http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads What Traveling Reveals About The Human Heart Sat, 10 May 2008 07:51:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en From a revealing blog (The Twisted Stethoscope) by a Malaysian, Jason Leong, who attended medical school in Ireland. Part I Here is a list of criteria one must comply with to be truly Malaysian. You may be a Caucasian expat who has lived in Malaysia for decades, or you can be a ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/are-you-malaysian.html The U.N. is reporting as many as 100,000 dead and more missing. International media is reporting that most countries wanting to send aid to Burma, including the U.S., are waiting outside the country in ships, helicopters and planes...waiting for permission from the junta to let them enter. NGO's insist ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/aid-to-burma.html KL is a big cosmopolitan city vibrant and alive especially late at night. Luk noticed it right away...watching the 20 something girls dressed in the latest Asian fashion. Today she came out of her hotel room sporting a white mini skirt with over the knee black stockings with lace ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/4th-day-in-kuala-lumpur.html Last week Amy, Josh's wife, flew down to Samui from Beijing with a colleague from her international school where they teach history. Four short days but it was a treat to see them! Koh Samui to Trang to Krabi The day before they left Doug, Luk and I drove to ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/update.html Oaxaca's Radio Wars By Charles Mostoller Despite assassinations, community radio is spreading throughout southern Mexico. "Some people think that we are too young to be informed, but what they should know is that we are too young to die." These were the fateful words of Felicitas Martinez Sanchez and Teresa Bautista Merino, two ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/oaxacas-radio-wars.html An excellent site in English for people wanting to understand China is "The China Beat...Blogging How The East Is Read." One of the writers is Peter Hessler Peter Hessler (b. June 14, 1968) who is an American writer and journalist. He is currently the Beijing correspondent for The New ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/a-blog-for-china-watchers.html Found some trivia in a Bootsnall article: Portland, Oregon, where it rarely snows, is about 130 miles further north than Toronto, and over 200 miles further north than Boston. The entire country of England, with over 50 million residents, is a wee bit smaller than the state of Louisiana. If you combine England, ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/geography-trivia.html New York Times Article By SHAILA DEWAN Published: April 29, 2008 LOS ANGELES — When the time came for the smiling Tibetan monk at the front of the University of Southern California lecture hall to answer questions, the Chinese students who ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/chinese-students-fight-view-of-their-home.html This is an interesting post in response to the Australian who described his experience in Canberra with the passing of the torch (read below.) This writer was born in China and has lived in China, Mexico and now France. She is well educated and speaks several ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/another-view-of-the-torch-runs.html Had a great conversation with a German guy in his 40's the other night. Culture, politics, language, heritage...then I told him my maternal grandparents were from Poland. "When, did they immigrate...after WWII" he asked. No, they immigrated to the US through Ellis Island in 1892, I replied. ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/a-german-prussian-poland.html I have been following a thread on a discussion forum on Couchsurfing.com about the Olympic Torch Relay in Australia. An Australian fellow who was among the Tibetan supporters wrote the following posts in response to what he experienced that day. Some of it is repetitious because he ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/a-protest-that-didnt-make-cnn.html Found a great thread on a Bootsnall Forum so I picked out the ones I could relate to and added some of my own. You know you are a traveller when: you spell traveller with two l’s. (Every other English speaker in the world uses the British spelling.) you know what a "gap ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/you-know-you-are-a-traveller-when.html Young and old revelers hanging off of pickups and sangtaews fling plastic pans of water from a garbage can at the traffic going in the opposite direction. Small children aim at cars and pedestrians alike from the sidewalks. Anyone brave enough to venture into the streets end up ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/fun-for-young-and-old.html I arrived on Samui, an island in the south of Thailand, from Bangkok on tuesday. Doug, my son and his Thai wife Luk found me a lovely quiet hotel with a pool right in the middle of Lamai but back off the street. Of course there was a ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/koh-samui.html The price of rice has sky-rocketed in Thailand to such a degree that gangs have taken to raiding farmers' rice fields. Some farmers have taken to sleeping in the fields to guard against thefts. One economic advisor on CNN Asia has called it a "rice tsunami." He ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/rice-tsunami.html Tonight I went out to the street and bought my dinner which I brought back to my room to eat. First, a Papaya Salad with only one little red chili and it's still hot! 80 cents. The two sticks with small pieces of what we would call pork bacon cooked ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/dinner-from-the-street.html Last night I opted for a foot massage at a place where the strong Isan masseuses from NE Thailand are trained at Wat Pho (Temple of the Reclining Buddha). Dating from the 16th century, this monastery in Bangkok began as an open university and is still the national headquarters ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/a-coincidence.html You hardly find a mention of Soi 22, where I usually stay in Bangkok, in the travel guides. Interesting. Not anything here for sightseers really. But good if you live here long term. The well-dressed tourists in the high end hotels and serviced apartments here must just head ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/bangkok-sukhumvit-soi-22.html Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who took over after Thaksin Shinawatra, the former PM, was ousted by a military coup after charges of corruption, claimed yesterday that he is being threatened by yet another coup...the result no doubt of political infighting. The military has promised there will not be ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/what-now-for-thailand.html Wanted to post some pictures of menu items created by my son Josh at the One East On Third Restaurant in the Hilton Hotel Beijing where he is the Chef de Cuisine but am despairing of getting menu descriptions from him. So here are a couple of pictures...one of ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/nomads/josh-in-beijing.html