Where's Doug?

The National Orchid Garden is within the National Botanic Garden. While the Botanic Garden is free there is a charge for the Orchid Garden.

The Orchid Garden contains over 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids, with over 600 on display.

There are specialized climate buildings for orchids that like cooler temperatures and a mist house for ones that find the 90% humidity of Singapore too dry.

If you appreciate orchids and flowers in general, it's an amazing place. I took so many photos.

The general garden is also great, but for one visit, the orchids steal the show.

There is a subway stop at both entrances to the gardens, so it is easy and inexpensive to get to.

My other visit that afternoon was the Asian Civilisations Museum. It's not a large museum, but it has an interesting collecion, which is based on the trade that has passed through Singapore between the Western world of India, the middle east and Europe, and the Eastern World of China, SE Asia, and Japan.

There is a large exhibit based on the wreck of of a Arab ship that sunk 1100 years ago on its way back from China. The items recovered from the Tang Shipwreck were purchased by the museum. I am always amazed at the amount and array of goods that were carried in ancient ships. The coastal trade was as valuable as that along the overland Silk Road. Being better able to carry heavier loads than on the overland route, items like ceramics, furniture, precious metals, etc. moved by ship.

The Tang ship had thousands of pieces of Chinese ceramics. Researchers can identify the particular kilns in which ceramics were produced. Many of the materials were made specifically for export, designed for particular destination markets.

Small ceramic bowls were packed into larger vessels for shiping.

Some pieces are an amalgum of work from multiple cultures, like this incense burner.

The horse is Chinese porcelain, and the incense container on its back is made from two Japanese tea cups, while the gold work is French, and it's all topped off by a piece of red coral.

The museum has a collection of religious artifacts from the different Asian religions as well as Western ones.

In front of the museum is a chain suspension bridge of iron components made in England and shipped to Singapore.

The Marina Bay Sands is a massive hotel, casino, and shopping complex. The shopping area is almost 1,000,000 square feet with over 270 stores, mostly high-end luxury shops.

The hotel occupies the three towers with 1,850 rooms. The rack rate starts at about $650 US and goes to over $20,000. There is a 1.3 million sq. ft. convention center, a casino with 500 tables and 3,000 electronic gaming machines.

Connecting the three towers at the top is the 1,120 ft. long skyway with a 490 ft. infinity pool and a capacity of over 3,900 people.

Just going up to the cantilevered observation deck with no amenities was $35, so I skipped it. Needless to say, I also skipped staying there.

The construction cost was 6.88 billion USD, making it the world's most expensive casino property. It is clearly successful as a $8 billion expansion is underway.

The hotel is surrounded by other fascinating constructions, including the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum and the Helix Pedestrian Bridge.

The best route home from Indonesia went through Singapore. So I figured I should not miss an opportunity to see some of this amazing city.

Singapore is just one degree north of the equator, and unsurprisingly its hot and humid. So even coming from Indonesia, it was noticeably hotter.

Singapore is a fascinating place, situated on a strait where boat traffic between East Asia and India passes it has been a key trading location. Despite this, it was not a significant site until the British official, Stamford Raffles, bought the island from a local ruler. Even then, it was not a major city until after WWII.

It became an independent nation in 1965 and rapidly developed to become one of the Four Asian Tigers. Talking to people who were there ten and twenty years ago, they are amazed at the development.

The central business district is a forest of modern high-rises.

But as a tourist it's the Gardens by the Bay, The Marina Bay Sands and surrounding development that is most amazing.

I started in the Gardens by the Bay, a magnificant development. The first stop was the Supertree Grove, a group of 12 tall "tree" construtions.

There are two ways to visit the upper levels of the trees: a walkway between several of the trees, and an elevator to the top of the largest of the trees.

From the top of the tallest, there is a great view of the Marina Bay Sands hotel, an incredible development of hotel, casino, and high-end shopping that cost over 8 billion dollars to construct.

If you look up at the ceiling of the elevator you get a display of the elevator shaft. I didn't notice it in time on the way up, so the video is of the trip down.

The other part of the Gardens by the Bay I visited was the two conservatories: Cloud Forest and Flower Dome.

