Throwback Thursday – How a good luck symbol became one of terror.
“… it remains a symbol of auspiciousness – which sometimes leads to jarring images like this …”
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. Don’t monkey with the dancers!
For our final #Temples travelpic, lets head to Pura Luhur Uluwatu, or Uluwatu Temple in Bali. This is a ‘sea temple’, built on a clifftop, and is one of the most popular tourist spots in Bali. The temple started life sometime in the first millennium CE, but the current structure was expanded in the 11th…
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. Turtle Tower
This week, we’ve been looking at temples – and for Saturday, it’s a temple shrouded in smog, in the middle of a lake, itself in the middle of Hanoi. Well, strictly speaking, this photo was taken FROM a temple – but the image is of the “Tower of the Turtle”. The legendary sacred turtle…
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. Hidden gems near Home.
“Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country” I remember, back in the days when I was a regular at a church youth group, discussing how this bible verse had (like so many others) an application in non-religious terms .. how we all tend to ignore that around us because it is…
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. What a Champ(a)!
Strictly speaking, this is detail from a Group G (Temple mountain style) Champa temple at My Son, in Vietnam. But that’s gobbledygook – so perhaps I had best explain. In the My Son area of central Vietnam, there are a series of temples and other structures – the last remnants of the Champa people,…
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. Fiji’s Hindu Temple
The Sri Siva Subramaniya Temple is in Nadi, Fiji – and it is, like many Hindu temples, a continuous work-in-progress. The ceilings inside are covered in murals depicting adventures of the gods and scenes from the vedas – and as soon as the ceiling is covered, a section is whitewashed and a new mural is…
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. Transplanted temple – from Uji to Oahu
The temple in today’s #travelpic is a bit misleading .. it looks like a Buddhist temple in the mountains of Japan – but Japan is a country that Shirley and I are yet to visit. Instead, it is the Byodo-In temple on the island of Oahu, in Hawaii. It’s a replica of a 900-year old temple in…
Travel Pics Theme: T for Temples. How a Sanskrit symbol became an emblem of horror
The word ‘swastika’ apparently comes from the Sanskrit “svastika” which translates roughly as “good fortune”. It’s been a symbol of luck and prosperity in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism for centuries – in fact, its first use predates all those religions by millenia – going back 11-thousand tears or more. But it’s also been used in Europe for…
Travel Pics Theme: S for Singapore
The theme letter for our travel pics this week is S, for Singapore. For Wednesday, it’s the Sri Mariamman Temple, the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore. We’ve been there twice .. the first time at night in 2010, and then during the day in 2016 (when this image was taken). It’s a temple built to…
Travel Pics Theme: I for Italy
The theme for our travel pics this week (and a bit) is I, for Italy. To be honest, the only time we have spent in Italy is in Rome, and in Venice – plus travelling to-and-from – but even those two cities were amazing. We’ll start with Rome and this magic view of the Colosseum…
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