Pieces of Me: Swaziland

Apr 23, 2011

Reflection

One of my favourite 'must shoot' scenary would be reflections.

Reflections could be from the water (which are most of my photos), glass, mirrors, etc.

What so special of photographing a mirror image of a subject? Just check out the photos and see.

The photo which started it all
Florence, Italy 2008

And also from this
Zaans Schans, Holland 2008

Versallies Palace, France 2008

Stockholm, Sweden 2009

Nile river sunrise, Egypt 2009

The Parliament at Bern, Swiss 2009

townhall at Basel, Swiss 2009

Pamukkale, Turkey 2009

Copenhagen, Denmark 2009

View of the Frederiskborg Castle, Denmark 2009

Nyhavn at Copenhagen, Denmark 2009

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2010

Inside the Alcazar garden
Seville, Spain 2009

Alhambra, Granada Spain 2009

And of course my most famous picture
Lake Titicaca, Peru 2009

Yosemite National Park, USA 2007

During the highland tour, Scotland 2008

View from my safari lodge
Kruger Park, South Africa 2010

Kruger Safari, South Africa 2010

Swaziland 2010

View from the cable car
Lantau Island, Hong Kong 2010

Wan Chai harbour, Hong Kong 2010

Storm, my cousin's dog
CNY 2011

Dec 2, 2010

The Swazi Land (21-23 June 2010)

Swazi 'lalangs'

Kingdom of Swaziland is a small African country landlocked in the South Africa. From the Safari, we drove to Swaziland and it’s a pity that our tasty and juicy oranges were confiscated by the Swazi custom. We spend 3 days in Swaziland staying a typical Swazi bee hive hut inside the Mlilwane Game Reserve. It was definitely once in a lifetime experience as the two nights we spend there were the coldest and we had to steal blankets and pillows from our guide's room. We had the coldest shower ever and its outside from our hut as the shower and the toilet were separate built. I still remember while showering, I could feel the chill wind blowing and the shower stopped producing hot water.

sunset view on the way into Kingdom of Swaziland

mirror lake??

view of the ceiling

bee hive hut

The next day, we spend the time going to the candle factory for a peek on how the Swazi's hand made the beautifully crafted items. The candles were colourful, cute and took on the animal shape. They demonstrate the way to make those candles and we bought some of the candles, mine was a cute brown and yellowish black hippo at a discounted price!

colourful candles

showing us how it was made

market outside the factory

chilling out at the cafe drinking milo

It was in Swaziland, I had my first horse ride which my stupid horse keep eating grass every 5 minutes and was not following the lead of the rest of the horses. We spend some time hiking around the vast land behind our bee hive hut and May and I started to snap pictures of ‘lalang’ non stop all because she was extremely obsessed with them after looking at her friend’s photo of lalang in Broga Hill!

doing the super Mario jump

my horse which keep eating grass every 5 mins

The next day was spent going to the cultural village and it was awesome! We danced, laughed, and giggled at our tour guide, Cunnie trying to imitate the tribe dances. The tribe was headed by a woman who took over her deceased husband post as the chief tribe. According to Cunnie, she took in orphans around Swaziland and took care of them. The children were happy to see us although we could not communicate much, we had a good time.