The Cloud Forest replicates the cool, moist conditions of tropical mountains. It features a 42-meter-tall Cloud Mountain that you access the top of via elevator and then walk down a winding path, which crosses under a 35-meter waterfall multiple times.

They have introduced a Lost World theme to the Forest with dinosaurs.

This young man was fascinated with the T-Rex until it turned its head towards him.

Unlike most conservatories the main climate chore here is cooling. There is a major cooling system for both domes that links back to the Super Tree Grove where some of the trees act as intake and exhaust towers.

It is a rainforest in there!

The second conservatory is the Flower Dome an even larger dome, listed in the 2015 Guiness as the world's largest at 3 acres!

It has an amazing collection of succulents and cacti.

Its size allows for large scale exhibits and plants like full grown baobab and palm trees.

And special flower exhibits like this one on Turkiye.

Outside, walking along the building under the large framework reinforces the size of the dome.

The Gardens by the Bay parks with the SuperTrees and the domes cost over one billion dollars, and frankly, it seems like a bargain.

We continued in the area around the Batur caldera with a visit to the Besakih temple, the largest Hindu temple on Bali.

The temple complex extends up a long hillside, with multiple courtyards and shrine complexes along the way.

We saw many people arriving with offerings for the temple.

Then we were off to a local small dam where the local youths have put together a show of tossing buckets of water over their heads while standing on a lower lever of the dam.

Once again, it was a chance to learn more about the iPhone camera. After some experementing I found that the Live Photo function was perfect for this. Live Photo takes a quick series of photos and stores them all as one photo. There are several ways to use it, as a short movie, or combined as a long exposure, or select one image as a single still. Since the arcs of water were very fleeting events, this allowed me to pick the single image where the shot was perfect.

Finally, we went to Ubud, the main tourist town on Bali. The central area is fairly compact with multiple temples, the Ubud Monkey Forest, hotels, shops, restaurants, museums, and more.

We visited the Saraswati Temple, which has a complex of ponds and fountains at its center.

The Monkey Forest is the big attraction, though. This 25-acre forest holds about 1,250 long-tailed Balinese macaque monkeys, three temples, and numerous stone carvings.

The monkeys are very well fed with multiple spots where corn, squash, bananas, and more are spread out for them. As a result, they do not hassle visitors.

Sometimes they seem to blend into the carvings.

We also visited a private house and complex for balinese dancers to photograph some of the young women dancers.

That evening, we went to a performance of a traditional Balinese play.

It was a convoluted story that most of us couldn't follow. But it had a chorus of men playing the roll of monkeys.

It ended with a fire dance.

We took the ferry across to Bali and to an ocean front hotel in Pemaron on the north coast. Doubtless originally a fishing village, today it's focused on tourism. Our focus here was the fishing boats and dolphins.

The boats are modern outrigger canoes with motors.

So, of course, we were out on the water before dawn, but this time we didn't have a long drive and walk to get there.

After sunrise, the focus shifted to dolphins. There were pods of dolphins about, and they would surface momentarily around the boats, but never really long enough to spot them and get the camera focused on them to get a photo. I've been whale watching and such often enough to know that I wasn't going to get a good shot, so I just watched. The guide chastised me for not taking photos of the dolphins, but later admitted that in more than ten years, he'd never gotten a good photo.

Then other boats started coming out looking for dolphins, and kept coming. Soon we were surrounded by more then 50 boats in a swarm. Someone would spot some dolphins and all the boats would go shooting off in that direction. Of course the dolphins were submerged by the time they got there. It was kind of sad and funny. Then i notiecd off to the west another huge swarm of boats doing the same thing. The dolphins surfaced so briefly that I doubt they were much bothered.

After breakfast, we walked through the local market, a good chance to see local produce and get some people shots.

The stalls in the market mainly had produce and candy.

The locals put small trays of flowers and such out on the sidewalk in the mornings as offerings. The market also sold the materials for those.

Of course, there were bananas, lots of bananas, and a good variety.

Then we were off, up into the mountains, to the Batur volcanic caldera.

