New Year in Wat Traimit temple

This New Year’s Eve visited temple in Thailand. This is Wat Traimit temple not far from Bangkok station. Before New Year Bangkok city center near Central World gets very crowded. This temple is close to MRT and MRT was not crowded during evening. Therefore, my choice to see new year festivities by local eyes. Inside temple many people sitting around and on the stairs of temple. I walked around a bit and decided to wait for new year there. Before new year monks did a lot of talking and chanting. All people were connected with white ropes. These white ropes originated somewhere inside temple. Then clock hit 2400 and I could see fireworks on nearby river. I thought that’s very interesting that Thais also celebrate new year at 1st of January, after all their new year is in April. If you think about new year in Asia then each country has its own time – Japan in January, Korea, China and Vietnam celebrate Lunar New Year in February, Thailand – in April and so on. After start of new year everybody started to pull its rope and then the net of white ropes disappeared. Monks started to bless everybody with water. Soon after I left and felt that it was good experience. Happy New Year!

Tama Monorail Line

One of my favorite lines, because it goes to Tama Zoo and also it travels in hilly area. It starts at Tama Center station and the middle crosses very busy JR line Tachikawa. It even stops at North and South side of this big station. Further it travels over flat urban area till station Kamikitadai. I was filming rail switiching at this very last station - Kamikitadai.

Nanjing-Shanghai high speed train

I am trying out new train in China. Amazingly, inside and outside looks like Japanese shinkasen. Rail line was opened in year 2010 and top operational speeds are around 350km/h.

Train serves highly populated Yantzee river delta area, between stations Shanghai and Nanjing in Jiangsu province. Major stops are Shanghai (13m inhabitants), Suzhou (6m), Wuxi (4.5m), Changzhou (4.5m) and Nanjing (7m).



There are ticket vending machines in stations, but all foreigners need to buy ticket at station window and show passport. My suggestion is to make photocopy of Chinese visa, as photocopy is also valid. Staff will enter Chinese visa number on ticket.