed and fruit out in the front courtyard for the variety of birds that live in the area. their presence provides lexie with infinite amusement. he is an indoor cat so has never caught a bird but he knows he would like one, judging by his trembling meows as he gazes out the window at them. personally, i don't think he'd know what to do if he actually caught one!

it was as cold at it looks

as i have said before, one of the things to love about canberra is its distinct 4 seasons: fresh new springs, colourful cool autumns, blasting hot summers, and freeeeeeeezing icy winters. we get hardcore frosts on some mornings and this morning was no exception. this is a closeup of the outdoor setting in our back courtyard with a spikey front layered over it.

steps and silohuettes

this shot captures perfectly our touring of the angkor temples. lots of really steep sets of carved stone steps. and stopping at the top to rest with your hands on your hips after climbing the buggers. while drinking in the majestic view over your kingdom!

nancy hazell

gramma, my mum's mum, at rebecca and ali's wedding. she is 87 and going really well. the female genes in the familial line are very strong - my mum has 5 sisters and 1 brother. and of the 15 cousins, only 4 are boys. girl power!!

what the hell

another giant khymer face. just because i want to.

ground control to angkor thom

two of the many massive stone faces carved by the ancient khymer people and installed throughout angkor thom. what amazing khymer and cambodian history passing which they have gazed out upon across the centuries.... if only they could actually speak.

not london bridge, not falling down

walking across tower bridge at sunset. tower bridge is often mistaken as being london bridge. probably because london bridge is really quite boring to look at, while tower bridge is quite striking and makes for a much better photo(s). finally i should mention that tower bridge is featured in the spice girls movie when they jump their bus over the bridge. so clearly it has exceeded london bridge in the fame stakes.

where life moves slowly in a good way

one of the most stunning sunsets i have ever seen was watching the sun set behind the mekong river, sitting on the top of a hill in luang prabang, in northern laos. life is laos moves at a slow and leisurely pace compared to other south east asian countries, you truly cannot help but feel relaxed there and just happy to be. what a wonderful place it would be to live.

accidental zen

i am not a believer in god(s) but sometimes i have a sense of greater powers or forces at work in the world. maybe it is just the magical concept of fate or meaningful coincidence. when i returned home from a trip to vietnam and was looking through the many many photos i took there for the first time on a screen bigger than the tiny one on the back of my digital camera, this was one which instantly became one of my favourites of the trip, it encapsulated so perfectly what the whole vietnam experience had come to mean to me. because the truth of this photo is that it was not carefully taken at all - but rather very carelessly out of the window of a taxi racing through the busy streets of saigon as i tried to capture the image of the clouds - only to truly accidentally and unknowingly, yet with perfect partnership, catch the word 'zen' in the same frame.

how's the serenity?

the almost perfect serene stillness of an autumn-tinged lake burley griffin taken from in front of the high court of australia across to the national carillon, with the tops of the defence buildings at russell visible over to the left. i like the low moon already visible hanging in the sky too. not such a bad photo given i took it with my mobile.

old school advertising

appealing streetscape in prague. ordinarily i loathe the painted brick look but this is stylish. which is saying something given it's a billboard for foul pepsi. i wonder if mands would love the painted brick in our living room so much if i did it like this. somehow i think not :)

the turning of the leaves

one of the things i love about canberra is the distinct four seasons we experience. i think it would be perfectly dull to live in a place that was warm all the time. autumn in canberra is crisp, bracing and visually stunning thanks to the proliferation of european desiduous trees.

where we came from

day 2 of the inca trail. about 8 hours of walking the path of the ancient incas en route to machu picchu. the crossing over 2 mountain passes (while nearing the second, this photo shows mands pointing back towards the first one, aptly named dead woman's pass), and down into 2 deep valleys. moving through about 7 vastly different temperate ecosystems from tropical tangled thick jungle to open near barren plains on the flat tops of mountains. blazing sun, misty rain, white snow (the last sighted in the distance on mountain tops only, thanks be). and as i have said before, i would do it all over again.

twisted innovation

some very funky and cutting edge architecture we came across on one of our wanders through the eternally beautiful and interesting city of prague. this was, later research uncovered, built in 1996 and is nicknamed 'the dancing house' (originally titled 'fred and ginger' after fred astaire and ginger rogers). if you happen to be in prague and are looking for it, it is on the vltava river, upstream from charles bridge.