The size of these ancient volcanoes is astounding. They can be miles across. In this photo, we are on the rim of the caldera, and everything in the photo is the caldera.

The dark areas on the ground are from a recent eruption from the "small" cone on the left.

On the rim is the Pura Tuluk Biyu Hindu temple. While most of Indonesia is now Muslim, Bali is mainly Hindu, with unique style temples. The first thing you notice is the split gates.

One unique thing about Bali is that everyone visiting a temple needs to wear a sarong. They usually have loaners if you don't own one. That allows us to learn how to wear one.

A few years ago, some tourists figured out they could create the image of a pool of water at the gate with a mirror below the camera and it became a popular image to post. Now the local guides carry a small mirror to take a photo of the tourists.

The temples are courtyards with a variets of shrines in them. Tall pagoda type shrines are the most common. There are two varieties; stone towers,

and ones with multiple thatched roofs.

They typically contain just enough space inside for an image of the god that shrine is dedicated to.

There may be a pavilion with a roof, but otherwise it's open space with the shrines. People come to pray, worship, and leave offerings at the shrine to the god of their choice.

Our hotel was also on the rim of the caldera overlooking rice terraces below. Of course we all lined up to take photos, but they had finished harvesting and were burning the rice straw in the fields. As the day went on the smoke kept getting worse.

Of course, we were up before dawn. The smoke had cleared, and we had a good shot.

Our next stop was the De Djawantan Forest, a private forest with large spreading trees and paths. People come to walk or take carriage rides through the forest. Of course we were not here to take rides we were here for photos. Our guide hired a carriage to go down the path towards us while we toook photos near sunset.

They wanted more atmosphere, so they had people create smoky fires alongside the path. But the fires didn't work well; the fires didn't smoke well, and the wind blew most of the smoke away. But again, this was a learning opportunity. I found that my photo editing software can add "atmosphere" to a photo at a prescribed depth into the photo. So I added more smoke behind the carriage to get the desired effect. So it is modified, but the whole thing was staged anyway, with smoke artificially added, so whether you add the smoke by building smoky fires or with software doesn't seem that different; it's not a natural portrayal of the area.

Other than this photo shoot, the rest of the day was just driving.

The next morning, we were up at 2 AM again to get to the top of the volcano Kawah Ijen. We were at the base of the volcano in the dark. We had two options: walk up the steep path in the dark, or pay to be pulled up the path in a cart. Everyone decided to go for the carts.

The volcano is noted for the sulfur vent in the caldera. Sulfur gas comes out in a cloud. If it hits the rocks, it condenses into a thick layer of solid sulfur. If it hits the water, it turns the water into sulfuric acid.

Men make money by climbing to the top of the volcano and down into the caldera, chisel up chunks of the solid sulfur, and carry it up to the top and down the outside to sell. A 100-pound load of sulfur sells for about $10 and requires several hours of work. At some point, a man decided to get carts made for them to use to carry the sulfur down the mountain. Later on, they figured out that they could make a lot more money pulling tourists up the mountain than taking sulfur down. So now they start the day pulling tourists up the mountain, then gathering sulfur and taking it down, making money both ways.

The trail up is rough and steep, so they use two men with ropes pulling and one pushing to take people up the hill. It costs $100 for the trip. It was steep enough that we all got out and walked to the steepest parts. I got to the top after sunrise, but that wasn't the reason we were there.

Here is the scene at the rim of the caldera. You can see some of the carts.

Looking down into the caldera, you can see the yellow sulfur, the sulfur gas, and people there.

Here are men carrying the sulfur up the hill.

(The men were paid for posing for the photos.)

I am starting on a photo tour of East Java and Bali with Nathan Horton Photography Tours. I did my tour of Ladakh last year with them and couldn't turn down a chance to visit Indonesia with a tour focused on photographs.

It's a long way here. I flew from Madison to Chicago, to San Francisco, to Singapore,e and finally to Yogyakarta. That's about 34 hours in planes and airports.

But knowing that I arrived a day early, as insurance against flight delays, and a chance to relax and recover before starting on the tour. Nathan has warned us it's going to be challenging. We have a lot of days out for sunrise, including one day with sunrise at the top of a volcano, which we will need to drive to, then climb to the top.

