Last spring I visited the Kansai Region of Japan for a whirlwind five day tour of Wakayama, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. Along the way I stopped at Fushimi Inari Taisha 伏見稲荷大社, one of the most popular and photogenic attractions in Kyoto. I seldom engage in conventional tourism but couldn’t resist the sight of thousands of torii leading up the mountainside. Here are a few photos from my time there.

Collected here are a series of dreamlike photos from a road trip into the misty mountains of Lugu in Nantou, central Taiwan. I undertook this trip with a friend in July 2014. Our goal was the Lotus Forest 忘憂森林 (pinyin: Wàngyōu Sēnlín), also known as the Misty Forest 迷霧森林, a high mountain bog formed in the aftermath of the catastrophic 921 earthquake when a landslide altered drainage patterns, forming a small lake and drowning part of the existing forest. At an elevation somewhere close to 2,000 meters, the Lotus Forest is often shrouded in thick fog, imbuing it with an eerie mystique that attracts Taiwanese people from all over the island.

Yínhédòng 銀河洞 (literally “Milky Way Cave”) is an extraordinary cliffside temple next to a gorgeous waterfall in the mountains just outside of Taipei. Originally founded in 1914 and extensively renovated in 1958, the temple recently celebrated its centennial, as proclaimed by the red banner draped out front during my first visit in February 2014. In a story that sounds entirely apocryphal, the cave was reputedly a hideout for Chén Qiūjú 陳秋菊, a Shenkeng resident who famously led a rebellion in the earliest years of the Japanese colonial era.

After the seething chaos of Bangkok I travelled south to spend a few days relaxing in Ao Nang, a small town in the province of Krabi, Thailand. I had expected to find tranquil paradise by the beach based on what I read online, particularly down around Railay, which is only accessible by longboat, but everywhere I went was massively crowded and overdeveloped. Still, I managed to take some good photos of the natural beauty of Krabi, as well as a handful of cool temples and shrines, pictured below.