This pretty garden, originally laid out by a wealthy silk merchant, later became a popular beer garden. The small palace to which it belongs bears the name of the brewer who once had his brewery in its cellars and is still owned by his descendants.
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There is something about a tale of an abandoned city that tugs at the imagination, and this one is no different. Here among the remnants of an emperor’s glory you can still discover riches, and the sense of a world that existed only briefly and is long gone.
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There is a solidity to this church; it seems rooted in the soil from which it was built. Its thick walls with their jutting buttresses look more like a fortification than a place of worship, and its massive bulk seems completely out of proportion to the small community it was built to serve.
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Early morning, and the sun has just climbed above the volcanoes that encircle the lake. A fisherman in a rowing boat drifts slowly, checking the net that he hopes will have captured some fish overnight.
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A woman crouches beside the fast-flowing river, panning for gold. Hers is a simple life in a rural village, but success here could change it forever.
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A king and his queen are buried here, an unexpected sight in a country where much of ancient history has been forgotten, ignored, rewritten or even erased.
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The landscape here is a series of horizontal stripes in blue, green, beige and brown. It creates a calm backdrop for the flamingos as they feed, their pale pink feathers reflected in the still pools of water.
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Fog hangs low over the outlying islets, and huge tree trunks almost block our path to the beach, but it is worth the scramble for the wonderful photo opportunities that we find there.
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For many of us the colours red and green trigger memories of Christmas. Glossy holly leaves and berries, a beautifully decorated tree, Santa in his red suit, a pile of wrapped presents. But a questionably ugly reptile? Probably not – and yet ...
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Only in North Korea, I thought, could you have a day of sightseeing like this! It was the country’s National Day, marking the 71st anniversary of the founding of the DPRK, and our itinerary for the day had been carefully planned to allow us to see how Pyongyangites celebrated the occasion.
