A sun enthroned in heaven

"An image of the sun enthroned in heaven, radiating one thousand beams of light:
Were one to shower bright rays of light upon all beings, how exellent." - The Seventh Dalai Lama

Light plays a very important role in my work, its something I find tremendous beauty, divinity and inspiration in. I look at people like Turner and I find inspiration in the way artist like these captured the subtle interplay it creates in our world.

Spiritually I find it very uplifting as well, I see God in the way that the sun comes out from behind the clouds and the way that street light comes through trees.

Its something I'm always trying to capture and never quite reaching, this sun enthroned in heaven.

Glastonbury and Wells: The lsles of Avalon

Set like a lighthouse amidst the rolling green seas that are the fields of Somerset. Glastonbury Tor is inescapably the first thing you see as you arrive into this beautiful and historic countryside.

I had decided to take a break from city life and catch up with a friend who lived there. So for me my Glastonbury weekend didn't involving getting knee deep in mud, as much as enjoying delicious vegetarian food and sunbathing on the hill of Glastonbury tor.

I started my weekend in Wells, a beautiful and quintessentially English town a couple of miles outside of Glastonbury and got introduced to the cathedral there. It turned out to be as impressive on the inside as it was on the outside. With a beautifully decorated high ceiling and a clock that came to life every hour with miniature figures.

After that me and my friend took an hour to wander around Wells and take in the sights, including a beautiful garden just near the abbey before taking a bus over to the town of Glastonbury.

Now Glastonbury itself is held as somewhat of a sacred site both to the local christains and pagans that have made the town their home. This is due to the fact that the famous Tor has been variously an iron age site, the resting place of an early church, a site mentioned in Arthurian legends and most recently a rebuilding of the church tower itself. The town is also the site of a thorn tree said to be planted by Saint Joseph of Arimthea. Who according to legends struck a staff down that became the famous tree.








It has become therefore somewhere to enjoy both the natural beauty, old worldly pubs and ambient spirituality (and admittedly sometimes slightly unhinged spirituality) which goes with the place. After catching up with my friend we spent the day pursuing shops, enjoying the beauty of the White Springs (a lovely underground building which houses one of Glastonbury's natural springs) and sunbathing on the Tor itself.

After enjoying some food at one of the local restaurants we got some beers and enjoyed the sunset overlooking the town itself. The next day we climbed the Tor and got to enjoy the wonderful views over Somerset that the hill provided, did some more shopping and enjoyed music from a local band playing at one of the pubs in the town.

I ended my last day having a pint and a nice Sunday lunch at the George and Pilgrim before heading home rested, relaxed and spiritually refreshed ready to get back to the working week ahead.

Ankor Wat and Siem Reap

The temples of Ankor Wat were as impressive as I had hoped for. Magnificent ruins that were a testament to both the highest ideals of man and more solemnly the power of time to wash everything away.

It was for me a strange place mixture of inspiring, peaceful, sad and deep spirituality, oh and also massively stress. Did I mention the crowds? Holy heck if the Cambodian government want anything to be left of the ruins by the end of the next hundred years they really need to sort out some sort of crowd control (and yes i'm well aware of the irony of me visiting it and saying that).

I ended up renting a bicycle for my days in Siem Reap and it turned out to be a rewarding (and exhausting) way to explore the beautiful ruins close by. I wandered through exquisitely sculptured spires, crumbling parapets, nature tore temples and intricately carved faces peering out from the stonework.

By evening I chilled out with friends, enjoyed drinks and relaxed by  the swimming pool of my rather nice hostel. Overall it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable place to stay.

Christmas In Saigon

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Christmas Eve and proceeded to spent the day wandering around the city. Saigon turned out to be rather a different beast from Hanoi. Affluent where Hanoi was rustic, open where Hanoi was cramped and open all hours where Hanoi wound down at twelve.

They both shared a certain sensibility however, both were busy and hectic with the strange mixture of culture, spirituality and a pronounced emphasis on making money.

My first stop was the Bitexco tower in downtown HCMC, where I was offered a stupendous view over the city. After this I wandered the streets of the city itself, taking in the sights, sounds and views that the city had to offer.

I slept well that night and got up ready for a full day of sight seeing, I started my tour at Vietnam's war museum, where I got to witness first hand the devastation that Agent Orange and chemical weapons had caused, not only on the people (and in horrible detail children) of Vietnam but also on the countries wildlife and forest (much of which is still recovering).

After this I visited the Jade Emperor Pagoda and enjoyed the sheer level of beauty and craftsmanship that pervaded every level of the temple. Buddhas mixed with Taoist deities, all wrapped in a cloud of sweet smelling incense. That evening was Christmas day for me and I was pleasantly surprised to run into a few familiar faces from Bangkok. I spent the evening getting pleasantly wasted before moving on to the azure beaches of Cambodia.

Good morning Vietnam

After a few days spent bumming around Bangkok doing nothing particularly touristy (I watched The Hunger Games and had a Mcdonalds) I decided it was time to go somewhere new. Boy did I hit the ground running with Vietnam.

Hanoi was hectic, stressful and overwhelmingly eventful, but it was also spiritual, cultured, vibrant and exotic. In other words it was love at first sight. I spent the first half of the day wandering the streets of the old quarter. I explored temples tucked into corners, walked past streets packed with shops selling things based on themes (such as christmas decorations, childrens clothing and in one particularly beautiful example and entire street packed with flowers).

After all this excitement I was ready to head somewhere a bit more meditative so I visited the beautiful Bach Ma temple. Wonderfully decorated and filled with buddhist statues, ancient poetry, the waft of people giving incense and writhing with dragons that decended from pillars set into the rooftops it was a place of awe inspiring beauty.

After visiting the temple I parked my bum on one of the many street vending stalls and had my first taste of Vietnamese food. It turned out to be both variably in cost and flavour, ranging from the exquisite to the awful (as fitting a metaphor for Vietnam as you'll as likely to find).

I felt the need for something a bit more laid back after this so I headed for one of the many lakes in the city of Hanoi. It was an ocean of calm in an otherwise hectic city and I spent a good hour or two there relaxing and watching the comings and goings of the city.

I felt by the time I left Hanoi that it was time to go somewhere more relaxing so I decided upon the verdant hills of Sapa.

Thailand: Sangkhlaburi

 Sangkhlaburi managed I think to be one of the best places I visited in Thailand. Quiet and remote, its right on the edge of the border next to Burma and as such has a large number of refugees from the people of the Mon tribe (fleeing Burma's oppressive regieme). Unfortunately they are barely given any rights in Thailand and as such have to subsist on extremely low wages with very little rights to travel. Fortunately it has become home to a large number of NGOs and so is a great place to come and volunteer.

After arriving I spent the first day canoeing with friends on the beautiful lake by which my hostel was located. We drifted past sunken villages, golden temples and the far off mountain ranges of Burma and Thailand. and afterwards we swam in the warm waters of the lake. The evening we headed out to the amazing food market that got held daily around Sangkhlaburi, with so much delicious food to choose from I was beginning to wonder if I might start getting fat.

The following day I rented a bicycle and spent the day cycling around the temples in the village. After crossing a huge bridge made of bamboo on the lake me and my fellow traveller wandered past houses that floated suspended on the water. The temples were even more amazing, appearing as they were to be made of sold gold and after wandering past the many buddhas in its halls, I follows some children's examples and spent at least half an hour trying to throw coins into the pyramid creveses within which the smaller buddhas sat.

For the rest of the day we cycled around the hills surrounding the village and came at last to rest back by the lake, ready that evening to head out for even more delicious food.