If you have followed this site quite a bit, you would have noticed that this is one of my favourite sites to shoot Mount Fuji. I could wake up early in the morning and walk 30 mins to the other side of Kawaguchiko across the bridge and set up my tripod before 6am. And in the last 3 times I have been here, Mount Fuji would always be visible in the morning along with a calm lake to catch some reflection. Kawaguchiko is large enough not to be perfectly calm, and the wind does kick in about 7-7:30am. So get there early. I will not detail too much how to get there, the easiest would be via the Keio Express bus line from Shinjuku just opposite Yodobashi Camera. And as a primer, Fuji 5 Lakes regions composes of… of course, 5 lakes. From the right to the left, there’s Yamakako, which I have never been, and since I have not heard too much about the view there, I have no plans to visit since it is also out of the way. Kawaguchiko is arguably the easiest one to access, as it is just situated by Fujikawaguchiko and the northern shore is littered with attractions like a monkey show and a music box museum. The views here are one of the best accessible without long hikes and a car, and Mount Fuji looks symmetrical from here. The only possible issue is that the town would be visible in your picture of the famous mountain. Only an issue if you’re after the mountain sans civilization. Just next to it would be Saiko, where Mount Fuji is not visible at all, obscured by a close by hill. News has it that Saiko is a good fishing place. Next to it, a little drive a way is Shojiko, which I think rivals Kawaguchiko. Cars could drive to the lake bank facing Mount Fuji, and you could get down to water level. What you would see on the opposite bank on the foot of the mountain is just pure nature. However, Shojiko is not that easy to reach without your own car. The public buses don’t run regularly, so you may have 1 hour there and if you do not get on the returning bus, the wait may be quite long. No buses at night the last time I checked, so night time shooting by bus would be impossible. One could camp by the lake side though. The last one is Motosuko, a relatively large lake, with an elevated vantage point at the far side of the lake. It is even more remote than Shojiko. This is also the view of Mount Fuji that could be found at the back of a 100 yen note.

Lets see what we have here…

Shoji-ko: This is one of the first shot of this Autumn season for me. The EXIF reads 5:30pm and it was already dark. Exposure reads 30 secs at f5.6 on a 28-70mm. It was already dark when I got there, and the long exposure lights up the mountain a bit. I kept the foreground dark to convey the evening mood. You could see car lights on the right at the bottom of the mountain, and some faint lights at what could be the mountain 5th station. AT this time of the year, the snow cap is starting to grow, but obviously it is still early.

Shoji-ko: This is one of my favourite picture of the shoot. Exposure reads 4 minutes 30 seconds and f8. I did another one that was 20mins long but came up to almost a blank shot. I had a ND8 on the lens and I would have to stretched it to 1hour exposure if I was to get something like this. What I wanted to do with this shot was to have a long enough exposure to catch the star trail. You could also faintly notice a line of a passing aircraft. I would have wished to have more time here, I guess I will explore the possibility to camp here the next time. Would have been great to catch an hour long star trail.

Kawaguchiko: This was taken at very close to 6am. Note the vapour on the lake surface. This morning was not what I hoped for, with cloudy skies in the morning. When I got to the lakeside at 5:30am the mountain was covered in clouds, but almost always it clears at close to 6am when the faint trace of sunshine appears. You also notice that Fujikawaguchiko town is quite prominent in the foreground. This is a 4 sec exposure at f8, at about 40mm, and I cropped the top and bottom of the original frame. You also noticed that the view from Kawaguchiko is a little different, with the long gentle sloping sides of the mountain visible from here, while at Shojiko, the slope is quite strong.

Kawaguchiko: Looking at the east at the rising sun. The only good thing about a cloudy day is that the morning red sun glow is quite strong.

Kawaguchiko: With the sun starting to appear in the morning, Mount Fuji starts to glow a little shade of red. This scene only lasts not more than 10 mins. In fact I think it might have been shorter than that. So this is where an ergonomic camera comes in, when you switch from one scene and light type to another. The controls has to be easily found and you do not have the luxury of diving into the menus to change something.