hazell-tinged memories

my cousin rebecca exchanging rings with her partner ali at northwest bay. a very special day and a special location - right across the bay from the house that my grandparents built, that my mum grew up in, and that my sisters & i grew up in. a day layered on top of decades of great family memories.

can a bird actually hum?

this is one of the half decent photos i managed to get of the nazca lines - of the hummingbird geoglyph - as our tiny 6 seater plane rolled and banked at extremely high speed and low altitude over the nazca desert. while i managed to spot all the main shapes bar the monkey - mands, sitting beside me, saw the first few then spend the rest of the short flight barely holding down her breakfast while the woman in the seat in front of me (hi nicole!) lost hers completely. the shapes are quite amazing - some up to 200 metres across and completely indistinguishable as anything other than piles of rubble at ground level.

it's the terror of knowing what this world is about

this image captures just one moment of what was a completely fabulous weekend we spent up in sydney back in 2004. mainly, and i do admit bias, because we went to a david bowie concert. i love love love david bowie. finally getting to see him in concert, as part of his world 'reality' tour, was one of those dreams come true. especially when he sang 'under pressure' which is my favourite bowie song - one of the guitarists (a woman) did the freddie mercury half of the duet. we also went to the police and justice museum at circular quay - the reason being we had recently read razor by larry writer, and a lot of the documents and evidence he used to write the book were in this museum - including said razors used by the razor gangs in the sydney crime scene in the 1920s and 30s. and finally to mardi gras fair day. a really perfect weekend!

my type of religion

it's officially called the melbourne cricket ground but in winter it is affectionately known as 'the G', and it is the mecca for the australian football fan. its current full capacity wavers around the 100,000 mark. but even if it's only half or even three quarters full, as it was on the photographed day in question (official crowd count was 73,503 mad screaming blues and tigers fans), and the crowd either witnesses the ball slotting the two biggest posts or senses an umpiring injustice - the mighty fervent roar that echoes around and around in that cauldron is both deafening and thrilling. we worship our football. especially when our side wins. carlton won on the day captured in the above image. so obviously it was a great great day :):) i barrack for carlton blues, and mands for richmond tigers. we try to make it down for one if not both the match-ups between our teams each year. otherwise we hit the ainslie footclub club here in canberra to watch and shout at games on the big screen there with friends. 

hello cocky!

who doesn't love the good ol' cockatoo? arrogant brash noisy attention-seeking birds that they are. we get loads of them (and other birds) around our house here in canberra. i have placed a bowl out on the wall beside our front gate, in which i put a mixed seed and pieces of fruit. these featured cockies and their friends showed up one rainy day to feast on some seeds, then they drank water out of the gutters, before departing noisily - leaving behind a solitary feather which i stuck in the soil of the bottom of the lemon tree pot.

l'artiste enivré

this could be a photo capturing a triple eclipse of some sort, or a smaller planet casting a shadow over a larger red planet. or an abstract and very expensive painting in the louvre. but it isn't. it's a snap i took of the inside of a lamp when i leant back on a couch at my sister gina's 30th at soak (kaos by day, soak by night) in north hobart. i found inspiration for this arty shot in a few jagerbombs and there will be more to come in future :) this was a really fun night, with all the requisite hijinks and dramas necessary for a memorable evening with family and friends. i'm just glad i wasn't the one wearing a cushion cover as a hat!

grey concrete rainbows

and what's that there at the end? ain't no pot of gold. maybe a trough of gold. this is a shot of commonwealth avenue bridge shooting over lake burley griffin, which is our man-made lake here in canberra. it's a snap i took with the mobile phone camera on a lovely big bike ride mands and i did around the lake (well around a hell of a lot of it!) back in january. i like the strong symmetrical lines of the bridge lanes with the faint sight of parliament house at the end. it almost looks like it's fading away...

jaws VI

this is the first photo featured which i didn't actually take myself or set up camera to take it, but nonetheless i want it here because it documents a significant occasion - one of me face to face with a shark! mands got me a shark dive for a birthday many years ago. indeed, for my 30th she got me a sky dive. some people think there is something concerning and insidious with this pattern of life threatening gifts but i know it's just because she knows me so well :) she also took this great photo. thanks mands! besides, grey nurse sharks are not a man-eater despite having quite a terrifying and impressive set of gnashers. it was literally awesome to be in the water (manly aquarium) with them. at one point i noticed mands (in the viewing tunnel, which runs along the bottom of the aquarium) pointing behind me, i look around and there is a shark coming right at my face. it would have actually hit me in the head if one of the supervising aquarium staff hadn't pushed up against it's stomach so it just glided over the top of my head instead. my eyes would have fallen out of my head if it hadn't been for the goggles! 

