BootsnAll Travel Network



ypoC

May 22nd, 2006

Last week I traveled fast through Cambodia; the country’s tourism industry is growing quickly and akwardly.  There is a strong aftertaste of Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge’s (Red People) idealistic genocide that occured 25 years ago.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Crossover

May 14th, 2006

I have to tell you something. I’m seeing shiny otters that hang around in corners eating bamboo. Read the rest of this entry »

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Find the Monk

May 8th, 2006

The street looked like most of the others I’d been lost in all week.  This time I was watching for signs of the World Federation of Buddhism.  After recieving some unusually excellent directions at a dry cleaner’s I found the building and bumped into other raggity westerners.  Read the rest of this entry »

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wanderwandersweatywonder

May 8th, 2006

After living in Asia… you trust nobody but you believe everything… if every trip worth taking is both a tragedy and a comedy, rich with melodrama and farce, it is also, at its heart, a love story. The romance with the foreign must certainly be leavened with a spirit of keen and unillusioned realism; but it must also be observed with a measure of faith” (“Video Night in Kathmandu” 1988 Pico Iyer 23).

I’m still here! Pouring sweat onto the streets of Bangkok along with 9 million other people, the Thai, the hippy backpackers, the smug sexpats, lots of TOEFL degree holders.

“You look so young and innocent now but you won’t when you leave Thailand.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Le Llaman Bodhi.

May 4th, 2006

That´s right, they call him Bodhi, at least back here in Madrid; and by they I mean Rhea and Senorio T and maybe their flatmate, Pablo, a lifeguard at the local nudist beach… Read the rest of this entry »

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pretty generalizations.

May 3rd, 2006

Have you been to Budapest?  A lot of buildings here are waiting to be torn down but are being used as bars in the meantime, it´s beautiful.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Peaceful lunch leftovers.

April 30th, 2006

 I just left Geneva where it was springy and I fell completely asleep in a park and woke up in a puddle Read the rest of this entry »

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Three people, four wheels

April 27th, 2006

Marion! We’re here at the Lyon bus station but don’t worry, some guy will bring us to a metro stop that’s closer to your house. I know it’s 4:30am and the metro isn’t running. What? OK see you at the metro stop.

When the bus pulled into Lyon two hours EARLY I was more than glad to have Paul by my side. I’m not sure he would say the same for me – Paul was about to spread out and sleep at the station but I wanted to find Marion.
The French guy walked us to where Marion was waiting, shaking her head in disbelief… Salut Marion! Thanks for having me, I mean us.

In a state of sleepless euphoria Marion, Paul, and I almost drove straight to Geneva for Sunday morning Quaker meeting and to see our friends Sophie and Nico. Instead we caught the sleep lost on the overnight bus from Barcelona.

Around 15:00 we made it out the door for a tour of Lyon. Lyon has a new public bicycle system with lots of stations set up around the city to check the bikes in and out of. It was the perfect spring day for a bike ride so although we ran to check about six stations we only managed to grab one bike because everyone else in the city had the same idea. Paul, everprepared, snapped open his own fold-up cycle and we were off.

The only way to see Lyon: cruise backwards on handlebars down the path beside the Rhône until you reach the Opera where the well-dressed audience stands around watching kids breakdance during intermission. Then run up the hill in the artist’s district and climb up a tree and sing until the sun sets.

The following morning Marion and her girlfriend headed off for a relaxing week in the Alps and Paul and I caught the next train to Genève (barely).

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Ciao Barça, let me go…

April 23rd, 2006

Barcelona kept me for awhile.  I couldn’t get to bed before 4 and I couldn’t leave Read the rest of this entry »

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To Hemmingway, los Cuáqueros, and shaggy shaggy locks.

April 19th, 2006

Silence.  A lot of centered silence this week.  Even more oneness with dishes, recorders, football, mountaintops, European driving (Fun!), intellegent caring humans.  Us young Quakers sped up a mountain in the rented Fiat to Can Saleta, a little cottage where I had to fold in half Read the rest of this entry »

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