Kawaguchiko: Looking towards the west, at the thin layer of fog on the surface of the lake early in the morning. We are at 6:20am now.

Kawaguchiko: Here’s a 1 minute exposure intended to give the lake a smooth appearance and to blur out the clouds. It has this mysterious look although it was not one of my favourite shots. Lacks drama. EXIF says 60 sec at f8 and so far all these were shot at ISO200.

Kawaguchiko: This is one of the opportunistic shot for the morning. A fisherman was just passing by in front of me and I waited for him to reach the middle in nice alignment with the mountain peak before I took the photo. Note the altocumulus clouds, as the lower level clouds start to be blown away.

Kawaguchiko: And with a little graduated ND filtering, here is a shot that starts to look different from the rest. This one is 6:48am. There is now enough light to do 1/30sec at f8. I’ve switched to a 17-35mm wide angle set at 22mm for this shot. All on tripods and remote trigger.

Saiko: One of the reason to come here at this time is to catch the Autumn leaves in Fuji 5 Lakes region. At the lower altitudes most of the trees are still between green and yellow while it has already started on the top of hills.

Saiko: Ok I lied a little bit. It is possible to catch Mount Fuji on the western end of Saiko, but only at an oblique angle like this. Since Saiko lies on the shadow side of a hill, it gets the sun later in the morning, and the fog on the surface of the water is still visible at 7:50am. The lake surface is relatively calm here, with reflection of the mountains quite well defined. The blue tint on the water surface was courtesy of a Singh-Ray Gold-n-Blue polarizer. The non filtered photo looks quite bland since I’m shooting more or less into the sun. EXIF reads 1/90s at f8 and I’m back to the 28-70mm.

Saiko: Morning fishing at the lake. This close crop isolates the scene from the messy mountains in the distance which would distract from the subject, in this case the boats. This was shot with a telephoto, one of my favourite lens, 70-180mm Micro. It looks sharper than this on the original file, almost pixel level sharpness. I just love the way the surface level fog stays on this lake surface longer than the other 4 lakes.

Saiko: On the same side as I am standing on, a fly fisherman prowls the banks.

Motosuko: This is the only one that I liked from the banks of Motosuko. This is 8:30am and the sun is already quite high up in the sky. It looks like it over the mountain as at Motosuko you are looking from the west. The vantage point at the carpark is elevated, and I don’t think the lakeside view will be better because part of the right slopes of Mount Fuji is obscured by a hill. This view is very difficult to digest for me, mainly due to the lack of ability to capture a clean Mount Fuji like at Kawaguchiko. However, I met some Large format photographers at Motosuko, so there is obviously some with different opinions than me. The cloud day and the fact that most morning you would be shooting into the sun, makes Motosuko a better evening spot.

Shojiko: back at Shojiko, I noticed this opportunity to shoot a reflected bank at the western end of the lake. Mount Fuji would be on the right in this case. This was shot at a humble 35mm. ISO had to be cranked up to 560 due to the fact that most of the foreground is actually in the shadows. I had to use Lightroom to bring it out while keeping the skies controlled.

Shojiko: The rest of the lake looks quite normal. Nothing special in this view.

Shojiko: One of the boats you could rent for fishing. I’m not sure if a fishing permit would be required to rent it, but for fishing that’s for sure. For this shot I had to add +2/3 stops to the exposure as as the boat is relatively in the shadows compared to the background. But the resulting image was better than I expected when I first shot it.

Shojiko: This marks the second trip where I get ducks swimming past me. The first time I fumbled to switch my camera to the right setting to get the ducks and the mountain sharp and the right shutter speed. I ended with a blurred out ducks… motion ducks. This time I dialed in 1/250s and f11 right away and also managed to set the camera to continuous shot. I have about 10 shots of various duck positions, but I tend to like this one that is a little past the mountain in the middle. I also like the way the sun is partly obscured by the cloud and it is possible to see the god rays above the mountain. Focal length for this shot is 17mm on FX sensor. I’ve heard of people complaining about the Nikkor 17-35mm, but it is a fine lens for me.