i swam every day

i do love swimming and being in water but i so often enjoy it as i fear open water because of sharks (yes irrational i know) and am repulsed by public pools, so when mands and i stayed at a small resort in port douglas for our whatever-you-call-the-holiday-after-a-civil-partnership - i took great delight in swimming in the outdoor heated (unnecessary but lovely nonetheless!) pool at least once a day. and i didn't have to share it with anyone else at any time (well ok, mands a couple of times). it was absolute bliss to float on my back and quietly gaze at palm fronds and blue sky.

gratuitousness

i will continue my indulgence in paris for another post. this is one spectacular outlook from the very top of the eiffel tower. there is nothing over-rated about the tower at all - it is beautiful by day and night. it is little wonder that over 200 million people have visited this global icon since its construction just over a century ago. the only negative thing about it is that when you are up it, you are not looking at it. mands got a bit wiggy at the top because it is so high up, it took some convincing to get her up there. but she was glad she went up :)

i do love paris

i really really do. and i haven't even been there in the spring time. only in the autumn and the winter. but even then, and even on a grey cloudy day like the one in the photo, it truly is a beautiful city with so many wonderful sights and experiences. and so pleasant to walk around. it is little wonder that it is the most visited city in the world. the only thing going against it is that there are french people there. but aside from that, it is just simply delightful. i have been there twice and would go back again in a heartbeat. the third time i would stay in montemarte again as i did the first time, which is the 'arty district' up on the hill with steep cobblestoned streets near sacre de cour and the moulin rouge. mands and i saw don johnson (of miami vice fame) when we were in paris, he was staying in a hotel only 5 minutes walk from ours! i may have even taken this photo just before we saw him, as he was walking into a hotel bordering place de la concorde - a major square where this egyptian obelisk is situated, with the eiffel tower in the background. the oblelisk was a gift to france from egypt in the early 1800s - it is nearly 3,500 years old. don johnson is not as old as this, but he is even better preserved.

closer still with zah zoom

i don't know what these little plants (some kind of grass i would venture) are called but they numbered the thousands if not tens of thousands on the walk along the bay of fires. they were soft to touch almost like cotton wool - and certainly looked like swathes of cotton balls to walk through, with the wind blowing them about. it's hard to explain but i really liked them, it think because the way they moved about in the wind they looked like a sea of little furry white creatures happily bobbing about.  

year of the dragon

well it was actually year of the monkey, and this wasn't in china. but i was born in the year of the dragon, chinese zodiac calendar wise i mean, so i have always thought they were pretty cool. these very impressive dragon stair-rails (if you could call them that!) were located in one of the six royal tombs up the perfume river from hue, vietnam. 

the water out of the tap is very hard to drink

daniel johns playing with silverchair in canberra, followed by powderfinger: 'across the great divide' tour. powderchair won the headlining spot in the tour because queensland won the state of origin that year. the state of origin is the annual interstate rugby league grudge match (well, best fo 3). powderchair is from brisbane, queensland, and silverchair from newcastle, nsw. while i don't really watch league, i always barrack for the toads (queensland) in state of origin on principle. having said that silverchair is the better band and should have had headlining spot - not decided by a dumb sports competition!

trapped in a 20s timewarp

as in mands and i are both 20-something in this photo - and will be forever and ever. check those hair colours! we are not so brash now in our 'old age' :) i really like this photo, i think it's a nice one of both of us. we are on the tahune airwalk in southern tasmania - which is a walk literally up amongst the trees (and you know how i love trees!) with a series of walkways nearly 50m above the forest floor, stretching for half a kilometre. it is beautiful down (and up!) there.

