3185 SINGAPORE (Central Region) - Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum

Located in the Chinatown district of Singapore, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum is based on the Tang dynasty architectural style and built to house the tooth relic of the historical Buddha. The ground breaking ceremony was conducted on 13 March 2005. It is claimed that the relic of Buddha from which it gains its name was found in 1980 in a collapsed stupa in Myanmar. The relic is housed in a giant stupa weighing a whopping 3500kg and made from 320kg of gold, of which 234kg were donated by devotees.

3184 NORWAY - Greetings from Norway

Norway is an unitary monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula plus the remote island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard. The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. It covers an area of 385,252 square kilometres, and has a population of 5,258,317 (January 2017). The country shares borders with Sweden, Finland and Russia, and the Skagerrak strait separates it from Denmark.  Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea.

3182 FRANCE (Saint Barthélemy) - Colombier Beach

Located in the northwestern part of the island, Colombier Beach is a secluded beach - an entire bay area only accessible by boat or foot. It is a lovely white sand beach lined with vegetation, and the only building which can be seen from there is the home of billionaire David Rockefeller, origin of the development of a high-end tourism in Saint-Bartholomew. L'Anse de Colombier is now part of the natural marine reserve of Saint Barthemlemy.

2538, 2571, 3180 UNITED STATES - Plains Indian Feathered War Bonnets

2538

Posted on 10.05.2016, 23.05.2016, 27.10.2017
When the average person think of an American Indian man, he usually pictures him as wearing a large eagle feather war bonnet. This stereotype has become so widespread that nowadays even the Indians themselves have taken it up, and members of tribes who never used the headgear in aboriginal times now wear it on occasions when white people expect them to "look like Indians". Much confusion exists, even among anthropologists, as to the symbolism, use and distribution of the various types of feathered bonnets worn by the Plains Indians.

2571

Native American tribes consider the presentation of an eagle feather to be one of their highest marks of respect. Any honored person must have earned their feather through selfless acts of courage and honour, or been gifted them in gratitude for their work or service to their tribe. The esteem attached to eagle feathers was so high that in many cases, such as a warrior (e.g. Dog Soldiers of the Cheyenne), only two or three honour feathers might be awarded in their whole lifetime. Roman Nose, one of the most influential Cheyenne warriors, was known for his illustrious warbonnet that was said to protect him during battle.

3180

Plains Indians normally use eagle feathers as the most significant part of the bonnet to represent honor and respect. Some Plains-style bonnet forms are the "horned" bonnet, "flaring" eagle feather bonnet, and the "fluttering feather" bonnet. The "horned" bonnet can consist of a buckskin skull cap, shaved bison or cow horns, and dyed horsehair with bunches of owl feathers beneath the skull cap. The "flaring" eagle feather bonnet is often made of golden eagle tail feathers connected to a buckskin or felt crown. There are slits at the base of the crown that allow the bonnet to have a "flaring" look.

3179 POLAND (West Pomerania) - Kołobrzeg Lighthouse

Located on the Polish coast of the Baltic Sea, on the right bank of the river Parsęta, at the entrance to the port of Kołobrzeg, Kołobrzeg Lighthouse is 26m tall, with a range of its light glare of 29.6 km. Its history dates back to 1666. In WWII it was blown up by German engineers as it was a good look-out point for the Polish artillery in March 1945. After the war it was built at a slightly different location from the original, using the foundations of the fort buildings complex; located close by to the town.

3178 POLAND (Mazovia) - Warsaw

3178 Warsaw: 1. View of the Castle Square;
2. Łazienki Park - Palace on the Isle (south façade);
3. Wilanów Palace; 4. Dmowski Roundabout

The legend attributes the Warsaw name to a fisherman Wars and his wife Sawa, a mermaid who lived in the Vistula River and who Wars fell in love with. Nice legend, but actually Warsz was a 12th/13th century nobleman who owned a village located at the site of today's Mariensztat neighbourhood. Unlike other old cities of Poland, as Krakow or Poznan, Warsaw is a relatively young city, which really became important in 1596, when King Sigismund III Vasa moved the court from Kraków to Warsaw.

3177 BULGARIA (Ruse) - Basarbovo Monastery

Basarbovo Monastery (the Monastery of Saint Dimitar Basarbowski) - is a Bulgarian-orthodox cave monastery situated in the picturesque valley of the Roussenski Lom River, at 10km from Ruse, in north-eastern Bulgaria. It was established during the period of the Bulgarian-Wallachian Empire, but its name was mentioned for the first time in a Turkish tax register in 1431. Saint Dimitar Basarbovski was born in 1685 in the nearby village of Basarbovo, but he has spent whole his life in the monastery.