Shojiko: Picnic by the lakeside. One day….

Fujikawaguchiko: Enough mountains… the other reason to come here is for the red leaves. There is an entire tourist attraction the week I was here based around a flea market and the sights of red leaves like these. This was shot just next to the road on the northern banks of Kawaguchiko, with many tourists passing behind me. 70-180mm Micro does its second purpose as a micro lens.

Fujikawaguchiko: More red leaves. This is at 1/180s f5.6, the only reason for the large aperture is that I was hand holding the lens set at 90mm and I really wanted something sharp. ISO is 450. For close up shots like this I would go for shutter speeds that are reciprocal of double the focal length (i.e. 1/180s)

Fujikawaguchiko: Trying something different here.

Fujikawaguchiko: I have no idea what this chair is doing here, but it is one of those test shots that made me go “hmm, not too bad looking” after importing it into LIghtroom. So it stays.

And one last shot to close this post. What a better way than to shoot a Japanese Maple leave, Japanese style with uncluttered background and lighter earthy toned overall picture. Over and out, till the next season at Kawaguchiko.

*end*

Inside Hong Kong MTR Train

Started off my new project weekend, to photograph the station names of every single MTR station in Hong Kong. I don’t know how long it will take to do them all, but 3 or 4 weekends may be just enough. The idea is simple, take a camera, one lens and stop at every single station and then move on to the next.

There has not been any over eager security guard asking me to stop photographing so far, and to keep things interesting, I’ve got 2 months of backlogged podcasts to keep me company while continuing the task. The only thing I learnt is that there is a limit to the time you can spend in the metro, once you pass the gates. Its about 2.5 hours. And I spent a little more than that, and the Customer Service office let me out without a penalty. Otherwise it would cost a little more than 20HKD. I believe it was 21HKD that they mentioned.

Chai Wan MTR Station

There’s no deadline to this project. It will be completed when its completed, and I will figure out then what to do with all the database of photos! Today I managed to shoot 512 NEF files!

So, in anticipation of a long trip to South America at the end of 2010, I decided to pick up a D3 to familiarize myself with its high ISO performance. My thoughts at that time was that a D3 for main body and D300 for that extra DX reach would be ideal for a long expedition. And just before I was going to ask my usual dealer for one, the D3s was released, and just as well.

Long story short, I now have a D3s. And in summary: while I’m not new to photography, nor digital photography, this camera does induce a bit of an extra learning curve.

First test as I shoot my first 1000 pictures: ISO performance. I don’t intend for this to be a review, hence I don’t plan to include sample pictures. The early feedback from the internet forums is that this camera performs about 1-1.3EV better in ISO compared to the previous high-ISO champion, the D3. As I do mostly landscape with this camera, I intend to test it only for that purpose.

I did 3 tests today, first was a landscape shot with camera focused at infinity in bright daylight, a second scene with an close-up object (confession: a pretty wartime Leica IIIc) with proper illumination, and third was a city scene from the top of a tower.

Results:

What I can say is that this camera’s ISO performance is amazing.

- ISO200-ISO1600: I will not hesitate to shoot with the D3s up to ISO 1600. I could not see any noise or loss of details on the NEF file all the way up to that level in Adobe Lightroom. For once, auto-ISO is an option in the field. (Of course, one should always shoot at base ISO if you can, with a tripod, but still, 1600 is something I will not shy away from. It is THAT good!)

- above ISO 1600 – ISO 6400: From ISO higher than 1600 onwards, I see some noise appearing in the shadow areas, but the well illuminated areas are fine. This goes on all the way up to ISO6400 easily. The noise is very much film-like chroma noise, which is bearable. Not noise-free, but not too much of a concern as details in the scene are all still there.

- up to ISO 12800:  The details held up all the way up to ISO 12800. I love this camera! At 12800 the noise is still very much chroma like with some tinge of colour noise creeping in.

