Thai News
Sunday, January 8th, 2006Six days of U.S./Thai trade talks in Chiang Mai has resulted in a stalemate with the help of 10,000 protesters…an alliance of 11 groups who are resisting trade liberalization. They are not ready, says the director of the AIDS Success Foundation, for expensive drugs caused by prolonged protection of intellectual property rights that will only benefit a few businesses instead of the Thai people. Other activists and academics have expressed grave concern that liberalized trade would open Thailand to foreign firms that would bring western values that would destroy the already endangered Thai way of life.
The irony was stark, however, when in the same week the Bangkok Post featured a glossy full page picture of Thailand’s beloved “Jazzy King” playing his saxaphone…celebrating six decades during which he has inspired, entertained and encouraged Thai people. He plays on Saturday nights at Klai Kingworld Palace on Hua Hin Beach south of Bangkok where the 78 year old king lives. He learned to play while he was studying as a student in Lucerne Switzerland. He and his band plays Dixieland, New Orleans and Big Band music and has jammed with the likes of Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton. He sometimes composes spontaneously while playing…an aide writing the notes while he blows.
I had read that Tiananmen was the biggest square in the world. However, Mao's huge Mausoleum takes up about a third of the square...almost right in the middle...so the area doesn't ... 
I want to emphatically state (and I think Bob would concur) that I have nothing but admiration for this proud and resilient people who have survived 70 years of this "ideological tidal wave that ... 
I am looking forward to visiting my grandfather's little village in the north. Seven generations of his ancestors were farmers and lived in the same little village of Szczepankowo. In ... 
The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Stanislav Gross, is 32 years old and looks 20! We are realizing how little information we have gotten in the US in the last ... 
Wednesday Dec 11
In Old Town Lijiang, Bob joined us for breakfast at our hotel at 9am; met Li at her hotel at 10:30 for minibus trip up the gorge. Bus had no shocks ... 
Major Cities We Visited
"The opening up of China is a stirring idea," Lonely Planet says. A foreigner traveling alone today is privileged to see more of China than almost any Chinese has seen ... 
Pol Pot, the architect of one of the most brutal and radical revolutions that had its origins in Beijing China, was never brought to international justice. He died in 1989 from Malaria (or ... 
Next door to the restaurant in Taunggyi I struck up a conversation with a young university student who was tending a a small bookstore. "Can everyone speak (out) in America," he asked. ... 
June 5, 2002
The next morning James drives us back to Outjo, the small predominantly German/Afrikaner town we had stayed in before and we buy apple strudel and real drip coffee in the bakery and ... 
May 27, 2002
We see the 3000km of 1.5 meter high "Buffalo Fence" along side the road on the way to Okavango Delta in Botswana. It's actually a series of high-tensile steel wire barriers ... 
We pull into camp outside Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. We listen to CNN...TV for the first time in weeks and hear yet another warning about terrorism in NYC...funny-Josh never mentions anything in ... 
May 20, 2002
Up 5 am and out 6:30. Most of the day is spent traveling to Zambia. A bridge is out on the road south so we have to double ... 
Picked up a Sunday Observer-local Tanzanian paper in English; lead article: "Reading culture badly lacking" lamented the lack of interest in reading and warning that Tanzania could become isolated and left behind as ... 
Israelis Bombed 9/11?
While waiting for the others to come out of the temple at Edfu, and when it became apparent that Bob wasn't going to buy anything, Bob was invited into a seller's ... 
Zoe