My trip to Papua New Guinea was the perfect way to start 2011.

These photos were taken on a fish-eye lens from a canoe going down the Sepik River – the Sepik is one of the world’s greatest rivers and is over 1200km in length. The greener shot is looking out over the fjords in Tufi.

PNG was a magical place, every bit as special as I’d imagined it could be. I especially loved the endlessly changing sky.

Kat Hing Wai (吉慶圍), a walled village in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

It is home to about 400 descendants of the Tang clan, who built the wall in the early 1600s to protect their village from bandits.

Today, most of the homes inside have been renovated but the six-metre thick wall still remains. The gate to the village is guarded by an entrepreneurial crowd of old women, who pose in traditional fringed hats for $HK20.

The village is in an area known as Kam Tin (錦田) which can be accessed via the Kam Sheung Road station. We took a double-decker bus to get home, via Tai Po Market - it’s an interesting journey that goes quite close to the Chinese border, and meanders through rural and industrial areas.

Currently in Hong Kong, enjoying the sights and sounds of the Lunar New Year celebrations for 2011, year of the rabbit.

Photos include shots of migrant workers waiting in Shenzhen for the long train journey back to their homes and families; HK residents celebrating the new year with offerings of incense and food at the Sha Tin Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas; and Hong Kong Harbour lit up with messages for the new year.

Painting Elephants in Udaipur

“Come in Miss, come in! I show you to paint with a squirrel hair!”

A man stands in the doorway of a tiny art shop, grinning at me. It’s only just breaking light here in Udaipur, the city of lakes in India’s northwestern region of Rajasthan. The cobbled streets are almost deserted and there’s a slight fog, making the maze-like alleyways down near the ghats seem more magical than usual.

I hesitate. Stacked in frames against the front window of the shop are beautiful paintings, none bigger than a postcard. Each artwork is a detailed glimpse into the wonders of Rajasthani culture: palaces, forts, lakes, snarling tigers, and dancing serpents.

But after a month of travelling in India, I am more than a little cynical about grinning men. I start to walk on.

“No sell, I provide you art class!”

They say there’s a sucker born every minute, and when you’re travelling, you are re-born every day. So, I give in to India yet again and turn around, squeezing myself and my backpack through the narrow entrance and down some chipped white stairs.

Read the rest over at Trespass.

These brilliant snapshots are of the first Australasian Expedition to the Antarctic which departed Hobart in 1911. Led by Dr Douglas Mawson, the group of scientists visited Macquarie Island and undiscovered regions of Antarctica.

James Francis (Frank) Hurley was the official photographer, but other members of the crew also took pictures.

Oh! What I would give to be an explorer living in black-and-white pictures… definitely daydream-worthy material.

The beautiful photography of Haran Kumar.

So so so excited about my trip to India - I leave in exactly one month !!!!!

..it reminds me of arriving tired and alone at Anchorage airport in Alaska, very early one morning last August.

I was just waking up and it felt like I was walking into a dream or an enchanted sleep where I might just disappear over the horizon once the plane was off the ground..

At lunch today with a friend who might be going to study in Ottawa next year (!!), I’ve since been sent along a rather nostalgic path that’s etched into my mind as endless snow trails and glacial mountain crevasses.

I know nostalgia is entirely unproductive but oh! i do miss Canada.

a fish-eye view of some of the delights of my travels in Seoul, Korea..

and oh! i miss eating and making kimchi.. that strong smell of garlic, the vivid blood red of chili-stained cabbage, the gleaming eyes of fish spawn winking at me from the bowl…. gruesome maybe, but with some green tea, an absolutely wonderful way to enjoy a meal! i wish it was socially appropriate for me to eat with my fingers all the time..