- above ISO12800 – ISO102400 (HI 3): the detail performance starts to drop at ISO +1 to +3 EV, basically ISO 25k up to 102k. Basically the image gets smudgy and bands appear at the highest ISO. But if the difference is between taking a picture and no picture, I’d take the 102k ISO shot anytime over lost opportunity.

Next up: Movie mode at 720p. This is something I’ve used, but the camera seems to be adjusting most of the functions automatically. I will need to test it out to find out how it works.

Typing this on the flight from Singapore to Istanbul.

Trips with a historical slant can be stale for those who prefer to ignore the significance of places beyond its heyday. I have a feeling that most parts of my upcoming 2 week trip will be of interest to only a small minority. I have spent almost 3 months reading Edward Gibbon’s excellent “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, referencing wikipedia and making notes on google maps, charting the locations as I go along. Luckily for me, most of the action towards the end of the Roman Empire centers around present-day Turkey.

The focal point of course is on Constantinople, also known today as Istanbul, where Emperor Constantine decided to establish the first Christian kingdom, arguably because he decided to side with the growing popularity of a new religion. Sacked a few times by passing crusaders and finally falling to the giant cannon of Sultan Mehmet II of the Muslim Ottomans less than a thousand years later. In Istanbul I would expect the signs of history to be more obvious, but it would be a challenge to find the remains of the wall where the muslims breached the city wall.

Planning to stay 3 days in Istanbul. As for the rest of the trip, the rough planning is as follows:

After Istanbul, and using it as a hub, I will do two day trips. First of it will be to Hadrianople – present day Edirne – next to the Greek border. This is where the Ottomans set up their capital and headquarters before heading out to conquer Constantinople. I expect the city to be bland,with history hidden behind a modern facade, tourists passing through, oblivious to the role this city played in the founding of present day Turkey about 700 years ago. A day trip out of Istanbul should be sufficient.

Then there’s Nicaea – present day Iznik – where a bunch of church elders held a meeting a bit more than a thousand years ago and decided on the Nicene Creed, a story setting the relationship between the key figures of today’s Christian church doctrine. All other conflicting views were banished, and purged. Iznik is famous for the tiles that graced many Ottoman monuments in Turkey. Again, I’m expecting a ruin or two but nothing more than the pleasure of getting GPS coordinates in a city steeped in historical significance. If time permits, perhaps Iskander Kebab in Bursa not too far from Iznik before returning to Istanbul.

To save time, I plan to then take a flight down to Nevsehir, in Cappadocia. A bus from the capital would take too long, losing up to a whole day to get to the heart of Turkey. At Urgup, I have made advanced booking on a rental car which will be with me the whole trip in Cappadocia while I try to cover the whole area in 3 days. It is probably ambitious to do so with public transportation, so we shall see. Distances seem quite short so I shouldn’t have to use up tanks of petrol everyday.

Planning to spend 3-4 days there depending on my mood. Cappadocia would be the landscaping part of the trip, and my DSLR and a couple choice lenses and tripod will come with me for this purpose.

The next few day post-Cappadocia is unclear at this moment. Will probably make it up as I go along. One possibility is to go to Kayseri, hanging around the most muslim city of my trip, and taking the overnight train down to Adana to have a kebap, and finally down to Antakya (ancient name: Antioch). The second plan is to skip Kayseri, but since I’m not in the mood to apply for a Syrian visa, not sure what I will do in the 3-4 days down south in Antakya. Will worry later. All I know is that I have to be in Adana at a certain time the day before the flight back so that I can catch a domestic flight from Adana back to Istanbul, where I will spend another night before leaving Turkey.

Total duration: two weeks. This will be during Ramadan season, so I’m prepared to fast if I have to, eating breakfast and dinner only.

