"That's all folks" was an exaggeration

When I finished my 10 travel photos challenge I realised that I had a few interesting/amusing photos that nearly made the cut.  So here they are.  The order is simply that in which I stumbled across them.

 This photo is a picnic area in a Provincial Park somewhere near Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.  It was a three week mission so we had 2 weekends free.  On the first myself and two UN colleagues engaged a driver and went hiking in the park  It was nice that they had yurta set up as shelter sheds.

 This is the centre of Bishkek, with the Tien Shan mountains in the background.  From memory PRC is on the other side of the ridge.

The photo was taken from the Balcony of the Hotel Dushtok where we stayed for most of the time.  We had started off at a more modern hotel out by the disused airport but (a) it took an hour each way to get there (b) the runways were used for go kart racing so the hotel was very noisy and (c) the quality of build on the hotel was appalling.  So we moved to Dushtok.  None of the foregoing problems: it was an old Soviet Hotel but quite good fun.  We had been out somewhere one evening and as we walked back in heard female voices calling down from the mezzanine.  The hotel met all needs, if you should happen to have any needs that needed meeting.

 Back to SE Arizona.  A number of places there set up Hummingbird feeders and invited the passing birders to visit.  You were expected to leave some coin (or paper, they weren't fussy) to cover the cost of the sugar.  One place we went to got through 50 lbs (it was the US of A) of sugar per day.  I am reasonably sure these are Black-chinned Hummingbirds.  On a good day one of the places would get 25 species in a day!

 This is NOT Arizona.  It is Chisinev, the capital of Moldova - which is not Molvania but some similarities could be seen if one looked. It started snowing on the first morning I was there and made life a bit interesting as they weren't over-endowed with infrastructure.

For example this is how they cleared the pavements.  I have a suspicion that something similar was at the airport.  One of the local contacts commented that under the Soviet system everyone had some money, but there wasn't much to spend it on.  Now there is a lot of stuff in the shops but with very high unemployment no-one had any money!  In the evenings I used to go to an internet cafe which really was a cafe: most of the clientele were young and loud music was the go.  Very good fun.

We actually paid for this trip!  It was a textile oriented tour of Vietnam and this was taken in the small village of Bac Ha in the far North of the country.  We were there on market day and the ethnic minority folk put on their best traditional clothes and bought their traditional goods down to sell.

The road down from the mountains came right past our guest house.  This was the scene as we ate breakfast in a cafe across the road.  The plastic jerry can wasn't too traditional, but the rice wine in it certainly way.  I think in a modern society you could run jet aircraft motors on it.  One alley in the market had about a dozen folk decanting this stuff into smaller bottles: had someone lit a cigarette they'd have blown the town off the map.

This is the market in Dubai.  Close to the old town and very near the Souk.  I enjoyed my wander round here - possibly the only infidel in the place.  I was on my way to Afghanistan.

Boxing day 2002 at Saadani in Tanzania.  There had been a huge thunderstorm the night before and we knew there was 10km of black cotton soil to be traversed.  We asked the owner of the Lodge what the road out was like and he didn't know but asked his drivers.  The answer was "Barabara kufuta." which translates to "The road is erased."    The guys were sent off in front with us following in their wheel tracks.  When we bogged they - with more skill and in a V8 Landcruiser - backed up and attached a rope.  When we got to the end of the black soil they reckoned we'd be OK, so a little chakula (tip) was administered and off we went.

We had another 50 km to go to get to the  bitumen road.  After about 10 km a tree had fallen across the road a mzee (old bloke) wielded  a panga .  A little more chakula.  After about another 5 we got to some road works which looked like the Somme in 1917.  I tried going round but a mango tree got in the way and I slid sideways halfway down a steep bank.  Some local youth appeared and reckoned I could drive down into the morass and they would push me through.  This happened!

When we got to the bitumen - taking 3 hours to cover 60km - our daughter, in the back seat said she was not going to work in Africa.  The next issue was that the wheels  were full of mud so vibrated like crazy if I got above 80kph.  As we had about 700 km to cover that day that was a bit of an issue.  Fortunately the mud was pretty sloshly and some fell off and the rest got balanced by centrifugal force and by the time we got to the Segera Bus stand (100 km up the road) the usual TZ speed of 130 kph was available.

(This was somewhat similar to Boxing Day 2001 we we got bogged in the middle of Mikumi NP about 10 am and waited until about 4 pm for someone to show up with a chain to pull us out!  We didn't get bogged anywhere on Boxing Day 2003.)

This was just round the corner from our house in Tanzania.  Who needs a chainsaw? 10 wananichi with sharp axes are cheaper.  They had the road cleared in 30 minutes.

The big question in the US was "Does a bear crap in the woods? "  A similar question in Sri Lanka might relate to leopards and be answered in the positive.  This was the second leopard we saw on our trip to Yala.

Nassau in the Bahamas was big on seafood.  The UN compelled to take an extra night on my trip there as it saved money.  It turned out the return flight was $250 and when asked if she wanted to spend 5 days in Nassau for $250  Frances rapidly answered "yes."  A very good trip it was, both my work and our tourism.

This market is in Lautoka Fiji.  A real town unlike Nadi which just exists to serve the airport.

This is Nunavuk Canada.  The shot was taken on a flight from Bangkok to NYC towards the end of our time above the Arctic Circle.  Soon after we went briefly back into dark, before the final 2 hours daylight.

The final night after a workshop in Cape Town.  After dinner this band fired up with township jive and were absolutely fantastic .  Most of the folk at the workshop were of similar complexion to the band and had very good moves.  Pali Lehohla (Director of Stats South Africa) who had organised the event, was particular active in this regard- as would be expected by anyone that knows him.  I was sorry I had to leave at 2200 hours to catch my flight back to NYC.