I recently read Alain de Botton's beautiful book "The Art of Travel" for our Travel Book Club, and was struck by his thoughts on the importance of curiosity while traveling. De Botton maintains that guidebooks dilute our own curiosity, and in fact make us guiltily obedient rather than personally involved. There is nothing like Asia for forcing out of travel complacency, shoehorning us out of our expectation that our guidebook can explain our experience. Our senses, our wonder, those become the driving train of travel when in a destination like Asia.

Here are photos that made us stop and wonder aloud, to ponder and reflect, to question how much we'd ever really known while even the rising moon looked different as it quivered through the ginger scented air.  

(photo gazing hint: click on the first photo and then scroll through that way you are seeing the photos and also the captions in lightbox format)