emulating kate winslet

we spent a good half an hour or so out on the uyuni salt flats in bolivia, taking photos that played with perspective - the vast expanse of white with nothing really visible on the horizon allows you to do this. so we took photos like mands pushing a 'giant' bottle of vodka on top of me, us standing on a 'giant' pair of dice, and me holding a 'minature' mands in my hand. i'm not sure what i was doing with this particular photo but i do like it anyway for its simplicity. the salt ridge mands is standing on is only a 1cm high or so. in fact in look at it now, it almost looks like a 'giant' mands standing on the top of a wave breaking at the beach! or maybe she is remembering the giant jebus from rio :)

salt on everything - just as i like it

bolivia was my favourite country in south america - i knew next to nothing about it before we went there and loved everything about it by the time we left. when we were planning our trip to south america, we had two must-sees - mands wanted to see the big jebus in rio de janiero and i wanted to walk the inca trail into macchu pichu. these two locations are pretty much on opposite sides of the continent so we simply booked a tour that stretched overland between the two. and when i say we simply booked it, we really did simply book it without looking in any great detail at what else was included in the tour. we were just happy about going to south america. so it was a genuine joy and surprise to do the tour and discover what we were seeing and doing as it actually happened. for example on the first day out of rio de janiero we were in a van going south down the coast and got on a boat only to discover we were going to stay on a brazillian island for 3 days - it was woot! anyway that is not what this photo is about, it's a photo of salar d'uyuni - the salt flats in south west bolivia. salt salt salt as far as the eye could see - it is the largest salt flat in the entire world at over 10,000km squared. i even licked the ground. 

sport(wo)manship

a genuine handshake (not an arm wrestle as the pose may suggest) with smiles on both competitors' (amelie mauresmo 4 2 def by victoria azarenka 6 6) faces after a great grand slam match. not to mention some very nice muscle definition on their arms!! 

bog of eternal stench

this is on par with what i imagine assaulted the smelling senses of jennifer connelly's character in the movie 'labyrinth' when she encountered the bog of eternal stench. ginormous geysers in south-west bolivia spewing out sulphurous 'rotten egg' gas. they bloody stunk. i can still remember that smell!

very very vertigo

i don't usually suffer a fear of heights but i don't mind telling you that when i had had my fill of the views over machu picchu from the top of huayna picchu, which is the little mountain you see in every classic machu picchu shot behind the main city, and turned around to make my descent - i was for a moment absolutely and utterly paralysed with sheer terror at the sight of the return journey, which is featured in this photo. on the climb (in many parts literally climbing) up i didn't take much notice of the lack of safety features - most likely because having trekked over 50km in the prior 3 days up and down mountains, it took every last scrap of energy (more sheer determination!) to make the final 360m vertical ascent up huayna picchu. i didn't have the energy on the way up to notice the lack of rails or ropes or anything resembling an obstacle to a near sheer drop to the mountain valley floor below. however as i went to make my way down, it was ALL i could notice. needless to say i did make a safe return down, but i'll never forget that sickening fear and imaginings of tumbling all the way down should i lose my footing or grip!

i love haggis

twice, and over ten years apart, i did an almost identical 3 day minibus tour from edinburgh up through the highlands and lochs to the isle of skye then back down returning to edinburgh. why? because i loved it so much the first time round! in 1996, it was love at first sight, making scotland my favourite country in europe. then in returning to scotland over a decade later i couldn't resist doing pretty much the same route again, and why not with the same company 'haggis adventures'. the tour again passed through the truly breathtaking sight of glencoe. driving into the start of this massive valley, with two misty massive mountain ridges towering up on both sides, you feel like you are instantly transformed into an ant - you literally feel so small in comparison. this photo gives some idea of this perspective, if you look carefully you can see a teeny tiny itty bitty yellow line in the bottom right hand corner of the photo, this is the haggis bus. it is an amazing place.

cartoon browns

another modified photo, this cartoon effect was in photoshop if my memory serves me correctly. it was a nice photo i took (camera held by me with arm outstretched as you can even see in the reflection of my sunglasses!) in the first place, if i may say so myself - but i like this cartoon result as well. simplified but still honest.... with no wrinkles or blemishes to be seen. an airbrushing of sorts ;) this photo is from way back in late 2003 when we went for a daytrip out to port arthur, this moment on the cruise out to isle of the dead, where a thousand people, mostly convicts and paupers, were buried in the early to late 1800s.

masquerade ball of sorts

this is one of my sisters, georgina, at my 30th which was basically a drinks and nibbles in the backyard affair but i required that people wore masks. if i remember correctly i think this mask was actually anna's (my other sister) but gina had borrowed it for a moment. anyway it's a pretty cool mask. mine was a jester (of the court) mask with the floppy hat points (the technical term being liliripes!) with jinglebells on the ends.