3176 ROMANIA (Braşov) - Bran Castle

Located not far from Brașov, on the former border between Transylvania and Wallachia, Bran Castle is often erroneously referred to as the home of the title character in Bram Stoker's Dracula, although has only tangential associations with Vlad the Impaler, voivode of Wallachia, the putative inspiration for Dracula. In 1212, Teutonic Knights built the wooden castle of Dietrichstein as a fortified position in the Burzenland at the entrance to the Rucăr-Bran Pass, but in 1242 it was destroyed by the Mongols.

3045, 3175 VIETNAM - Hmong people

3045 A Hmong little girl with her bird

Posted on 10.05.2017, 23.10.2017
The Hmong is an ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China (where is considered a sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity), Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. The Hmong began a gradual southward migration in China in the 18th century due to political unrest and to find more arable land. During the first and second Indochina Wars, France and the United States' Central Intelligence (CIA) recruited thousands of Hmong people in Laos, to fight against forces from north and south Vietnam and the communist Pathet Lao insurgents.

3175 Hmong girls with water buffalo in Sa Pa

Following the war, hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees fled to Thailand to seek political asylum. Thousands of these refugees have resettled in Western countries in two separate waves. The first wave resettled in the late 1970s, mostly in the United States, but also in Australia, France, Canada, Argentina, and French Guiana (about the community from French Guiana I wrote here). Others have returned to Laos under United Nations-sponsored repatriation programs. About the communities from French Guiana I wrote here. The second wave resettled mainly in the U.S. since 2004.

1851, 3174 SINGAPORE (Central Region) - Fort Canning

3174 The Gate of Fort Canning

 

Between 1859 and 1861, a fort was build on a small hill located in the southeast portion of Singapore, to defend the harbour. It was named Fort Canning after Viscount Charles John Canning, who was then Governor-General and the first Viceroy of India. The fortifications were regarded as a failure from the beginning, as ships could easily get close enough to destroy the town and remain out of range of the fort’s guns. Moreover the lack of a water supply rendered the fort useless as a place of refuge.

1851 Lt. General Arthur Percival (General Officer Commanding
of the British land forces in Malaya and Singapore) and
another British Officer in Battle Box

In 1907, the old fort was demolished, and in 1920's a military headquarters was built with underground rooms serving as operations centre. Completed in 1938, the Battle Box comprised 30 rooms and had its own generator. By 1941, it was considered to be too small for its intended use, and a new Combined Operations Headquarters was build. The Battle Box remained the Headquarters of Major General  Frank Keith Simmons, who was responsible for the defence of Singapore Island.

3173 UNITED STATES (Wisconsin) - North Point Light

The North Point Light is a lighthouse located in Lake Park on the East Side of Milwaukee. It replaced a previous Cream City brick lighthouse constructed in 1855 that was located too close to the edge of the eroding bluff. In 1888 a cast-iron lighthouse was built, but this tower was not tall enough and was placed on top of a steel structure in 1912 raising its height to 23m and light focal plane to 47m. The present light source is a 25,000 candlepower lamp rotated electrically, visible for 40km, and controlled by an automatic time clock.

3172 ROMANIA (Bucharest) - The 6th Meetup of the group Postcrossing & Philately, Bucharest, 7 October 2017

With the occasion of the 6th meetup of the group Postcrossing & Philately, which held in Bucharest, on 7 October 2017, Eugen Mihai edited a special postcard, in limited serie (60 copies). In image is the Suter Palace, now Carol Parc Hotel, located near historical Carol Park, on Filaret Hill (the highest natural point of Bucharest, named after a late 18th-century metropolitan of the region). Condé Nast Traveler included the hotel in its "Hot List 2008: the best 130 hotels of the world."

3171 TURKEY (Marmara Region) - Gökçeada map

Located north of the entrance of Dardanelles Strait, in the Aegean Sea (11 nautical miles from the Gallipoli Peninsula), Gökçeada (named under 29 July 1970 Imbros) is the largest island of Turkey, and has a population of 8,776 (2016). The island was primarily inhabited by ethnic Greeks from ancient times through to approximately the 1960s, and today is predominantly inhabited by settlers from the Turkish mainland.

3170 UKRAINE (Lviv) - Potocki Palace in Lviv

The Potocki Palace in Lviv was built in the 1880s as an urban seat of Alfred Józef Potocki, former Minister-President of Austria. It was confiscated by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940, and in 1972 was adapted for holding wedding ceremonies. In the 2000s, the President of Ukraine appropriated the palace as one of his residences. The present palace was built in the style of Baroque, the era of French King Louis XIV by the French architect Louis Alphonse Rene Dovernut. The project was modified by Lviv architects Juliusz Tsybulski and Ludwik Baldwin-Ramult and implemented under their guidance.

