Tam Thanh Mural Village

Posted by Annette Johnson on May 14, 2019
Posted in: Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 2 Comments

April 2019 I stayed in Danang and had heard about this wonderful Art decorated Village with it’s famous murals. One of several Art villages to be seen in Vietnam. I nearly didn’t get here because it is about an hours drive from Danang on the road to Hoi An .

As luck would have it, i got a good price and went and don’t regret it for a minute, I was rewarded with some of the most talented street art/Murals I have seen and very friendly people.

As I did this trip independently I was not crowded by the “our buses ” that come in from Hoi An around lunchtime, so had the whole place practically to myself. This gave me time to explore every nook and soi(tiny alleys) and get some of the not so frequently seen murals.

Tam Than is a fishing village still and there are still fishermen , there boats lined up on the unbroken shoreline. A wonderful place to go….Tell me which is your favourite in the comments below!

Cao Dai Temple Danang

Posted by Annette Johnson on May 3, 2019
Posted in: Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Leave a comment

Cao Dai Temple Danang

From my recent visit to this Cao dai Temple in downtown Danang in Vietnam, a great place to find sanctuary for the hustle and bustle of the City around it.

Here you will find the concept of a “One World Religion” and I really liked that and the layout and un-fussiness of the whole building.

Founded in Vietnam in the early 1920s, Cao Dai is based on the main religions of the East and West and takes as its saints characters from different cultures, such as Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare and Lenin. Today the religion has approximately 1.5 million followers. The temple in Da Nang, the second largest in the country, houses representations of the Divine Eye, the emblem of the doctrine, as well as the founders of Islam, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.

Caodaists believe that all religions are ultimately the same and seek to promote tolerance throughout the world.

Worshippers at the Cao Dai Temple strive for world peace and harmony with beliefs steeped in a number of world religions. Followers must obey the five virtues of Confucianism – humanity, obligation, civility, knowledge and reliability and have belief in the Buddhist principles of rebirth and karma.

Watching Caodaists pray is one of the major highlights when visiting the temple as they dress in long flowing robes of white for lay followers, yellow, blue or red for priests whilst bishops have the Divine Eye embroidered on their headpieces. During worship, men are seated on the right and women on the left with all devotees seated in orderly rows. The building is a combination of Neo-Gothic, Baroque and Oriental design and is very ornately decorated including dragon wrapped pillars, seven-headed cobras and ceilings of sky blue.

Vietnamese Heroic Mother Nguyen Thi Thu

Posted by Annette Johnson on May 1, 2019
Posted in: vietnam. Leave a comment

The Largest statue I have seen to any mother anywhere in my travels.
I arrived here at about 12 noon so the sun was right on top of me, it was unbearably hot, but I wanted to do this woman justice with the light and the one colour granite that she is carved from.

A great monument not just to this hero mother of the communist regime in Vietnam, but to all Mothers of the World, being here gave me a great sense of being a “Mother” and the size and grandeur is fitting to us all. Interestingly inaugurated on March 24th 2015, being my birthday day!

I found it a very calm and restful place to be, huge gardens covering some 15 hectares in Cam Mountain, sadly it was so hot when I visited that I could only manage a small part of this great monument.

Costing a little over VND 410 billion (US$19 million) contributed by local authorities and beneficiaries from inside and outside the country. Inside the actual sculpture is housed a museum honouring the lives and contributions of 50,000 Vietnamese heroic mothers nationwide.

As you approach it from the massive roadside car drop off, you will be met first by it eight pillars sculpted with images of heroic mothers from across Vietnam as well as young volunteers who fought and died in the Truong Son Mountains. houses inside a museum honouring the lives and contributions of 50,000 Vietnamese heroic mothers nationwide. This is followed by four plateaus of steps, with a smooth path running alongside for those unable to manage the very easy steps

 

“Comparing Apples”

Posted by Annette Johnson on April 27, 2019
Posted in: Artists and Photographers, Uncategorized. Leave a comment

It is so wonderful when an artist chooses your work to reference their creations, and today this great piece of Art is from my friends at Artists and Photographers on Face Book.

 

Ros Beck, I am honoured you chose my “Multi Coloured Apples” for your project. I also love the way you saw something different in the message it gives to the viewer.

Today’s stunning piece of work titled “”Comparing Apples”, comes from Ros Beck who is an artist in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her images are predominantly Horses and dogs, but here she shows her talent to diversify into other subjects with this piece.

When Roz posted this image in the group one of her comments about the piece, saying “.I love still life… this started as a piece to be donated to the families of a recent mass shooting here in chch, but I ran out of time and sent a 3 horse pour instead, but this says a lot about the human race, we are all just people no matter our colour or beliefs!!”

You can see Roz and her work at;  https://www.facebook.com/Ros-Beck-Art-936226009772475/

 

Làng Bích họa Đà Nẵng Da Nang Fresco Village 2019

Posted by Annette Johnson on April 25, 2019
Posted in: vietnam. Leave a comment

I have just come back from Danang in Vietnam this April 2019, One of the things I look for as a photographer is the unusual and artistic areas of anywhere I am visiting.

Here in the heart of Danang is a community project to combine sustainable tourism and turn degraded houses into desirable homes for the local people.

The project has commissioned more than 30 mural paintings, with the theme being; Culture, beauty and nature and the people of Danang.

The project was started in early 2018 and is expected to expand to other localities across the country by 2019.

Tan Thanh fishing village being the other better known project, which i also visited and will be posting the video of shortly!

If I was asked which was my favourite, i would be hard to choose, but I think the butterflies and the simple images of children playing traditional games that are painting on the school wall.

Please if you like what you see , subscribe to my channel here;

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM6F5tRsao7N2FRyv4n2CZQ? and have a look at my other interesting videos, thank you.

Kydymadjar Gorge

Posted by Annette Johnson on March 21, 2019
Posted in: Kyrgyzstan. Leave a comment

 

 

In the Issykul area of Kyrgyzstan there are many many beautiful canyons; Skazka Canyon

Grigorevskoye Canyon, etc. One of the lesser known but still interesting to visit is the Kydymadjar Gorge, much smaller than any of the other rock formations we visited.

 

We visited this one en route to Skazka Canyon

stopping for about half an hour off the main road to explore it

 

 

Shor-Kol (Tuz-Kol) – Salt Lake and Mud Baths

Posted by Annette Johnson on March 21, 2019
Posted in: Kyrgyzstan. Leave a comment

So while we were in the Issykul area we took a trip to the salt lake, famed for healing mud and dead sea like floating possibilities, we hired a car and driver to take us there.

After a full day of walking around in the heat and climbing over rocks in the Skazka Canyon, this was a welcome relief, well we thought it would be if our drivers car had not developed a puncture on the way to the salt lake!

 

Thankfully he managed to “phone a friend” who brought another tyre out for him, and after spending an hour in the shade of the nearby trees, we were back on our way to the Lake. As you can see from the first image it was a long and dry ,dusty road to the lake.

 

Salt Lake (also Dead Lake, Tuz-Köl, Kara-Köl) is a small lake on the southern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, notable for its high concentration of salt in the water, as well as healing mud on the banks and bottom of the lake.

 

The shore of the lake is covered with curative clay of different colors, as well as with sharp crystals of salt, which are formed from the drying out of water. The size of the lake is very small: the length of the coastline is 1.5 km, and the depth is 11m.

Despite its very small size, because of its salinity, it does not freeze even in winter.
Paradoxically, but very popular now, this lake was almost unknown until the 2000s, and more or less only started being visited by tourists in 2010.