The small village of Basha, tucked away in the mountains of south-east Guizhou, is a fantastic place to get a taste of ethnic Miao culture.

With the main street through town straddling a mountain ridge the village flows down either side.  Many women continue to wear traditional clothing, with males carrying on the ancient practice of winding their long hair up into a top-knot and shaving the sides of their heads.

Officially the village has an entrance fee which usually indicates lots of tourists, however these are likely to be day-trippers.  Stay overnight in a small guesthouse and you will often not see another person.  You will also be able to wander the stone pathways in the early morning amongst the bamboo and wooden stilt houses that cling to the mountain-sides as mist swirls through the valleys.  An awesome way to get a real taste of village life.

There is nothing I love more as a traveller than hanging out at markets.  Always a hive of activity they are a place where you will find real life – real people doing real things!

Nowadays, people often talk about how the number of shots they take with a digital camera has increased substantially compared to the old film days.  Well in the markets of the ethnic minority areas of northern Vietnam back in 1999 I managed to easily burn through 8 or 10 rolls of film in a couple of hours.  Some fast and furious shutter clicking – which did seem a little obscene back then.

The colour of the traditional dress for the Flower Hmong was just brilliant with vibrant pinks, blues and greens, while the Black Hmong wore deep indigo and the Tay often wear a shirt (differing colours for various areas and tribes) with indigo trousers – the PaDi with the triangle style hats in the images also belong to the Tay ethnic group.

This gallery contains a collection of images originally shot using mostly Fuji Velvia colour slide film which have been digitally converted to black and white.    Most were taken at Can Cau and Muong Khong markets, with images in the fields shot on the outskirts of Bac Ha and the Black Hmong in the mountains outside of Sapa.

The colour images are gorgeous and are posted separately (click here to see), however I find it is easy to get lost in the vibrant colour.  The black and white allows me to appreciate the all the detail of the image – the people, the location and the traditional dress.

I love all the excitement that comes with a lion dance.   Hearing that familiar pounding drum and the clashing of the cymbals is enough to get the adrenaline flowing.

In Guangzhou recently I was lucky enough to come across a lion dance out the front of a temple and even luckier to get a front row position when they did a second impromptu performance.  Lion dancing can be vigorous activity and these guys were swapping out for a rest each few minutes, but this also meant that the performance lasted for around 20 minutes.

Hailing from Southern Vietnam the Cai Dai religion is a feast of colourful kitsch.  Its saints include Sun Yat-sen, Victor Hugo and Vietnamese Poet, Nguyen Binh Khiem, while its beliefs and teachings seem to be a bit of a mish-mash of Buddhism, Catholicism and Taoism – the vibrant robes of red, yellow and blue are said to represent and in a way pay homage to each.

These images were taken at the church’s principal location, the Holy See in Tay Ninh just a couple of hours from Saigon.  Unfortunately, we had pretty average weather with a bit of rain before dawn and overcast skies for the early morning service, however the people were incredibly welcoming and the church filled with intriguing detail.

As I am unfortunately not in China for this year’s holiday I thought I should drag a selection of last year’s shots out of the archive.

While often you see dragon boats racing up and down in straight lines, similar to a rowing regatta which is all very orderly and organised, the event I attended last year out in Hangzhou near Shanghai was pretty much the total opposite.

Boats raced around a tangle of streams within the Xixi wetlands in what seemed to me to be absolute disarray.   Rowing in sync to the pounding of drums and clashing of symbols, thousands of onlookers jam-packed into every possible vantage point and cheered as boats looked to randomly come up against each other in a challenge.   Fast and frantic action would ensue for an undefined period of time.

At least three boats capsized within an hour as the downward pressure of the crews furiously dragging their oars through the water resulted in some being unable to recover and ending up totally inundated.  There were also times when traffic just got all jammed up, it took a little while to clear things and get moving again but I guess this is typical of any form of transport in China!

To find out more on the history of this holiday, click here to check out the blog post I wrote after attending the event last year.

If you ever have the opportunity to get to one of these types of dragon boating festival events, persevere with the crowds and make the effort as it is definitely an entertaining event.

Flower Hmong Girl

This gorgeous little Flower Hmong girl from Northern Vietnam just has the most amazing and emotive facial expression in this shot!

We were wandering about the area near Bac Ha one afternoon some 11 years ago, the golden light was bathing the countryside making for simply incredible views.   To add to the already very photogenic conditions villagers were all traditionally dressed and just going about the business of farming.

This was the first in a series of days where we were privileged to visit some of the most remote and authentic communities I have ever experienced.

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