We are also on the move a lot, not staying in one place for more than one night.

So a relaxing day at this beautiful hotel is welcome. I've been out exploring the grounds,

feeding the koi,

seeing the buildings, including their gamalan set,

and the view across the landscape to the mountains in the distance.

Tomorrow we are out to Borobudur, a 7th-century Buddhist Temple that is the largest in the world. Nathan is thrilled that we can get permission to be at the temple for sunrise at 4:15 am.

This is the start of a two week photo tour of East Java and Bali, Indonesia. The tour started in Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta is not a major destination, but there were cheap flights available from Singapore.

We stayed the first couple of nights in the Plataran Borobudur Resort, a beautiful place on extensive grounds.

We stayed there because it's close to the Borobudur Buddhist Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in the world. The temple was just visible from one of the locations in the resort.

The next morning, we were up very early to drive to the temple complex and climb to the top before sunrise. (This is going to be a common daily practice on this trip. )

Sunrise from the top of the temple was beautiful.

As it got lighter, we could see the details of the temple we were standing on. It's built as a large mountain, with nine platforms. The top layers have 72 bell-shaped stupas, each containing a seated Buddha statue. The temple was built in the 9th century. The site was later abandoned after the population converted to Islam and became covered with volcanic ash and vegetation.

The British rediscovered the temple in 1814 and removed the ash and vegetation. It was determined that restoration was needed, and over the years, various restoration projects were done. Finally, in 1975, a major project was started. Over one million stones were disassembled, catalogued, cleaned, treated for preservation, and restored to their original location. The work included stabilizing the walls and adding drainage. It took 15 years and 600 people. When complete, the temple was listed as a World Heritage Site.

After sunrise we worked our way back down the levels. The walls of the lower levels are covered with bas relief carving depicting the life of the Buddha.

Once back on the ground we could see the immense size of the temple.

Afterwards, we returned to the hotel for breakfast and checked out to move on to our next location, the Prambanan Hindu Temple complex.

Prambanan is very different from Borobudur. While Borobudur was one large structure, Prambanan originally consisted of 240 seperate structures. It is commonly believed to have been built as a Hindu answer to Borobudur. The temple was only really active for about 80 years before abandonment, possibly due to the eruption of the nearby Mount Merapi volcano.

The temples collapsed during a major earthquake in the 16th century.

The temples stayed as ruins until the 20th century. The temples now standing were reconstructed in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the site contains these few major reconstructions surrounded by piles of stone blocks marking the sites of the other structures. Most of the blocks are just rectangular stones, and many were reused in surrounding construction; it would be nearly impossible to reconstruct much of the structures. The government decided to reconstruct structures only if more than 75% of their original stonework was available.

We took a train to the vicinity of Mount Bromo, where we would spend an entire day, but first, we visited the remote Madakaripura waterfall. At one time, there was a concrete walkway to the vicinity of the falls, but over time, sections have been lost due to landslides and erosion from the stream. So to get there, you walk on the path for a while, then wade the stream, then a section of path, etc. When you get close, you climb over a hill of loose stone covered with wet mud. When you arrive, this is the falls.

I have been to enough waterfalls, that I did not find this one particularly appealing.

The following morning was out day for Mount Bromo. an active volcano complex. Once again we were up early (2 AM!) to be in position before sunrise. This was good because by sunrise the viewpoint was packed with tourists and we were positioned at the front with our tripods set up.

The weather was perfect, with clear skies, some scattered clouds, and a bright moon for early light. The site is a huge caldera with multiple cones inside. The most active is not very large, but steams continually. The floor of the caldera is flat and sandy, and the rim provides a perfect viewpoint for morning photography.

This was an excellent opportunity to learn more about my iPhone's night mode. I had an attachment to mount it on a tripod which worked well. I learned that the night mode sets the exposure time based on the light level, but also the steadyness of the phone. Hand held the exposure is limited to less than 10 seconds, depending on how steady you are, but on a tripod it will take up to a 30 second exposure. It also does this in a creative way. Rather than one long exposure it take a series of short ones and then does image stacking to create a combined photo. This allow it to adjust the stack alignment for minor movement. The result is an amazing ability to take low light photos, especially with a tripod.

