Santa Monica is a fairly wealthy community located along the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles. The 10 freeway ends in Santa Monica and is the main freeway leading to this city from Los Angeles. PCH or Highway 1 runs along the western part of Santa Monica bordering the ocean. The famous Santa Monica Pier is located near the end of the 10 freeway in Santa Monica (with good traffic this is about 20-30 minutes from downtown LA. You can … [Read more...]
Los Angeles, CA – Torrance
Perhaps Torrance is not the first city you think of when visiting Los Angeles - but when digging into the city's history and unique attractions you quickly find that this is a city worth exploring. While flight was invented by the Wright Brothers near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina - it is in Torrance that flight was developed as a commercial entity. A number of company headquarters are located here - it is ground zero for International auto … [Read more...]
Los Angeles, CA – Shopping
The following are a few shopping districts and or shopping centers that we have visited in Los Angeles and Orange County. LOS ANGELES Los Angeles is one of Southern California's hubs for shopping and fashion ranging from high end shops in Beverly Hills to the mega sized shopping+entertainment centers. Many of these shopping centers do not just feature shops but are lifestyle destinations in and of themselves - boasting other attractions set … [Read more...]
India: Sixty million villages and still counting
How on earth do you cover one billion people and more than five thousand years of history in one short article? I am afraid I won't be able to answer that question in regard to writing something about India. I can do no more than give you my week's worth of roaming about in northern India, a country which I found as diverse as it is huge and old. Just to get primed for the speed at which life proceeds in much of this country, our train to … [Read more...]
Where is the Ho Chi Minh Trail?
Saigon, Dec. 14, 2004 Director Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' is a movie about the Vietnam War. Nowadays it is also a swanky bar in the heart of modern Saigon, Vietnam. I have yet to visit it, after having arrived in Saigon today from Hanoi, but I have heard that it enjoys a locally notorious reputation for fast cars, fast drugs, and fast women. It might be wiser to start with the tamer entertainment establishments of this utterly … [Read more...]
Smoke the Revolution
Havana, Cuba March 25, 2003 Dear Friends, Greetings from Cuba!! Just a couple of weeks before my departure to Havana, I could not have imagined soaking up the warm and humid trade winds here on this beautiful Caribbean Island. Instead I was entertaining thoughts of attending a Spanish course in Guatemala, when my old pal Jimmy Bentley called out of the blue to tell me he was looking for a nutcase to join him in defying the US embargo of … [Read more...]
Let your Vacation Bloom in Amsterdam!
Ah yes, Amsterdam - the city of tulips, the city of blooming festivals of color and fragrance in the springtime. However, when you travel to Amsterdam, you'll also find a teeming center of finance and culture, rivaling other European capitals. Begun as a tiny fishing village about 1200 AD, Amsterdam has grown into the capital of the Netherlands, the country that is still, today, called "Holland" by many tourists unfamiliar with the fact that … [Read more...]
Medellin, Colombia Welcome to Paradise
"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...]
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...]
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