26 - Yatiyantota, Sri Lanka

Midway between Colombo and Kandy.

25 - Xieng Khoang, Laos

City in the center of the North. Also the province that's home to the famous Plain of Jars. Here's some Lao Karaoke on the subject:

P.S. Second day in a row on Plate 25 — Xs don't appear on every atlas page so I had to go for what was near.

25 - Wiang Pa Pao, Thailand

60mi. NE of Chiang Mai. In Thai script, that's เวียงป่าเป้า. Here's what it looks like to ride a motorcycle in the area:

24 - Vorontsovka, Kazakhstan

150mi S of Semipalatinsk.

23 - Urn Island, Hong Kong

Not a lot of U's in SE China, at least in the pinyin system used in my Times Atlas. Urn Island is in the NE part of the Hong Kong territories. Seems to be the island now known as Tai Tau Chau (大頭洲). Here's some footage that may be of 大頭洲, or if not that, shot from 大頭洲 looking elsewhere.

22 - Tsenhermandal, Mongolia

100mi. E of Ulaanbaatar.

21 - Sangju, South Korea

Small town pretty much at the center of the country. Wikipedia:

The economy of Sangju is traditionally agricultural. Agriculture remains an important sector, as 40% of the city's residents are engaged in farming. Sangju has the largest number of farming households of any district in South Korea, and the most agricultural land of any district in North Gyeongsang.
The area has been famed for sericulture (silk production) since Silla times. Currently 243,000 m² of land are engaged in silk production, bringing in about 434 million won annually. In addition, numerous other cash crops are farmed in the area. The most important agricultural product is rice, in the production of which Sangju is 7th in the country, with 169.13 km² in production yielding 162.9 billion won. Other important products include grapes, apples, pears, and cucumbers.

Here's a sculpture by Dong-Heon Kim, carved in "marble, sangju stone":

20 - Rumoi, Hokkaido, Japan

60mi. N of Sapporo, on the Sea of Japan.


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19 - Quezon, Negros, Philippines

Main town on the island's E coast. It, like many other places named Quezon in the country, is named for Manuel Quezon, who was the first, or the second, or the third President of the Philippines, depending on who you ask (but who died in the USA in 1944, in exile during the Japanese occupation). All this was before the US granted the Philippines true independence on (how convenient) July 4, 1946.

18 - Pontianak, Kalimantan, Indonesia

Borneo's westernmost midsize city, located directly on the equater. Also, pontinak is a Malay term for a sort of female vampire. There's quite a Youtube genre of purported pontianak viedos. Nor sure if any actually take place in Pontianak, though

17 - Ogasawara Gunto, Japan

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Otherwise known as the Bonita Islands, halfway between Guam and Tokyo. Their official tree is the screw pine. Their official flag is quite fetching:

16 - Novokuznetsk, Russia

200mi. E of Novosibersk, on the Trans-Siberian railway. Where Dostoyevsky married his first wife.

15 - Maprik, Papua New Guinea

In the northern coastal mountains. Built by the Australians in the 1930s as an administrative center; left to deteriorate in modern PNG, but recently enjoying a resurgence, in part to high global vanilla-bean prices. Here's a trilingual online dictionary for the Maprik dialect of the Ambulas language (English-Tok Pisin-Ambulas). Here's a sample sentence in Maprik:

Yaabuba yéte wuné vék kopi las ak yate tédéka.
While going on the road I saw that there was some ripe coffee

And here's a carved wooden headdress from Maprik, found on the National Gallery of Australia site:

14 - Loongana, Western Australia

On the exceedingly straight railway that traverses the Nullarbor Plain.

13 - Keyling Inlet, Northern Territory, Australia

Where the Macadam Range meets the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, at the mouth of the Fitzmaurice River. It used to be called the Keys inlet —not sure where they got the -ling, but here's the story of its first (European) name:


Discoveries in Australia By John Lort Stokes

12 Junee, New South Wales, Australia

25mi. NE of Wagga Wagga, 25mi. SW of Cootamundra. Here's a train leaving Junee in days of yore:

11 - Ihumatao, New Zealand

Hill W of Aukland International Airport, overlooking Manukau Harbour. Here's the Maori WIkipedia entry (Maori, being a polynesian language, being most appropriate for a wiki-form):

Ko Ihumatao he nohanga o te takiwā o Tāmaki-makau-rau, i roto anō i te rohe whenua o Ākarana-ki-te-raki (AK). E ai ki Toitū Te Whenua, he nohanga (he 'locality' rānei ki te reo Pākehā) he wāhi nohoia e te tangata, engari kāore anō kia tae te nui o te taupori ki te nui e taea ai te kī he tāone tonu tēnei. Ko Tāmaki-makau-rau tētahi o ngā takiwā o Aotearoa, kei Te Ika-a-Māui taua takiwā.