Here is an image well before sunrise, you can still see stars in the sky and cars driving through the fog in the bottom of the caldera.

A while later, we could see the flashlights of hikers climbing the Bromo volcano and a little belch from another volcano in the background.

Then the sun hit the clouds behind giving the a yellow glow.

Finally the low raking light lit the slopes of the cones below highlighting the textures. We decided this was the shot to print and frame.

During the stay at the lookout I took shots in other directions including this one towards the coming sunrise.

After some breakfast we headed down to the floor of the caldera, which was surprisingly busy.

We had the oportunity to ride horses over to the base of the Mount Bromo cone and walk to the top. I am really not fond of riding horses and so skipped that.

Then they arranged a horse rider to perform for a photo opportunity. He showed up with his horse's mane dyed rainbow colors and a unicorn horn strapped to its head. We had him remove the horn. He then proceeded to ride back and forth while our group took photos.

An then stationed himself in front of the volcano cone and had the horse rearing.

This was another good learning opportunity, as I found I could enhance the light on the dust behind the horse for a good effect.

He then posed together with the horse for a closeup. It really show the colors on the mane. In another learning opportunity I found I could isolte the side of his face and adjust the light level there seperately.

At the end of the day, we went back up to the top of the caldera rim for another staged shoot, this time with a fire-eater at sunset.

We ended the day with some good sunset light.

An unusual destination for us, just 40 minutes north of our apartment, but we are having our kitchen redone and thought it would be good to get out of the apartment while some of the work is going on. So I rented a house on the Wisconsin River. It's been very pleasant sitting, reading and watching the river slide by.

The weather has been a little cool and wet, an excuse for doing less hiking than I had thought.

I've done some cooking, but also visited a few local Supper Clubs. These are traditional Wisconsin restaurants, often in the country, with a menu focusing on steaks and seafood.

Just down the street from us is The Hooker's Resort, a pretty basic place, a bar side serving mainly sandwiches, and a restaurant side where you grill your own steaks. Not bad, but not interesting either, but I'm pretty sure that's not the prime focus of supper clubs.

We are not far from the Wisconsin Dells, the major tourist destination in central Wisconsin. We visited two supper clubs there. Both have upscale versions of the traditional menus. But the building and the resulting experience are very different.

Ishnala is the most famous Wisconsin Supper Club, over 70 years old and a classic traditional place. Dark wood interior, log cabin construction, trees growing up through the building, looks out over the lake. Its age shows in the dark interior and in the completely inaccessible design, lots of stairs, and narrow passages around the trees. It's possible to get to the front door in a wheelchair, but it's not obvious how to do that. Once inside the door, there are lots of stairs.

Daylene's is new, really new. We were there on the second night after opening. It's a modern design lots more space, wheelchair accessible. very open to the lake shore. The menu is a little more modern that Ishnala's while keeping with the supperclub theme.

The food was more interesting at Daylene's, and the open modern design was very appealing.

We agreed on our conclusion. Going to the famous traditional Ishnala was good to do once, but we have no interest in doing it again. Daylene's, on the other hand, I will definitely return to again.

I read beforehand about the issues with China blocking many websites. It was recommended to get a VPN before you go.

There are a lot of issues and misinformation with this.

A. Many VPNs are blocked in China, including ones usually recommended in articles. You have to buy and install the VPN BEFORE you arrive in China. VPN apps that are blocked will usually give you instructions to modify the OS on your phone or computer. As usual, I found their instructions were for an earlier version of the operating system, and it was difficult to work my way through them. I ended up not using a VPN.

B. The rules for blocked sites are very irregular. But in particular, many more sites are blocked on hotel Wifi than on cell service. I found that I was often turning off wifi to use cell service.

C. Cell service and wifi speeds vary a lot. Cellular signals vary in weird ways. You might get a great signal out in the middle of the desert and one bar in the center city.

