Photo a Day, Vietnam, Day 5

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Sa Pa is a border town in Lào Cai province northwest of Hanoi on the Chinese frontier. The far eastern edge of the Himalayas reaches here. Views to Vietnam’s highest mountain, Fan Si Pan (3143 meters), are often obscured by cloud. Sa Pa is the center of a busy trekking industry and home to a number of ethnic minorities.

We’re counting down the days until a new three+ month round the world trip, first stop, Saigon. A photo a day from Vietnam meanwhile. I’ll gather all these photos day by day here, on Earthphotos.com.

Photo a Day, Vietnam, Day 4

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After a journey of 4000+ kilometers from the Himalayas, spreading out south of Ho Chi Minh City, the Mekong River splits into multiple branches. “The Vietnamese refer to it as Cuu Long, meaning ‘nine dragons’.”

We’re counting down the days until a new three+ month round the world trip, first stop, Saigon. A photo a day from Vietnam meanwhile. I’ll gather all these photos day by day here, on Earthphotos.com.

Saunas on wheels1 / Saunas sobre ruedas1 / Saunas sur roues1 / Saunas com rodas1

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Saunas on wheels in Finland, via Sartenada’s blog.

Travels in Finland and abroad by Sartenada

In English:

Holy smoke – Gathering of mobile Saunas. Part1.

Can You imagine that there exist Saunas on wheels? Can You imagine that they meet every summer? I guess that nobody. Since 2005 in Teuva there has been organized mobile Sauna gathering. In 2016 they were cancelled. When You see my photos, You might say in Your mind that ‘they are crazy those Finns’. Imagination has been free when planning and building mobile Saunas. Delightful is that the idea had spread abroad, which was touchable, because there were also Saunas, from Poland, Italy and Germany. My post is in two parts.

Many Saunas were warmed up, because smoke was coming from chimneys and afternoon there were possibility to have a Sauna in them.

Teuva – where? Nearby the western coast in south Ostrobothnia. Distance from Helsinki is 381 km / 267 mi and from Oulu 404 km / 251 mi…

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Road Trip Photo a Day

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Our countdown is on now toward a three month+ round the world trip starting in mid-April. I’ll be traveling with my wife, the fearless Finn Mirja Murray. She and I will set out next month bound first for Saigon, ATL-IAD-BJS-Saigon. We’ve rented an apartment for three weeks:

It’s just off Le Loi and just above the Ben Thanh Market. We are coming from the ethnic food-constrained southern Appalachians and looking forward to eating well. Destinations beyond Saigon are up in the air for now. While we’re in Vietnam we hope to get up to Hue for a look at the work my friend Chuck Searcy is doing with Project RENEW. Chuck says, “A visit there brings into sharp focus the continuing legacies of the war that we’re trying to mitigate, unexploded bombs and mines (UXO) and Agent Orange / dioxin.”

Our ultimate mission is to make it to Finland by the time it’s summer there, sometime in June. We have a mökki, a cottage by the lake there. We’ll have to work out the route between Southeast Asia and Northern Europe. Just now I’m keen on flying HAN-IST-Tbilisi and enjoying some fine Georgian hospitality while we wait another few weeks for Finland to warm up, but that is subject to, even likely to change. Any other suggestions?

Meanwhile, from now to then, we’ll try to post a photo a day from previous trips to Vietnam on Twitter, where I am @BMurrayWriter, please follow, and all the photos we post will propagate day by day on Earthphotos.com, too, at this URL: https://www.earthphotos.com/Other/Around-the-World-Slowly-2019/.

This is a wide open, open ended trip. Please help us by lending your expertise. Do weigh in. Or, if you’re local in any of our destinations, please allow me to buy you a beer.