3169 ROMANIA (Bucharest) - Postcrossing Meetup, Bucharest, 9 October 2017 (World Post Day)

World Post Day is celebrated each year on 9 October, the anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in 1874 in the Swiss Capital, Bern. It was declared World Post Day by the UPU Congress held in Tokyo in 1969. Since then, countries across the world participate annually in the celebrations. The Posts in many countries use the event to introduce or promote new postal products and services. The Romanian postcrossers decided to meet on this occasion (the 32th meetup), and Ovidiu Bucşă edited a special postcard, very successful.

3168 SLOVAKIA (Bratislava) - Čumil the Peeper

Čumil is an Bratislavian emerging sewer worker, who got his head out of a manhole and... And nothing. Nobody knows what he's doing. Is he resting? Is he heading down to clean up your mess? Or is he peeping up women’s skirts? Because he is made from bronze, he has a lot of patience and can wait without any trouble until we will find the answer. Actually he waits since 1997, when was installed to spice up the look of the area, which was traditionally marked with drab Communist-era architecture and decoration.

3167 ROMANIA (Bucharest) - Ligia and Pompiliu Macovei Art Collection

The Ligia and Pompiliu Macovei Art Collection is located in the donors' private residence, a building erected at the beginning of the 20th century, in a French eclectic style, which can be found on 11Iunie Street in Bucharest, not far from the Carol I Park. It is the latest addition to the Bucharest Municipality Museum's patrimony (becoming a part of it in 1992) and portrays the aesthetical and architectural vision of two people with a background in art.

ROMANIA - Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania (UNESCO WHS)

In the 12th and 13th centuries, simultaneous with the advancement of the Kingdom of Hungary's border to the east and south-eastern Transylvania, until its stabilization along the Carpathians, Hungarian kings encouraged Germans and Székelys to colonize the areas newly conquered, in essence for economic and military reasons. The German colonists were named Transylvanian Saxons, despite the fact that most of them came from the western Holy Roman Empire. The political, economic and social influence exercised by them in the last eight centuries in Transylvania was a major and beneficial one. Unfortunately after the WWII, but especially after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, many members of this community emigrated to Germany.

3166 POLAND (Greater Poland) - Pleszew Narrow Gauge Railway

Pleszew is a town located about 90 km southeast of Poznań. The 3km narrow gauge line from Pleszew Miasto (town) station to Pleszew Wąsk (narrow gauge) station (adjacent to Pleszew main line station in the village of Kowalew), is the surviving fragment of the 750mm gauge Krotoszyn District Railway, which ran from Krotoszyn to Broniszewice, via Pleszew (50km). This line (formally named the Krotoszynska Kolej Dojazdowa) dates back to 1900.

3165 GERMANY (Bremen) - Schnoor quarter

Many of the sights in Bremen are found in the Altstadt (Old Town), an oval area surrounded by the River Weser, on the southwest, and the Wallgraben, the former moats of the medieval city walls, on the northeast. The oldest part of the Altstadt is the southeast half, starting with the Marktplatz and ending at the Schnoor quarter. Actually, Schnoor is the only part of the city that has preserved a medieval character. The neighbourhood owes its name to old handicrafts associated with shipping (schnoor means string in german).

1061, 3164 CHINA (Guangdong / Guangxi / Guizhou / Hainan / Hubei / Hunan / Sichuan / Yunnan) - Miao people

3164 Miao people

Posted on 21.04.2014, 08.10.2017

Miao is an ethnic group who live primarily in southern China, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, and Hubei, but also, in smaller numbers, in northern Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Miao is actually the official Chinese term for four distinct groups of people who are only distantly related through language or culture (and doesn't reflect the self-designations of the component nations of people): the Hmu people of southeast Guizhou, the Kho (Qho) Xiong people of west Hunan, the A-Hmao people of Yunnan, and the Hmong people of Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Yunnan.

1061 Long Skirt Miao women in Guizhou

There are some nine million Miao in China, of whom the Hmong constitute probably one-third. The Miao are related in language and some other cultural features to the Yao; among these peoples the two groups with the closest degree of relatedness are the Hmong (Miao) and the Iu Mien (Yao). Much of the Miao area is hilly or mountainous, and is drained by several big rivers. The weather is mild with a generous rainfall, and the area is rich in natural resources. Major crops include paddy rice, maize, potatoes, Chinese sorghum, beans, rape, peanuts, tobacco, ramie, sugar cane, cotton, oil-tea camellia and tung tree.