We arrived in Kashgar. In the last 20 years, the old town of Kashgar has been replaced with a large modern city. The actual Old Town has been converted into a tourist town, full of shops selling tourist goods and with very few residents.

There is a large statue of Mao overlooking the central plaza.

Our guide explained that while Mao was viewed negatively some years ago, his reputation has not improved. The worst of the Cultural Revolution is now blamed on the Gang of Four, and Mao is again the great liberator.

Kashgar is still predominately Uyghur and Muslim. The Muslim religeon is still tollerated, but within the liits of Chinese civil society. So many major mosques are now historical, cultural sites. Religeon is not allowed to challenge the government rules and laws.

We visited a historical mausoleum. Clearly, it was built on the principles of those in Central Asia, but at a much lower level of design.

Frankly, it looks like they bought the tiles at a discount, as there is a wide variety in the design and quality.

We took a walk through the Old Town and it really has been converteed into a large tourist shopping mall. The buildings are still interesting, but there is no culture left.

The next day we went out to Shipton's Arch an extremely tall hatural arch in the mountains outside of town.

It used to be a difficult access, but we learned that they replaced the ladders with stairs and added a cable car. We all decided to take the cable car and skip the 400+ steps. Imagine our surprise to find that the cable car covered the fairly flat road portion and took us to the base of the steps.

Today was a long driving day in the bus; 12 hours, a few at stops but most of the day on the road. Our goal was the "small" town of Makit. That's small in Chinese terms, about 400,000 people.

Most of the drive was along the Taklamakan Desert. Flat, grey/tan soil with mountains on the north and south horizons.

We stopped at the Kezi'er Buddhist caves, located in a river valley, so there was some greenery around. These are the least known of the Buddhist Cave sites we visited.

The caves are pretty small. and no photos allowed inside. Here are a few reproductions of the murals from the small museum on site.

These are very early Buddhist Caves along the Silk Road, and the images have more of an Indian style.

In Makit, we visited the local museum, not very interesting, and a local museum of painting by the local farming community. Not bad for naive art, but not really noteworthy.

Locals performed some local music and dancing.

We ended the day visiting a tourist operation on the edge of the sand desert. We had our choice of riding camels, riding in a dune buggy, or walking through the dunes.

We continue traveling west along the old Silk Road routes. Today, we travel on a combination of trains and modern 4-lane highways.

We take an overnight train to Turpan, a nearby Uyghur city. From there, we visited several minor sites.

The first was the ruins of the ancient city of Jiaohe. The city was built on an island in the middle of a minor river. The island has steep cliffs up to 30 meters hign on all sides and so never built any city walls. Founded in about 100 BC it was at various times the capitol of local tribes, seat of local Chinese governments and throughout a major stop on the Silk Road. It was abandoned after being conquered by the Mongols.

The city has an unusual construction. The local soil is very dry and hard mud, not quite a stone. In this dry climate, it is very stable and is the foundation for building material throughout the area. In Jiaohe, they did not build upwards using the material for mud bricks, but rather cut cave homes into vertical surfaces or down into the ground.

The ruins of the town are a maze of these structures.

Turpan is famous for it's grapes and raisins. Most famous varieties are very long ones, name Mares Nipples, and Fragrant Concubine. These raisins were a famous staple for travelers on the Silk Road and in that tradition I bought a couple of bags to take home.

The raisins are dried in brick structures or on the ground. The ones dried on the ground get much darker in the sun than the ones dried in the shelters. On the bluffs above the river at Jiaohe were numerous brick raisin drying shelters.

At a tourist area in town was a simulated drying shelter. We were told that in the hot, dry climate here, the grapes can dry to raisins in just days.

Since the Uyghurs are Muslim, there are mosques in the area. But since the communist Chinese are against religions, the large mosques are now "cultural centers."

The Sugong Mosque is a good example, built in a mix of Central Asian styles.

I have seen all of these elements in Central Asian Mosques, but the particular combination was new to me.

Switching religions, we traveled to the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, another group of Buddhist Cave Temples. (The Thousand Buddhas was a common mural style for the ceilings of these caves, and so many of these complexes get the Thousand Buddhas in their name.)

