Bukit Bintang is an upscale shopping district located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Compared to many of the areas we've walked through in this series, it is very nice looking. The place is lively, with a lot of shops, restaurants, cafes, and food stalls.
This video takes place in Borneo. It is shrimp season, so they travel down a river to get some shrimp and then return to their home, which is in a long building divided into apartments. They grill and pan fry the shrimp and enjoy their dinner. After eating they relax on the patio area in front of their apartment and then take a walk through the village.
If you want to get some sense of what they are talking about you'll need to turn on Captions>Auto-translate>English. Much of what you'll get will be gibberish, but you can follow along here and there.
A Ukrainian fellow takes a walk in the old city district of Surabaya on Java. Good video. There is a festival going on, and as a result a lot of chaos. Noise, shows, people milling about, and lot of cosplay. The people are also very friendly, a lot of them smile at the camera man, wave, and greet him.
At one point a group people taking a picture with a banner called him over to be in the photo. That reminded me of a story from my sailor days. We were on a port visit to Keelung in Taiwan. For a joke somebody called the captain and trolled him by claiming they were planning a race riot that night. That got the wardroom worked up and so they decided they had to do something to head off the mayhem.
I was on duty, so they assigned me to shore patrol with a black guy. I guess us harmoniously being together would snap everybody out of their prejudiced frenzy, or something. Well, we didn't want to do anything -- either get in the midst of a race riot or bother our shipmates at all -- so we basically hid the entire night.
At one point we were wandering around a hotel and opened a door to their meeting room. To our surprise a Chinese wedding reception was taking place in the room. Embarrassed, we tried to back out, but they were delighted to see us and rushed over to invite us in. They ended up stuffing us with food and drink. Yea, that wasn't exactly part of our shore patrol duties, but we were building rapport with the locals, right?
At any rate, at one point we ended up flanking the bride and groom as they took wedding pictures with us in them. To this day it amuses me that somewhere in Taiwan there is a wedding photo album with me inside of it. I wonder what stories they tell about that?
This is a walk through Hanga Roa, the main town on Easter Island (Rapa Nui). The town, such as it is, is small, but very well-tended and attractive. The walk starts in a residential area, works its way down to the coast, and then returns. The island is very touristy, with snorkeling, and of course the giant Moai heads, being the primary attraction. Easter island has had troubles with Chinese fishing fleets illegally denuding their waters which has required Chilean coastguard intervention.
Two astronauts, Peggy Whitson and Shane Kimbrough, exit ISS to fiddle about doing this and that. Seeing the station up close is interesting, we're used to seeing cheesy and rather plain movie sets with astronauts clomping around on them in magnetic 'gravity' boots or dangling from wires to simulate weightlessness, but the actual surface is quite detailed. The amount of external cabling surprised me, and I imagine it would horrify IT network engineer types with its sometimes rather haphazard looking routing. Also, since gravity isn't an issue, the station spreads out in a far more organic manner, with the modules, solar panels, and what-not laid out as needed.
There was, in a couple of shots, what looked like debris of some sort that was orbiting in proximity of the station. Were I ever to do an ISS spacewalk, that debris would probably include my space suited body when I forgot to secure my safety harness properly and floated away to my doom.
I gave it my 'walking in cities' tag. There is no city, and for that matter no walking, but it's close enough I guess.
Zamboanga City is in the southern Philippines. The walk starts in a market area and wends its way to the city center. The video was photographed nicely, without all the aimless camera pans you can get in these types of videos.
I did like seeing the jeepneys in the city center area. Jeepneys are a wildly painted means of semi-official public transportation that I always identify as being unique to the Philippines. Their decorations mix religious and secular iconography, often with the sacred heart of Jesus next to a Playboy centerfold. They're quite an experience to ride in.
Rosario is a village in the Cavite province of the Philippines. It is a fishing village, which both catches and processes fish. In the past it had the reputation of being a rough area, with a lot of local gang activity. As you can see in the walk, although there is no overt hostility, there are a fair number if hard looking characters keeping a close eye on the camera man.
The village is very basic looking, with shacks mixed in with simple concrete block buildings. The beach, with the small fishing boats pulled up onto it, is very scenic.
The Shilin Night Market is one of the night markets in Taipei, Taiwan. A night market in an area where streets have been closed off and it is full of food stalls, merchant stands, activities for children and young couples. They are very social places where friends and families can gather to talk, eat, browse, and get some night air.
The markets are very pleasant. I've been to several, including the one pictured above, and always enjoyed myself at them. Then again, aside from my home, Taiwan is probably my favorite spot on the Earth. Many fond memories of the place. Hopefully the CCP will be thwarted from screwing it up like they do everywhere they get their hands on.
This is a walk in Bandung, a provincial capital on the island of Java in Indonesia. The walk is though the downtown commercial area which is clean and well maintained. I think it is a bit of a local tourist destination. At one point you see a lot of people in costumes, mostly ghosts. I'm not sure what that was all about.
