Lei View of the World

Bhaktapur is a municipality adjacent to Kathmandu, 8 kilometers away. Literally, Bhaktapur means “City of Devotees”. It is listed in UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage. The Square can be regarded as a museum of wood carvings. Buildings are made of bricks which is indigenous to the place. They are adorned with wood carvings - from the windows to the doors, to the roof supports.

Temples are scattered around the city in neighborhoods. At first, I took a picture of every temple or shrine that I saw. But as we walked around the village, they became commonplace, I stopped snapping their pictures.

The attached picture is the gate to one of the Hindu temples in Bhaktapur. Inside the compound, one can see the old brick building with intricate wood carvings on windows and doors. There is also a Royal Bath at the back of the temple with two brass serpents guarding it.

Here are three Balinese doors that I find interesting.

Last January, I bought a digital camera - Canon S40. It has given me an incentive in going out of town so that I can make shots, and I can send them to you easily. I have downloaded them to my computer. Here’s one sample.

I took this at the Changi Airport. I had 4 hours transit time there. Instead of going out, I sat down and learned operating the camera, and practiced them at the beautiful orchids in the airport. I had taken 32 beautiful pictures already, and when I played around with the camera, they were all erased! So I hurried back to try and take the same pictures again.

This picture was taken at the “old city” section of Semarang City, capital of Central Java province. The water is actually a sort of basin to trap the water to prevent flooding in the area, because it is below sea level.

They beautified the place by placing lamps around the pond, making steps going down to the water, and conserving the old structures in this part of the city. Now people hold concerts or programs in this place.

This picture is the sea view from Hotel Sedona in Makassar (previously called Ujung Pandang), capital of South Sulawesi. It’s an island that I could not appreciate so much because it’s quite far. But after cropping the picture, it looked interesting.

After a day in Bali, we moved on to Lombok. We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel on Senggigi Beach. This hotel has a very beautifully landscaped grounds, similar to Bali Hyatt’s but on a smaller scale. Following are my pictures of the hotel and grounds.

I like these crocodiles sunbathing at the edge of the children’s pool. One of them even has its belly up!

A bird of paradise hanging from the trellis above the open dining area in front of the pool.

Blue flowers also hanging from the trellis by the poolside.

Balinese doors that were used as a hanging sculptures on the stairway.

I’ve just returned from Bali and Lombok. I took a lot of beautiful pictures or the hotels where we stayed. In Bali, we tried a new hotel other than our old favorite - Bali Hyatt Hotel at Sanur. This time, we stayed at the Gazebo Hotel, also in Sanur which is near our project office. This hotel is actually like a small Balinese village, where instead of the usual hotel building and its rooms, you have small cottages.

Each cottage can have from one to three rooms in it. As you go from cottage to cottage, you follow a winding path, where you can see small streams between cottages.

This is the reading area at the hotel. It faces the beach and is adjacent to the dining area. Many of the guests I saw were reading books while sun bathing.

This lady is reading a novel while sunbathing at noontime, not the best time to be under the sun, I would say.

Below are eggs, small ones are chicken eggs, while the big one is ostrich egg. They have been intricately painted, and are for sale to hotel guests.

Usually roofs in Bali have some sculptures on their edges, a Chinese influence perhaps. This roof has a live cat on it. I took this picture at around 6 pm with poor light. If you can magnify this picture, you would see cat’s eye glowing, reflecting the flash.