[Could you find your way through the pictures of this village?]
I then went and wandered a bit. Our seems like one of the older sections of the village, although the guesthouse is new. Other areas had regular construction and little shops, often in briefly dormant construction sites. The entire village seems to be booming as a result of the relatively new road. My apparently outdated 2007 guidebook warned that you should be sure to bring up everything you need because there’d only be two stores available. That’s off by at least one order of magnitude now.
After making a small purchase and seeing Mick and Katie I headed off on my own as they were getting sucked into picture purchasing. Should only be a five minute walk and I had an extra fifteen minutes to spare. After about five minutes I realized I was lost. I increased my pace and tried to find landmarks, such as red lanterns opposite a building hanging corn, only to discover that those particular accessories were everywhere.
Aside from the balcony, I couldn’t figure out a single feature of my inn that made it different from any other area. I knew the rough part of town my inn was in but that proved insufficient as I managed to just cross by the same area repeatedly. Five minutes before we had to leave, ten minutes after I was suppose to be there, I finally discovered the spot. Managed to fall on my face on the stairs on the way out.
I still think the town is beautiful, but I think it suffers to a degree from strict fidelity to traditional building methods. There’s a lovely variety of elevations, streams, and the like. Chickens and ducks wander the streets. But the basic patterns are repeated again and again and aside from some old buildings and the primary school there’s very few landmarks. Most of that is just a result of rapid growth, but I missed the variety that white-wash, paint, and the like added to the traditional buildings on the road here. Hopefully with time the variety will return to the town.
Recent Comments