The interiors of the caves have suffered grievously over the centuries. The later Muslim population believed in a religious requirement to deface the portraits and gouged ou the faces on the easily reachable images.

Foreign explorers from Europe and Japan discovered other images that had been buried under blown-in sand and chiseled out large sections, taking them to their home countries' museums.

An internet search reveals some of the stolen images.

There was an elderly gentleman playing a beautiful stringed instrument in front of the caves.

After I made a small contribution, he insisted I sit alongside him, and he handed me a tambourine. (I was of no use in attempting to play along.)

Next up was the Subash Buddhist Ruins, also referenced as Subash Temple. It was presented to us as the ruins of a monastery, and I was surprised at the scale of the ruins. It turns out that it was also a substantial town. Today, it consists of the remains of mud brick walls in the middle of a desert with mountains in the distance.

With lots of time on the bus, I played with the very dull sky in this photo and thought this version looked appropriate for this desert.

The Magao Caves are one of the premier sites for Buddhist Cave Temples. Located in a long cliff face south of the ancient Silk Road city of Dunhuang, there are over 500 caves, many of them painted and with statues. The construction of the caves began about 366 CE when a Buddhist monk named Le Zun had a vision of 1,000 Buddhas bathed in golden light. The earliest remaining decorated caves were built between 419 and 439 CE. As the site grew and grew in reputation, many noble and wealthy families would have a cave temple built. You can see portraits of members of the families on the walls of some of the temples.

Today, it is the most important and largest tourist site in the region. As a result, the area around the walls has been highly developed to handle large crowds. We are lucky to have been there in the off-season. If the facilities are utilized to a great extent at the peak, I think it would be very unpleasant.

They have built a large multimedia building at the site entrance with two projection halls: one showing a general view of the history and the site on a traditional screen, and one showing the interior of a dozen or so caves on a wrap-around "immersion" screen.

You take a transfer bus to the cave complex. The area is paved with fences to control traffic, modern stairs, and balconies for access to the caves. A ticket to the caves gets you entrance to between 8 and 10 caves, with a guide.

The guide for our group spoke English very well and was well educated on the caves, the history of the individual caves, and the interpretation of the images shown in the caves.

You are not allowed to take photos inside the cave, so I have limited photos from the internet available to show the interiors.

As you can see, the murals and statues are truly amazing.

The caves were occupied and developed until the 1400's. That means there are 1,000 years of caves, which cover several Chinese Dynasties, and occupation by other groups, most notably the Tibetans, with a resulting variety of styles and images.

This is the site that got me interested in this trip to Western China, and it didn't disappoint. The planning of the visit did disappoint a bit, though. I found out as we were leaving that there is a museum as part of the complex that we were not going to visit. If I had know I would have arranged to stay behind to see the museum and let the rest of the group continue on with the day's tour. But by the time I realized it, I didn't have time to figure out how I was going to handle the transportation on my own back to the hotel afterwards.

I had already insisted on a visit to the regional museum the next morning. So I figured that would have to do.

Instead I went along to the Yumen Pass Tourist Site. It consists of deteriorated mud brick sections of the old Great Wall extension and fortifications. It was and hour and a half drive to the area, another houlr and a half on shuttle busses around the site and then a third hour and a half back.

Section of wall.

Old wood pile.

Old warehouse,

Old Gatehouse

It was not worth the time, in my opinion. But it's a group trip, and you don't always get to choose.

That night we visited the Dunhuang Night Market. The Chinese love these night markets, with an array of stalls selling souvenirs, and foods. Locals definitely come for the food stalls. But they are a little hard to manage in a group.

They are colorfully decorated and lit, and so are a pleasant place to spend an evening and spend some money.

We took an overnight train to our next stop Jiayuguan. We have now moved out of the mountains and into the desert, with mountains to the north.

After an very early check-in at our hotel and some breakfast we headed out to the Wei-Jin dynasties tombs. These are brick tombs from between 220 - 420 AD.

There is a long stair down into each tomb.

The tombs are multi-chambered and well-constructed of fired brick.

I had to get this image off the internet are photography is not now allowed. In the photo you can see that some bricks have images on them. These are drawings of various parts of the life of the occupants. Here are some photos of bricks and replicas in the local museum.

