July 12, 2006
Khmer Tribunal Starts
The Seattle Times July 4, 2006 reported that the Khmer tribunal is starting so I went on-line and found the article below by The New Republic Magazine on July 12,...Read this update
March 16, 2006
Diamond Jubilee Of His Majesty
His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand will celebrate his Diamond Jubilee in Bangkok in June 2006. The King of Thailand is one of the most highly respected spiritual leaders...Read this update
Wat Chedi Luang
The oldest (700 years) and most interesting temple in Chiang Mai that had it's top toppled in an earthquake....Read this update
March 15, 2006
"Letters From Thailand"
"Letters From Thailand" is a lovely novel wrtten in 1969 by "Botan", a pseudonym of the Chinese-born Thai female writer, Supa Sirisingh, and recently translated into English by Susan Fulop...Read this update
January 12, 2006
Insurgency In The South
Since January 2004, southern Thailand has been gripped by a shadowy insurgency that has killed over 1,000 people and divided local communities along religious and ethnic lines. "Bangkok," ie the...Read this update
December 23, 2005
More On Mao
We are grounded by the subway strike so have been reading more of the biography of Mao by authors Jung Chang, the author of the wonderful three-generation epic "Wild Swans,"...Read this update
December 01, 2005
Museum Of Natural History
When we were in southern China last year we spent some time hiking and driving through parts of mountainous Yunnan Province that are populated primarily with, not Han Chinese, but...Read this update
November 27, 2005
Deep Into Mao & China
It's cold and snowy outside and right now I am deep into the recently published biography of Mao Tse Tung by Jung Chang who also some years ago wrote the...Read this update
October 23, 2005
Big Onion Tour
Big Onion Tours, the word "onion" being a play on the Big Apple, offers tours of neighborhoods of NYC. We chose the "immigrant tour" which shows how different ethnic groups...Read this update
New York Ancestors
In the beginning of this country, the New England colonies were being settled by the Puritans who endeavored to spread their intolerant "purist" religion across much of rest of the...Read this update
October 17, 2004
Great Days Great Wall
E found the website (www.wildwall.com) and the adventure offered intriguing potential...off the beaten track, away from the Chinese tourist groups that follow a guide with a microphone and colored...Read this update
September 19, 2004
Europe-Asia Dividing Line
Yekaterinburg is most famous, however, as the place where Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and five children were murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918. Having seen where...Read this update
Falling Out of Bed in Yekaterinburg
This autumn of 2004, our second time around the world, our train wanders through a rolling fairy-tale landscape in Siberia filled with gentle grassland (steppes) and Birch trees (the...Read this update
September 18, 2004
To Siberia & Lake Baikal
We boarded our a Moscow train at midnight. We are headed across Russia on the trans-siberian train system. However we will be breaking up the trip by getting off...Read this update
August 30, 2004
Who Would Have Thought...?
Who would have thought that Poland in 1995 would have chosen the former communist bureaucrat, Aleksander Kwasniewski, over the former hero Lech Walesa, who, along with the Solidarity movement, led...Read this update
August 29, 2004
Warsaw
In re-built Warsaw we view public art memorializing the Warsaw Uprising...Nazis destroyed the city while Russia watched on the other side of the Vistula River...then moved in and occupied...Read this update
August 27, 2004
Oswiecim Poland
The Germans changed the name to Auschwitz but the Polish still call it Oswiecim. We hire an English speaking guide to drive us to Auschwitz and Birkenau for the...Read this update
August 26, 2004
Polish Ancestors
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....Read this update
August 24, 2004
Krakow
We are out of the unusually hot and humid Czech Republic. After an all night train we are in cool Krakow Poland. We accept an offer by a young...Read this update
August 18, 2004
Young Prime Minister
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...Read this update
August 06, 2004
Former East Berlin
When I was in Berlin in 1965 it had been 18 years since the end of WWII and Europe was still digging itself out of the ashes. Nearly 40 later, Europe is transformed and on it's way, through the European Union, to providing a balance of power to the United States.Read this update
January 03, 2003
Chongqing
This is San Francisco...so hilly there are no bicycles, colored lights...lively with people walking through the pedestrian malls that fan out from Liberation Monument at the center...originally built to...Read this update
December 03, 2002
End of the Burma Road
Sunday Dec 1-3 2002 Arrived at Kunming from Guilin after 23 hours on the train. We had gained considerable elevation throughout the night. We took a taxi to the...Read this update
November 26, 2002
Mobbed at Yangshuo
Southern China Yunnan Province Tuesday Nov 26, 2002 At Yangshuo we were mobbed by women selling hotel rooms. I stayed with the backpacks while Bob and Jana looked at...Read this update
November 20, 2002