Equipment wise, I have the standard blogging machine, my Nokia E71 that will double as an alarm clock as it has the most irritating ring of all, and tripling as a GPS backup since it has google maps allowing me to have an eye up in the sky if required. Primary GPS is my trusty 10 year old Garmin eTrex Vista loaded with world map for this part of the planet. For the first time, I will bring a PCM sound recorder to get ambient sounds into my archives, honours going to the Sony PCM D50 recorder. A trip is not a trip without cameras, of course . I will have the usual 3 cameras. People shots will be made with a Leica M6 Classic and just one lens, a 35mm Summicron ASPH which should be versatile enough for close up action. Bringing 20 rolls of film, Kodak Tri-X, Chinese-made ERA100 and Fuji Neopan1600. Not forgetting a single roll of Kodachrome, just in case. DSLR for landscapes with a rugged-ish Nikon D300. Lenses that will come along: 12-24mm f4 AFS, 10.5mm f2.8, 28-70mm f2.8 AFS and my favourite all-round lens: Micro-Nikkor 105mm f4 AI. All Nikkors. Point and shoot honours will go to a Ricoh GR Digital in a belt holster for quick grab shots. A light Gitzo 1531T travel tripod and RRS BH25 tripod head comes along. All these goes into a Kinesis  Journeyman bag configured for half gears and half clothes. A Kinesis M550 multipurpose bag serves as a day and accessory pack when I need to move fast.

Enough on the equipment. This setup allows me to move fast and to jump on buses and planes without any big bulk. It’s heavy for sure, but nothing big plate of kebab at the day cannot soothe. And so it begins…

Majiagang Pier, Changxing Island

The term “non-linear” applies especially to this post. I have made 2 trips to Changxing island over a few weeks, both times armed only with black & white film. As usual, I would type out this blog post on my Nokia E71 and then combine and edit them on a Macbook when I’m back in the comforts of my living room. However, somehow I got the post on Hengsha up and I forgot about this one till March 2010. So here I am, working on getting it out of my clogged up draft box.

As I originally wrote: after Hengsha, it is only natural the next island on the Yangzi River Delta to visit would be Changxing island, a lot bigger than Hengsha and slightly to the west. Not the biggest of course, that honour would go to Chongming island, subject of a future trip which I planned but never got to carry out before this post went online. It is not too difficult to get to Changxing. Same bus or metro to Wusong port and a boat to Majiagang, which is the only pier on the island, I was told. There are a lot more boats to Majiagang than to Hengsha, and the same for the return trip, so it shouldn’t be any issue to get there and back and advanced ticket is not necessary.

There are not too much information about Changxing Island on the internet, at least not the English internet that I can search for. I was told that this island contains many orange farms, of the green skinned type. Lokam, some call it. Shanghainese would go there in their car in autumn and pick them, like a novelty item as if reminding them of the agricultural origins of Pudong. As the ferry passes by Changxing Island on the way to Hengsha, all I saw on Changxing was a lot of shipyards, so I have expectations of orchards, four-stroke tractors and shipyards.

Eventually I would spend a total of two weekends to survey two sections of the island, the middle  and the far western end. It would be total nuts to walk the whole island. Changxing is at least 30km long from one end to the other.

First Survey: 15 August 2009

Central Changxing Island hike

Tried to wake up early, as I expect a long long walk on Changxing. Left home at 0700hrs after packing my own lunch, as I don’t expect to waste time to look for a restaurant when on the island. After a quick breakfast, it was the usual bus 952 from People’s Square to Wusong port. At the Baoshan ticketing office, the next fast boat I could find was at 1000hrs. This means I have at least one and a half hours to waste at the waiting room. I plug in my iPod and Fring on my Nokia E71 and tried to get productive going through some podcasts.

Boarding time

Boarding the fast boat to Changxing Island

I have on me my old Lowepro Rover AW backpack, which I do not use too much anymore as I have found better alternatives. Inside is crammed with a Mamiya RZ67II medium format camera with 50mm and 127mm lenses. Originally I was thinking to bring 2 magazines and both black & white and colour film, but to cut down on the weight, it will be a black & white trip this time. Lunch went on the top of the bag, and the Sony PCM-D50 audio recorder in a pouch attached to the belt.  Navigation is provided by Garmin eTrex Vista, and backup with Nokia E71 running google maps in case I need to check if a path leads to dead-end or not.

