IAN LIPTON

My previous posts from Cambodia focused on the temples near Siem Reap. This makes sense because that is where some of the most spectacular and most accessible temples are. But, one of the nice things about hiring local photographers to show you the ropes is that they tend to know about or can get you to places that you would never be able to get to on your own. I owe a huge amount of credit for this post to the folks at Peace of Angkor because without them I would never have

Way back in September of 2014 my father came to visit while I was living in Shanghai, China. He was going to be with me for two weeks so we decided to take a trip somewhere else in Asia for a few days. We settled on Cambodia, specifically Siem Reap, mostly because I have wanted to see Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples for a very long time. This post and the ensuing series will chronicle that trip and the amazing things we saw and, of course, photographed. I should start

When you think about traveling around China there are basically two things that come to mind, pandas and terracotta warriors. We checked box number one pretty early on in our Month of Travels (if you missed it you can check out those lovable goofballs HERE). It only makes sense that as we near the end of our trip we check box number two. So, off we flew from the west on our way to Xi'an in Shaanxi province [MAP]. Xi'an has a ton of history, it was the capital of a number of d

We got on a bus to leave Rebkong and insodoing left the last small town on our journey through the Amdo region (don't worry, not the last stop on this trip). Our destination was Xining (she-ning) [MAP] the capital of Qinghai province. We didn't stick around in Xining for too long this time because our next destination was the town of Zhangye (jang-yuh). Why Zhangye, you ask? Because just outside of this town is something called the rainbow mountains (google it, or better yet,

After leaving Xiahe probably a bit too early, our next stop on the journey was Rebkong (also known as Tongren). This brought us to our third province on the trip (Qinghai [ching-hī]) and the last stop before we would get to a major city for the first time since leaving Chengdu. The major draw of Rebkong was not necessarily the beautiful monastery, but festival just outside of town. The Klurol (Lurol) festival lasts for three days and seeks to appease the mountain gods and to

Just in case you've missed any of the earlier installments you can check them out here: Part 1 Part 2: Chengdu Part 3: Jiuzhaigou - Songpan When we last left off we were spending some quality time hiking around the hills of Songpan in Sichuan Province. Our next stop on the journey was a small stopover town called Zoige (Ruo’ergai in Tibetan). Wrapped up in here is a story about how we almost got stranded in the middle of nowhere with no money because ATMs out in the aforement

Before we get started, if this is your first time, check out parts 1 and 2 here: A Month In China Part 1 A Month in China Part 2: Chengdu On our last morning in Chengdu, we woke up early and took a cab to the bus station to buy tickets for Jiuzhaigou [MAP] (pronounced jew-jĪ-go). Jiuzhaigou is a national park in northern Sichuan Province known for its beautiful blue-green lakes. If you Google around and try to find places to photograph in China you'd be hard pressed not to no

I spent almost all of 2014 living in Shanghai, China. My girlfriend (Tali) decided to do a study abroad as part of her master's degree and I decided this would be my last chance to pretend like I'm not an adult so I up and went with her. We promised ourselves that while we were in China we would take full advantage and travel as much as possible. This was harder, but not impossible, to do while she was actively taking classes, but we wanted to take full advantage of the fact