These are valuable not only for their artistic merit but for their portrayal of life 1,600+ years ago.

There are over a thousand tombs identified, but very few have been excavated, and only two are open to the public.

Then we went to the "Overhanging Wall," The westernmost section of the Ming era Great Wall. Our first stop was at the fort.

It was so heavily "restored" that it looked more like a replica and had little feeling of history to convey.

Then it was out to the Overhanging section of the wall, so named because it's on a steep slope. This was also reconstructed in 1987 using fired brick. It feels more authentic than the fort, but it probably isn't.

When we got to the lookout at the top, we came back on a paved trail down the mountain.

I noticed that at the extension of the wall beyond that point was just a low mound of dirt. So this section of the wall is an entirely new construction. The original was almost certainly unfired mud brick and wider than the reconstruction,

The Chinese are developing extensive tourist facilities at all these sites, with large parking lots, shops, paved paths, etc. The result is a loss of authenticity, in my opinion.

We headed back into Lanzhou to catch an overnight train to Jiayuguan and to check out the local sights while we wait for the train.

Our first stop was the Gansu Provincial Museum, which has a large exhibit of items from the Silk Road. Of course, most of them come from tombs.

The whole bronze calvary came from the tomb of a general.

There were glazed ceramic figures.

And much more. But the star of the exhibit is the bronze flying horse, which has become the symbol of the city.

I stopped in the museum coffee shop, but didn't see the lattes with designs printed on top. The couple that also sat at the table were very pleased with their flying horses.

We went down to the shore of the Yellow River, which flows through town. Our first stop was the Iron Bridge, the first one across the river in the early 1900's. It's now a pedestrian bridge, a good idea, as it is a very light design.

Looking at the bridge, it's clear they strengthened it some time ago. The arched top chord is clearly not original.

There are still New Year exhibits up.

We stopped at a place offering traditional rafting excursions on the river. Very Traditional! The rafts are made from inflated sheep skins and tied to a wooden frame.

They are certainly colorful, but I'm not sure how maneuverable.

After dinner, we stopped in a local snack shop for provisions for the 9-hour train trip. No one bought the variously flavored packaged chicken feet snacks!

I was busy enough getting on the train and such that I took no photos. The overnight train is much older than the high-speed trains. but still adequate. We had three cabins for the 12 of us, four bunks per cabin.

In the morning, we were traveling through the Gobi Desert.

The Labrang Monastery is the north side of Xia He, so a shortndistance frm our hotel.

Labrang is the largest monastery outside of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It houses about 1,200 monks.

Being at the edge of the Tibetan region, Labrang and the town of Xia He have been the site of conflicts between the Tibetans and both Han Chinese and Hui Muslim forces. Hui forces attacked the monastery several times in the early 1900's, killing thousands of monks and townspeople.

The monastery suffered during the Cultural Revolution, with the monastery shut down and the monks sent to villages to work. The monastery reopened in 1980, and many monks returned, but the government restricts the population to 1,500 monks.

In the fall of 2025 the government raided the monastery and surrounding villages searching for and seazing images of the Dalai Lama. All communications with the outside world were cut off at that time.

Many of the local population walk the four kilometer of the monastery on a daily basis. A long wall of Praywe wheels forms the starting point of the route.

This model shows the layout and extent of the monastery and the adjoining mountains.

There are a number of temple buildings throughout the site.

Contrary to the rules at Buddhist monasteries in other places, we were allowed to enter with shoes on, but were not allowed to take any photos inside.

The Chinese government does not allow the training of boys at Buddhist Monasteries. So there is no school, but there are several colleges for young adult men.

We visited the hall of butter sculptures of important religeous figures. The sculptures were amazing works.

Everything is carved from Yak Butter, colored with natural dyes, even the flowers.

They carve new ones for every New Year. These were new enough that the smell of the yak mutter was still pretty strong. Our guide admitted that hot weather in the summers now can cause problems for the butter sculptures.

The guide gave a good overview of Buddhism and the monastery, which was important as several of the group had little knowledge of the religion.