Gentle Giants

It breaks my heart to see these majestic animals used as tourist rides but I guess if they weren't there may be even fewer of them around. What must they be thinking?

This is also the last post I will be doing .........

for a month as I have to travel to Lae and Port Moresby for work, and then to Australia for holidays. It is too difficult putting down 30 or so drafts with phone lines they way they are at the moment and my graphic card problems, so this blog says au revoir not goodbye, for the time being.

Many thanks for all your support - see you on April 5.

Solemn Sign

Sign outside Dai Hung Temple in the grounds of Chua Thien Mu (Celestial Lady Pagoda), on Perfume River, Hue.

Sung An Temple

These photos were taken in and around the Sung An (Temple of Infinite Grace), in Minh Mang's Tomb, Hue. This temple held his most prized possessions and the Chinese inscriptions on the stela detailed his merits and accomplishments including his 142 children.

These photos below are a view of the temple through the Hien Duc Gate.

You can gather by now how much I love doorways and windows!!

War Image

There are a number of images from the Vietnam War that are burned into our psyche - the girl burnt with napalm running down the road, the helicopter evacuating Vietnamese from the roof of a CIA building during the fall of Saigon and the Buddhist monk who set fire to himself to protest the anti-Buddhist measures enacted by the South Vietnamese Catholic leader, Ngo Din Diem.

This is the egg-blue Austin sedan that ferried Thich Quang Duc to the Saigon intersection where he set himself ablaze in 1963. In this car was seen in the background of that horrific picture (as seen on the back of the wall behind the car)

This emotive relic is garaged in one of the monk's apartment buildings at the Thien Mu Pagoda outside Hue where he lived.