Waterfalls in Asia

As we were growing up, we’ve come to learn that Asia represents the Far East – a mysterious continent on the other side of the Pacific Ocean across the international date line, where customs, history, and nature seemed so distant and different.

Only glimpses of what’s there were revealed to us by our parents and relatives, but it remained a place that seemed strangely familiar yet strikingly unfamiliar. Being ethnically Asian, we knew that seeing the continent was only a matter of time.

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Now after having been to a few countries in Asia, we’ve learned much about our roots, about who we are, and about the Nature that sustains its residents while drawing visitors from around the world. We just knew that with Chinese and Japanese landscape paintings (some of which left lasting impressions on me while I was growing up), movies highlighting the landscape (e.g. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon“), and even landscape photos and drawings seen in many Thai and Vietnamese restaurants here in LA that this vast continent was rich with Nature. And where there’s Nature, there must be waterfalls!

The continent is vast and includes many countries and nationalities. For the purposes of this website, we’re considering the continent to stretch as far southwest as India and the Himalayas, as far southeast as the Southeast Asian countries (like Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, etc.) and their islands, as far west as the furthest desert expanses of China along with Asian Russia, and as far northeast as Siberian Russia as well as islands just to the south such as Japan. No question about it, this continent is huge so our humble sampling of what we’ve seen merely scratches the surface of what’s out there.

But indeed, we still go by our usual MO of using waterfalls as the excuse to go to certain parts of a country. And in doing so, we’ve encountered giant waterfalls shared between countries like Detian Waterfall as well as sacred waterfalls like Nachi-no-taki with temples and pagodas fronting its surrounding picturesque landscape. We’ve even seen rainforest waterfalls split into numerous sections like Thi Lo Su. And throughout these waterfall-centric excursions, we’ve also encountered ancient temples, fingerlike karst mountains draped in mist, wildlife quite unlike anywhere else in the world, and even volcanic features yielding hot springs as well as crater lakes among others.

Our humble sampling probably isn’t even an appreciation fraction of what’s on this continent. We hope we can continue to go waterfalling in Asia while learning more about the world and ourselves along the way…

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