Huangpu River traffic: Mainly barges

1043hrs: Arrived at Majiagang port. Took less than an hour to get here. This place is busier than google maps suggested. Leaving the port gates, we are all greeted by motorcycle taxies and minivan drivers, offering to have you anywhere on the island for a pittance. Too bad this trip is all walk for me, no cheating on any other type of transportation. Just about every car on this island is doubling as a makeshift bus or taxi. There are some roadside stalls selling dried salted fish (because you could smell it).

Everyone seems to live in houses here. Not small huts either, these are 2 storey bungalows. But it would not be fair to call these luxurious, but rather, standard houses you would find on a typical chinese rural community. Not really farm houses either. They all seem to have tiles on the outside, which brings the class down a notch or two in my opinion. But you are on an island, so maybe style is not the concern. The only minus about these houses is that the cars that travel on the 2 lane highway have their horns permanently set to honk all the time. To make things worse, they prepare to overtake half a kilometer a way.

One of the small township on the island. This is one of those 120 film rolls that got partly fogged because of user error. But came out quite artistic.

Came across this stockyard for bricks

So I set a course due north east and walked till I hit the coastline where I could see Chongming Island, cutting through villages and farms, and orange orchards. Its not east to be discrete when carrying a Mamiya RZ67 as it looks as though I’m there to hunt for wild boar. This camera is just too big! But I love the medium format negative that it produces.

1305hrs: Finally hit the coastline after having to cut through some plantation, helped by satellite maps from my mobile phone. Found a way to get to a bund, and now sitting on a ledge at N31.42274, E121.68030 having my packed sandwich while enjoying the view of the bridge that connects this island to the main Chongming Island. I have heard of a long bridge somewhere near Shanghai, and I didn’t know it was linking Changxing and Chongming Island. I don’t think the bridge is ready yet for traffic yet but it does look long as hell. There are plenty of wetlands plants here, swaying in the wind, with nice cooling wind blowing so that it is not too hot. Perfect peaceful time to spend half an hour on lunch and just relaxing before the trek back to Majiagang.

Walking along the dykes

... plenty of machinery left here, construction can be found everywhere. This one looks like a moon buggy.

Wide open plains, this is looking towards Chongming Island.

More construction workers

I think they're mixing cement here, found while walking through a village on the island

As expected, not all roads are paved on this island

It is quite common in China to see mobile phone numbers scribbled all over

A farm of some sort. For a while I thought it was grass, but I defer from making conclusions. Just makes a nice photo scenery.

1421hrs: Reached km0 of Fenghuang Highway, which should lead me straight back to Majiagang. The way back is just plenty of walking. Other than large breakwaters and dykes, majority of the island is mainly farmland. Not too many shops, so do stock up on tidbits and water before you venture out here. There are no restaurants that I have seen so far. They could be clustering around the Ferry Pier.

1530hrs: At Majiagang ferry terminal. No problem getting a ticket back to Wusong Port. The large waiting room at the terminal is noisy and full of locals. I don’t see any tourist today. Maybe this is a good sign.

Ferry waiting room

And there were plenty of seats in this waiting area...

1647hrs: Back in Wusong Port and hungry. Time to look for some dinner. It was a nice long walk today. Most of the trip was boring, but the northern shore of the island is perfect for a quiet picnic. What is better than a totally secluded place with only the occasional local and no tourists and best of all, quiet and has a great view of the Chongming Island bridge?

22 August 2009:

Western Changxing Island Hike

0800hrs: Back at wusong port queueing up for the day’s ferry ticket. Weather today is again forecasted rain but very very smoggy, but not worse than the typical smoggy Shanghai day. The ticket office seems emptier than normal which is strange. Bought a fast boat to Majiagang for 18 RMB, and like routine, went straight to waiting room 1&2. Boat number is 153, and I guess I will be at Majiagang before 1000 hrs.