Secrets I Will Never Know
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...Read this update
October 24, 2002
Facing Cambodia's Past
We got our second wind and almost reluctantly mounted a motorcycle taxi to do what we (or at least I) came here to do and that is to see,...Read this update
October 20, 2002
Catholics In Vietnam
Catholics have never had an easy time of it in Vietnam beginning with the Confucian elite who opposd the intrusions of missionaries among whom was Alexandre de Rhodes who devised...Read this update
October 16, 2002
Tourism Vietnamese Style
From the 200 kilometers of the Cu Chi tunnels, six layers deep just outside Saigon, the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese communist fighters) planned their campaigns on the South Vietnamese...Read this update
July 21, 2002
Chittorgarh
On the way out of town the next morning, I am not surprised to see a dead cow that had been hit by a car. “The government will come and...Read this update
July 18, 2002
Ghandi-India To So Africa
In my last story, I mistakenly said that Gandi was born in South Africa. He was not. He was born in 1869 in Porbander in the Indian state of Gujarat...Read this update
July 12, 2002
Sleepover In Soweto
A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa’s largest township On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in...Read this update
June 25, 2002
Table Mountain & District 6
The geographical configuration of the city of Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain is as beautiful as everyone has said it is. We took the cable car...Read this update
June 17, 2002
Robben Island
June 16 to July 13, 2002 Standing bunched shoulder-to-shoulder in the small anteroom of the prison on Robben Island where Mandela and others were political prisoners, our half of...Read this update
Bo Kaap or Cape Malay Quarter
The next day we take a minibus for 3 rand each (10 rand to a dollar) to look for an apartment. The buses are many and frequent with no schedule-you...Read this update
June 01, 2002
Angolan Refugee Camp
June 2002 So African Intervention in Namibia Namibia used to be part of South Africa and South African incursions into Angola and Namibia continued from 1975 until well into...Read this update
May 27, 2002
Buffalo Fence & Planet Baobab
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...Read this update
May 20, 2002
Zambia Border
2002 Rod warns us the roads in Zambia are even worse “shit” than in Malawi-which we found hard to believe but he was right. Most of these roads we...Read this update
May 17, 2002
Slave Trade At Malawi Lake
We are headed to Malawi Lake which is huge-of Malawi’s 118,000 sq km 20% is taken up by the long narrow lake which nearly runs approximately 500km down the...Read this update
May 15, 2002
Zanzibar's History
After Independence from Britain in 1963, Dr. Julius Nyerere was Tanzania’s beloved president for nearly 30 years until his death in 1999. The cornerstone of his policies were based...Read this update
Stone Town Zanzibar
May 11-15 2002 City of Stone Town Island of Zanzibar The tropical island of Zanzibar has a more cosmopolitan and warm and open ambiance than other African countries we...Read this update
April 30, 2002
A Felluca Ride Up The Nile
In Aswan, a felluca, an ancient sailboat of the Nile, is a common means of transport up and down the Nile River. It has a broad canvas sail and...Read this update
April 21, 2002
Cairo
On April 21, 2002 while waiting for our flight from Athens to Cairo, we visited briefly with a gentleman sitting next to us who was on his way to...Read this update
April 09, 2002
St. Peter's House
The Vatican In 1965 I had missed seeing the Vatican because I refused to stand in line three hours. So we took the Metro across the Tiber River to the...Read this update
April 01, 2002
Cinque Terre
Took a train to the Cinque Terre (Five Lands..or villages) area on the northern Italian Riviera. The towns, jutting out into the Mediterranean and straight up the hills on...Read this update
March 11, 2002
Seville Spain
In Seville, found a charming pension-the Hospedaje Monreal at Calle Rodrigo Caro, in Barria de Santa Cruz-about a block from the cathedral right in the middle of maze-like Barrio...Read this update
March 09, 2002
Lisbon
Roosters are symbols of Portuguese culture so we felt that it was appropriate that after staying one night in a boring part of Lisbon, Portugal in a hotel room...Read this update
March 02, 2002
Salamanca Spain
I just walked out of the jaw-dropping Cathedral in the beautiful old city of Salamanca a few minutes ago. Made Notre Dame in Paris look pretty tame. And there are...Read this update
February 21, 2002
TVG Trains Better Than Hitching
High speed (TVG) trains travel over 200,mph. In 1965 when a college friend and I traveled through Europe; it took all night to get from Dover to Ostergard on a...Read this update
September 30, 1995
The Registan
It is said, the sand was strewn on the ground to soak up the blood from the public executions that were held there until early in the 20th century....Read this update
Exotic History Of Samarkand
From Wikipedia: At times Samarkand has been the greatest city of Central Asia, and for much of its history it has been under Persian rule. Founded circa 700 BCE...Read this update
Posted by laughingnomad at 01:31 PM |
Read Comments (0)