10 - Hunter Island, New Caledonia, France

Really the southernmost (and uninhabited) island in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) chain, but a part of the French overseas territory, but claimed by Vanuatu too. Discovered (really!) by Captain Jimmy Joe, of the whaler Hunter in 1798.

9 - Ganokoro, Nauru

On the western side of the island, at the N tip of Anibare Bay. Here are some fascinating photos of Nauru's phosphote-mining heyday, during which the center of the island was scraped clean in the service of ... ammunition and fertilizer, I believe. Empire too.

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You'll note that the number of this entry has taken a big drop: I've cycled back to the beginning of the Times Atlas (plates 1-8 are world maps, not so useful for alphabet geography).

123 - Fisher Bay, Antarctica

In George V Land, Australian Antarctic Territory, 145 E longitude. As things go, it is rather close to Australia:


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122 - Eastern Island, Palmyra Atoll, Pacific Ocean

1200mi. SW of Hawaii. Part of an off-and-on inhabited Palmyra Atoll, ruled in an unincorporated fashion by the USA (and owned, since 2000, by the Nature Conservancy).

In 1859, Palmyra was claimed by Dr. Gerrit P. Judd of the brig Josephine for the American Guano Company and the United States, in accordance with the Guano Islands Act of 1856; however, the company never started mining for guano, because there was none to be mined.

Also, here's a delicious quote from the Palmyra wikipedia page, about the ungratefully conserved wildlife of Palmyra:

The main problem was the "Goonie" birds. Feasting in the evening, they could be drenched by the rain and become unable to return to their roosting grounds. Being attracted by the camp lights, they stopped over and usually regurgitated their meal all over the camps.

121 - Deán Funes, Argentina

On the rail line 80mi. N of Córdoba. Named, like many things in Argentina, for the eminant 19th century historian of Argentina:

The city of Dean Funes, like its northern cousins Tenochtitlan, Uxmal, Palenque, and Chan Chan, is home to a distinctive pyramid:

120 - Cerro de Pasco, Peru

In the Andes NE of Lima. Here's a great tidbit from the wikipage of the Peruvian soccer team Deportivo Wanka:

The team aroused controversy in 2004 when it moved its base to Cerro de Pasco, the highest city in the world and almost certainly the world's highest venue for professional football, at an altitude of 4,380 m (13,973 ft) above sea level, well above the point where altitude sickness becomes a problem. Its opponents criticised the move as an attempt to stave off relegation [to a lower league] by playing in conditions that no other team could tolerate, including hail, rain, near-freezing temperatures and a lack of oxygen from the high altitude. The club was relegated that season anyway.

119 - Bello, Colombia

Just N of Medellín.

Here's my quick sketch of the Capilla de Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Hatoviejo, an oldish looking church in Bello.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

118 - Aguaray Guazú, Paraguay

River flowing SW into the Rio Jejuí Guazú, itself an eastern tributary of the Paraguay.

117 - Zanderij, Suriname

30mi. S of Paramaribo. The name comes from a deposit of white quartize and sand that stretches across the Guianas (of which, of course, Suriname is the Dutch variety).

116 - Yaguajay, Cuba

Near the midpoint of the north coast. Site of a decisive battle in 1958, during the Cuban Revolution.

Here's a song from a pentecostal church in present-day Yaguajay. Note the Mexican-style worship music.

115 - Xilitla, Mexico

In San Luis Potosí state, near the Veracruz border.

Just outside town there's a concrete surrealist landscape, Las Pozas, built in the 1960s by the Englishman Edward James, a sort of Watts Towers in the jungle. Though in Mexico there's so much more of a rich context for amazing undulating massive structures, tombs, and pyramids.

114 - Wahiawa, Hawaii

Smack in the middle of Oahu.

Here's what the 1915 Aloha Guide has to say:

113 - Veniaminof Volcano, Alaska

Midway up the Alaskan Peninsula, W of Chignik.



Wikipedia:

Mount Veniaminof is an active stratovolcano located on the Alaska Peninsula. The Alaska Volcano Observatory currently rates Veniaminof as Aviation Color Code Green and Volcano Alert Level Normal. The mountain was named after Ioann (Ivan Popov) Veniaminov (1797-1879), a Russian Orthodox missionary priest whose writings on the Aleut language and ethnology are still standard references.
The volcano was the site of a colossal (VEI 6) eruption around 1750 BC. This eruption left a large caldera. In modern times the volcano has had numerous small eruptions (over ten of them since 1930); these are located at a cinder cone in the middle of the caldera.
Veniaminof has one of the highest elevations of Alaskan volcanoes. Partly for this reason, it is covered by a glacier that fills most of the caldera. Because of the glacier and the caldera walls, there is the possibility for a major flood from a glacier run at some point in the future.

111 - Uvalde, Texas

80mi. W of San Antonio.