"Welcome to Medellin, my friend! Look at the mountains! Look at the women! I'll tell you a secret - it's called Paradise!" Although Medellin is considered the most dangerous city in Colombia, if not the world, the locals never stopped telling me that it was the most wonderful place on the planet. The food, the weather, the people, they insisted, could not be better anywhere. That isn't exactly the image that Medellin holds for the rest of … [Read more...]
Peru Expedition Part 1 6/20/01 – 7/15/01
Wed. 6/20/01 My sister Patty drove me to the San Luis Obispo airport, as she has done on many previous trips; and I left SLO at 10:36 am, arriving in LAX at 11:45 am. There I joined several other fellow climbers and trekkers (including my son Kevin and his friend Deborah) who had arrived from other cities. Leaving LAX at 2:10 pm, we arrived in Lima, Peru at 12:40 am on 6/21 after an 8.5 hour flight and adjusted our watches for the 2-hour time … [Read more...]
Views of a Cruise
I have often found that the funniest experiences come to us in life by just observing our fellow humans and being aware of our surroundings. A few times a year I give a series of lectures on board a cruise ship. I teach folks how to invest in the stock market without anxiety. How to live a wholesome, sickness free life, and most of all....... How to be happy every moment we are on earth. On one particular occasion I sat on the open decks … [Read more...]
Indigenous Hill Tribes in Bangladesh
It is generally agreed that Bangladesh is not a heavily frequented tourist destination. But this poor and tiny country has some unique attractions and should be on the list of any curious traveler. Indigenous hill tribes are one of the primary reasons for visiting Bangladesh. The tribal population consisted of 897,828 persons - just over 1 percent of the total population, at the time of the 1981 census. They lived primarily in the Chittagong … [Read more...]
Burma: Poverty, Government Greed & Human Sweetness Part I
Burma Part I August 18 2002 Rangoon (renamed Yangon) Burma We took Thai Air to Rangoon. Bob left his Lonely Planet Guidebook Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military junta) on the plane and of course someone had pocketed it by the time we debarked. But we remembered the Yoma Hotel downtown and headed there. At the Yoma a French Canadian couple at dinner loaned us their LP so we could locate a bookstore somewhere in the city. Incidentally the … [Read more...]
Burma: Poverty, Government Greed & Human Sweetness Part II
Kalaw In a monsoon rainstorm we climbed off the train in this cool wooded hill station built during the British occupation. The locals laughed (with me) at my little paper sun umbrella I carried that I had bought at the umbrella shop in Inle. Only transport available was in a partially covered horse cart Driven by a kind old man. Off went the horse clipclopping with us along to the ironically named Dream Villa Hotel a few blocks away in the … [Read more...]
Our Time in China
The opening up of China is a stirring idea. A foreigner traveling alone today is privileged to see more of China than almost any Chinese has seen in his or her lifetime. I wondered what we could learn-traveling alone. Our images and ideas of China have surely been contradictory and distorted over time. In the years of the Cultural Revolution after 1966 tens of millions of Chinese had become the instruments of their own terror...a million were … [Read more...]
Great Wall and Great Zoo
The frigid bite in the September morning air in Beijing, China made me glad I had brought along a jacket. With the help of the hotel clerk who had acted as my interpreter, I had hired a taxi to drive me to The Great Wall. I thought that my request was simple enough to avoid any confusion with the taxi driver, but I thought wrong. Because of the demands of the 50th Anniversary celebration under the communist rule that Beijing was carrying … [Read more...]
East Timor: A Diamond in the Rough!
A diamond in the rough has been a term used recently to describe scuba diving in East Timor; the newest nation in the world. Located in the Southeast end of the Indonesian Archipelago, East Timor, commonly referred to as ET, has some spectacular diving to offer those adventurous souls in search of something new and different. In 1999 the world became much more aware of East Timor as civil unrest broke out after a referendum vote for … [Read more...]
Kodaikanal Vacation, India
Hai! My name is Vijay and I live in Chennai. Chennai, though a very pleasant city in many other ways, gets intolerably hot in summer. This year, Chennai recorded the second highest temperature in two years! We were melting in our clothes. This is why, we shouted with joy when my father told us he was taking to Kodaikanal (a hill station) for a leisurely summer vacation. Our father booked the tickets through the Internet, for our railway … [Read more...]
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