Hobbit holes €18 a night, +386 5308 8557, camplijak.com A wreath of jagged grey peaks towering over a milky blue river provides the backdrop for this eco-adventure resort.
But when he set up the project in 1996, after quitting his government forestry job, he unwittingly launched a trend that would earn Vang Vieng – a higgledy-piggledy town on the pea-green river with a backdrop of soaring limestone mountains – a reputation as one of the world's most unlikely, and dangerous, party towns.
The Boscobel estate is out back; the mountains and lights over the river provide the omnipresent backdrop.
Stand on the deserted silver beach looking inland and you'll see the tranquil Groot river lagoon, against the backdrop of the Tsitsikamma mountains.
As with The Drowned Book, the dark, brooding depths of the river Tyne form the backdrop to many an accidental death or suicide, while even the stories located elsewhere are suitably waterlogged.
Across the river, as if the backdrop has been spliced in from another image altogether, is the Manhattan skyline, from which a cloud of dark-grey smoke is billowing up into the blue.
There have been a few surprises, too: a lone brent goose by the Huntspill Sluice; a flock of 50 or so avocets feeding on the opposite side of the river, against the incongruous backdrop of Hinkley Point nuclear power station; and a rock pipit feeding among a dozen of the commoner meadow variety.
Amid this whirlwind energy, echoed in the rivers of the topographical backdrop, Janie Taylor floats with her bourrees in a quiet duet with Jared Angle to a sustained lyrical passage in the music.
Winding roads weave throughout the region, passing colorful meadows, farms, rivers, lakes, and a backdrop of mountain summits.
On his laptop, he showed me photos of guerrillas posed against dazzling backdrops: rivers, jungle peaks, ancient cave paintings.