This is an afternoon walk in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. Thimphu is in a river valley, but it is high in the mountains (7,000 - 8,500 feet) making it one of the highest capitals in the world. The mountains in the background combined with the skyscape are quite striking.
The city itself is very clean and well maintained. The architecture and decorative flourishes are very attractive. For the most part the people do not dress in western style clothes, instead the women wear an ankle length dress called a kira, and the men a gho which is a sort of robe that reaches to just above the knees.
The city is comparatively very quiet, with little traffic or crowd noise, which gives it a very tranquil feeling.
This is a video of a walk through downtown La Paz, Bolivia. It starts out on a touristy looking street with shops selling colorful local fabrics, guitars, crafts, and the like. There are also a lot of shops dedicated to hiking. I suppose one of the draws of Bolivia is hiking in the mountains. As my regular readers will guess, my passion for conveyor belt sidewalks will preclude me from taking part in that activity until they install some conveyor belt nature trails.
He moves through the streets and eventually ends up in a public square. He filmed it during the Christmas season, and so there a lot of elaborate Christmas displays in the square. It is a lively looking place, with some nice old buildings mixed in.
This is walk through downtown Singapore including its Chinatown district. He wanders through a lot of narrow side streets. A nice, well kept looking area. The murals are impressive.
Santa Tecla is a provincial capital in El Salvadore. This is a dusk walk through its downtown area. The neighborhood is full of shops, restaurants, stalls and bars. It is a lively looking place.
Occasionally he places music in the soundtrack. I'm not sure if this is to prevent a copyright strike from music playing in the bars, or to drown out an inappropriate conversation, or just eccentricity by the YouTuber. Regardless, the music is nice, so it isn't too annoying.
This is a bit of a different 'walking in cities' video. An Australian expat, at least I'm guessing his accent is Australian, is driving through the interior of Laos to his home with his wife and adopted daughter. He seems quite affable and at ease as a resident of Laos. I have no idea what he does to make a living.
The video starts with them on the road, passing villages and encountering a lot of trucks. Eventually they stop in the small city of Phou Khoun where they intend to spend the night. He shows us their room in the guest house, and later they go out to eat in a local restaurant and to visit old friends where he hears some sad news.
Because of the Great Firewall China controls what is posted on Western platforms. China carefully curates it image, preferring to portray themselves as sparkling and modern. Hence the endless shots of high-speed rail, robot delivery vehicles, brand new buildings and so forth.
Logic tells you there is something Potemkin-villagey about all that. Aside from that, a lot of Chinese street videos are nothing more than collections of pretty Chinese girls aimed at Western simps, so finding a good walking in cities video was a bit of a challenge.
The above is a walk through what appears to be middle class neighborhood in Wuhan, China (insert your own covid joke here). I think it is morning, the shop keepers are setting up their stalls and storefronts. He wanders through several streets and alleys. One thing that is striking, a lot of the vehicles and almost all of the scooters are electric, so the traffic sound is much quieter.
As an aside, the video was posted about a month ago. Since then, the upper Yangtze River basin has had a lot of rain and experienced heavy flooding. The Wuhan riverside area was flooded, and some of the interior streets as well.
This is a different walking in cities post in that this is a walk through an abandoned city. Instead of a mass of locals, we are in a mass of tourists. Petra is in southern Jordan and much of it was carved out of the cliffsides of the canyons that surrounded it. It utilized an elaborate system of cisterns to store water which made it a sort of artificial oasis. It was in the vicinity of trade routes, so for a time it was a relatively affluent city, although at its height it only had a population of around 20,000 people.
The above video gives you an idea of the canyons it sits in, below is a longer video showing more of the city and its surrounding area.
David sits astride the Pan-American highway in western Panama. It is primarily an agricultural hub, but other investment monies are strengthening its economy. As you can see from the walk, it looks like a well-tended and solidly middle-class city. I imagine that there is a fair number of expat retirees who have moved there.
A woman, who had married a person from another village and who's much older now, returned for a funeral. This is how her relatives gather to say goodbye to her when she leaves again. It is an elaborate ceremony, featuring prayers, singing a hymn, speechifying and drinking a fair amount of kava and grog. Large parts of it are in English.
This is from the YouTube channel of Uraia Tabua, He has a lot of other videos documenting everyday life in Fiji.
This video is a walk through a market in eastern Nepal. It is a weekend rather than a daily market, so I suspect it is much more of a social event than regular daily shopping. It certainly is crowded, and the crowd is cheerful and energetic.
Terraced farming lends itself to some amazing photos. They're usually taken from a distance so you can see the full hillsides covered with terraces. This video is a walk through some Indonesian paddies. It gives a good look at them up close and gives an idea of the engineering and labor needed to build them, much less raise the crops.
