A quick journey through seven rain puddles in Asia:

LIJIANG, CHINA:

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, this picturesque town tucked into the mountains of China's northern Yunnan Province is worth visiting, even if you want to do nothing more than enjoy a walk. In 1996, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale made a lot of buildings crumble, and some have looked down on the "new" ones that rose in their place. But if the touristy section of town seems too artificial, all you have to do is walk a couple blocks off the beaten path to experience the unadulterated architecture and atmosphere of Lijiang.

BERSTAGI, SUMATRA, INDONESIA

I visited the Indonesian island of Sumatra several months before the December 2004 tsunami took the lives of more than 100,000 of its people. Not that the ocean is ever a cause of worry in the highland town of Berstagi, which is many miles from the sea. It does, however, have volcanoes, and on my solo hike to Mt. Sibayak I passed by a list of foreign visitors who in the past 20 years went up but never came down. Some simply vanished, others were varifiably killed by the mountain. In this picture, which is taken in the town market, you can see the volcano in the background.

PASSU, PAKISTAN:

Shortly after arriving in this tiny town in the far north of Pakistan, I took a photo of the Karakoram Mountains outside my guesthouse (as seen in this puddle). A few minutes later I chased a goat out of my guesthouse room, then I photographed a dead rat in my toilet. As you can tell, the region is rich in photographic opportunities.  The area is also full of hospitable and rugged people.

SAIGON, VIETNAM:

Renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the city fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, many still call the city Saigon. Even the buses traveling the long road to Hanoi -- a 49 hour journey -- are often marked "Hanoi-Saigon". The city saw a tremendous amount of sorrow and death in the second half of the 20th century, but this hasn't kept it from being the most active, entrepreneurial city in Vietnam. An hour after a monsoon rain swept through the city, I took a photo of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, built in the late 1800s, and thought of all the history the building has seen.

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA:

Like Saigon, this Cambodian capital has seen its share of tragedy. But unlike Saigon, it does not feel as vibrant and forward-looking and thus the tragedy seems more present. Many of the sidestreets are still unpaved, and the potholed, broken roads are a metaphor for the country as a whole. Tourists who venture only to the famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia's north will not experience what life is like in most of the country.

LUANG PRABANG, LAOS:

If the frantic pace of Saigon's millions of people wears you out physically, and the brokenness of Cambodia's cities and countryside wears you out emotionally, head up the Mekong River to the Lao town of Luang Prabang. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the serenity of the Buddhist monasteries and the Laotians themselves will give you rest. 

ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN:

On October 6, 1948, at 1:00 a.m., two-thirds of the population of Ashgabat -- 110,000 people -- died in their bedrooms as an earthquake measuring nine on the Richter scale flattened the city. (The official Soviet figure, however, was 14,000; but the city was closed to outsiders for five years while they dug out bodies and rebuilt.) Now the capital of the independent nation of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat's character has been shaped by Saparmyrat Niyazov, the dictator who died in December 2006 and is better known by the name Turkmenbashi. Among his baffling decrees: In 2005, he ordered all hospitals outside the capital city to be shut, saying that the country's sick should all be brought to Ashgabat for treatment.

In the center of Ashgabat is this statue of a bull with a broken Earth on his horns. A woman is seen appearing out of a crack in the Earth and she is holding a golden child in her arms. That child is Turkmenbashi.

Joel Carillet, chief editor of Wandering Educators, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, follow his regular photoblog, or purchase images, visit www.joelcarillet.com