Motorcycle taxies waiting for passengers to alight from an incoming ferry at Wusong Pier

Packed a Mamiya RZ67 and a Nikon S2 in my small 20L Arcteryx backpack so that I don’t look too much like I have heavy photographic equipment. Lunch today will be a few buns from last night. Should be enough to keep me going all day. Water will all be in a 2L Camelbak inside the backpack. Bringing a Goosen Luna Pro light meter and the Sony PCM D50 audio recorder with a 16GB memory stick, about the most modern thing I have currently. Navigation is via an old Garmin eTrex Vista backed up by google maps on the Nokia E71.

There are many boats going to Majiagang on Changxing Island, but for some reason when you purchase tickets there is only one time on the counter. Trying to fill up the next boat? The fast boats are always filled up it seems anyway. Not tried the slow boat on the way to Majiagang, with more seats it should be a lot more vacancies on those. However, time is something I do not have much of, so no slow boat going there.

Ah, just like a professional sailor...

On the way to Changxing

0937hrs: At Majiagang. With the smog, the view at the port is quite different from last week. The dry dock named Emei Shan seems to be sinking, at least by design so that the large ship being repaired there can leave the dry dock. Smoggy but sunny day, so guessing at least sunny f/16 minus 3 stops all day long.

1021hrs: Took a local illegal bus to a place to the west end of Changxing with a name I forgot but have the coordinates for. Stopped just in front of an army shophouse. Everyone inside are dressed in uniforms but wonder what they do here. There is a bus stop across the road and I noticed there is a bus that leads back to the pier every hour on the first quarter. Took note of it by snapping a picture with my mobile phone. Its time to take a walk… To the coastline!

Rural transporter

Farmhouses

This little bit of treeline cover helps sheltering me from the hot sun

... but it mostly looks like this.

New home in the middle of nowhere

But I prefer this one for "house in the middle of nowhere", but this one is anything but new. Notice the phone number scribbled on the wall.

There are giant breakwater dykes in this end of the island, and I’ll just follow it for a few kilometer. The big issue today is that it is very very hot. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it got close to 40C today in the hot sun. There are not too many trees out here for shelter, and the cemented path does not help either. I must have walked more than 10km by the time I got back to the place where I started. The scenery here is less of a wetland, as I originally thought from Google Earth, but more of large desolate landscape surrounded by concrete dykes. Good potential for simple landscape photography.

Landscape always looks better when shot in medium format

Road to nowhere. On the GPS it looks like a straight few km in the hot sun.

And finally, the elusive orange/lokum plantation

Time to walk back.

1354hrs: Back to the place I was left off. A public mini bus stands idle and the driver is sleeping inside. This has to be the 1415hrs bus back to Majiagang. Bus costs 3RMB. The one sitting here seems like the right one. Once the driver sees more than a person standing outside the bus he opens the door and turns on the aircon. The buses here do not seem to have number, they go by the destination displayed at the front, which is a bit of a problem for someone like me.

In the bus back to the pier

1426hrs: Back at Majiagang pier. Bought a fast boat ticket back at 18RMB leaving at 1545hrs. Which is just nice as this leaves me time to roam the pier looking for more things to explore. First up would be a visit to the waterfront to try to recreate the picture I took last week but lost because of a roll of fogged up film. Left my 127mm Mamiya lens at home today so unlikely I will get the same exact shot but will try.

Feel thirsty enough to crave a bottle of ice cold beer. But figured a bottle of sugared water would be a better choice considering I’ve probably lost quite a bit of salt through sweating today. Then its time go go into the boat waiting room, which is a 2 storey building. As with any transport area, you are greeted by a guard and an xray machine. I see that here no one puts their bag into the machine.

This guy distributes gas canisters for cooking. At the pier.

Waiting Room

Waiting room

The waiting room seems to smell of urine. I was wondering if the floor is the toilet, but I guess its the unkept public toilet up on the second floor where most passengers wait and board the boat. Its fine to wait here except for the chain smoking men up here. They smoke all the time, never do you see them without a stick in their mouth.

1621hrs: Back in Wusong Port. Greeted by illegal motorcycle transporters, but this is quite normal outside the big urban centres in China.

And I leave you with this shot of a chinese easy-rider...

*end*