The blogger Andrew Sullivan has had a long running feature called “The View From Your Window”, in which readers submit a picture of whatever they can see from their window - be it scenic, mundane, or anything else. It’s a cool feature that draws entrants from all over the world, and was turned into a nice book last year.
Anyway, he recently turned it into a weekly contest: every Saturday he’ll post a window shot, and readers have till Tuesday at noon (EST) to guess where in the world the picture was taken. It’s a fun game that calls for a bit of sleuthing and guesswork. To get your juices flowing, here are the pictures from the past two weeks, along with the answers:
Okinawa, Japan. Why? Japan because the style of buildings and the landscape look rather Asian, it’s evidently an island, and it looks very clean/first world. Okinawa because it doesn’t look like Tokyo, and Okinawa is simply the next place that came to mind.
Alright, so maybe I don’t have the most logical thought process behind my guess. Can you do any better?
The mountains look very Southeast Asian to me. The buildings look rather Oriental. I’m going to guess somewhere in the Philippines, maybe? No idea of the city.
I’m thinking Vietnam. As for what city I’m not sure. I’ve seen photos of mountains like that before and I thought they were in Vietnam. I don’t think it’s Japan because the bus looks to be turning left and crossing the road so it would be a right hand drive country.
Before I read any of the answers, this was my guess:
Looks like Japan, but I think Honshu would be too obvious, so I’ll say another island. How about Hokkaido? Okay, what cities are there? (checks Wiki) Oh yeah, Sapporo, where the Winter Olympics were once held. I’ll go with that.
After reading the posts before mine:
That “right-hand drive” assumption by Edward The Head is probably correct. Oh well, if he’s on the money, at least I was in the general area of the right continent.
Reminds me of where The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed, which was the Phi Phi Islands in Thailand. There was also a Bond movie where the evildoers lair was in a similar looking spot, but I can’t recall which movie it was. My semi-confident guess is somewhere in southeast Asia. Unfortunately, the right hand drive would eliminate Thailand itself…but I’m not sure if I can reliable tell if we’re seeing the back or front of that bus.
Heh, cool beans. I had a feeling that might be pretty close. The karsted geology sure looked like pictures I’d seen attributed to China before. Then Google-fu took over. Google south china karst and you get this from Wiki: “The South China Karst, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, spread across China’s southern provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan.”
Looking at images of those provinces you see mention of Yangshuo which looked to be about the right distance from an equal sized river.
Lucky guesses really. I tried using google map then to find the building and that went nowhere a’tall.
Damn, got here too late. Those mountains definately look karst. Which actually is a Yugoslavian term, believe it or not. But I would have guessed Guilin simply because it is the biggest city in China in the middle of the karst formations. Yangshuo being perhaps the most popular “alternative” tourist destination although the karst in SW China stretches for thousands of square miles. Thailand also has karst and I’m sure other SE Asian countries.
