| Orchid Designs |  |
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"Perdmontemps Junction"
Grenada, W.I. c1994 Baila Lazarus
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| Jan. 17, 2004 | Bangkok | Things I have learned on my first day and a half: PEOPLE AFRAID OF TRAFFIC - STAY HOME! READ MORE |
| Jan. 27, 2004 | Uniquely Thai | There's nothing quite like experiencing life in the true rural Thailand to make me remember why I love travelling. This week I visited a CUSO placement in a small Karen village. READ MORE |
| Feb. 4, 2004 | Burma | I went back and forth over my decision to go to Myanmar (Burma) for weeks before I left for Asia and for weeks after I got to Thailand. My express purpose for going was to do a story on the remainng Jewish community in Yangon, a group of eight families, down from 2,500 people only 50 years ago. READ MORE |
| Feb. 10, 2004 | Chiang Mai | Yes, I rode an elephant. It's what people come to do
in Chiang Mai (in northern Thailand) with or without the standard three-day trek, river rafting on rubber and/or bamboo rafts, visiting a beautiful waterfall and traipsing through the living rooms and backyards of various hill tribes. READ MORE |
| Feb. 15, 2004 | Slow boat down the Mekong. | Slow boat down the Mekong... Slow boat down the Mekong... It sounds so divinge, so perfectly foreign, so Indochina. Doesn't it conjure up romantic images of sunsets and fishing boats, rice paddies and water-side bungalows? READ MORE |
| Feb. 18, 2004 | Luang Prabang -- heritage city | There are certainly pros and cons about visiting a world heritage site, such as that of Luang Prabang in northern Loas. READ MORE |
| Feb. 20, 2004 | Nong Khiaw -- I become a farang bitch | Nong Khiaw in northern Thailand was the first place I really became a farang bitch. (Farang, by the way, means “French” in some Asian languages and has become the word for “foreigner” in those countries. Lao and Thailand being two examples.) READ MORE |
| Feb. 21, 2004 | Back from Nong Khiaw--Seaweed, stones and rice with extras | Having spent two days nearly comatose in Nong Khiaw, I decided I would have to be taken away in a white jacket, or Lao equivalent, if I stayed there another day with nothing to do. READ MORE |
| Feb. 23, 2004 | Lao wedding -- tie boys and '80s make-up | Back from Nong Khiaw in the Nittaya guest house in Luang Prabang, it was finally the day of the wedding. READ MORE |
| Mar. 1, 2004 | March 1: Everybody loves Laos | Really, it's true, ask any traveller through Southeast Asia and
it seems |
| Mar. 4, 2004 | Don Det | I had heard about the islands of Don Det and Don Kon from just a handful of travellers who I met in Laos, as well as from some friends... READ MORE |
| Mar. 8, 2004 | Angkor and the hassles are just beginning | Let me say this about Cambodia. Any country that has an entry
in the |
| Mar. 12, 2004 | Cambodia: Guesthouse headaches and sex on the beach |
Having left my disappointment with Angkor behind in the dust of Siem Reap, I head out to Phnom Penh with renewed hope that my Cambodia trip would not be one of total dismay. READ MORE |
| Mar. 17, 2004 | From Scambodia to Vietscam | Given the many stories I’ve heard of tourists
being taken advantage of and |
| Mar. 19, 2004 | Facing the traffic (literally) in Ho Chi Minh city | Trekking in northern Thailand, white water rafting
in Malawi or paragliding in Israel... nothing compared to riding a motorbike through Ho Chi Minh City (also still known as Saigon). READ MORE |
| Mar. 22, 2004 | The Mekong Delta | It occurred to me that when our “Happy Tour” tour
guide for a three-day |
| Mar. 24, 2004 | The Cu Chi Tunnels | The first time I heard the term “tunnel rat” was in some Vietnam War movie with Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox. When Fox complains about the treatment of a female Viet Cong (VC) prisoner, his superior threatens to make him a tunnel rat. READ MORE |
| Mar. 30, 2004 | Floating my troubles away in Nha Trang | I was shocked… no, no, … appalled…. OK, OK, shocked and appalled… here I thought Vietnam was just supposed to be beginning it’s development of tourism and what do I see when my tour bus brings me to Nha Trang? Miami Beach. READ MORE |
| April 3, 2004 | Tigers and Camels and clothes, oh my! | Beautiful, beautiful Hoi An. A mix of stunning architecture dating back over 100 years – a mix of French, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese buildings – and a thriving clothing trade that knows exactly how to snag me. READ MORE |
| April 9, 2004 | The College of how to Overcharge Newcomers (CON) | Somewhere in Hanoi, behind an innocuous-looking noodle shop, down an alleyway and up a dark stairwell, there is malicious teaching afoot.READ MORE |
| April 10, 2004 | A bus to Vientiane: I should have flown | Looks like a cute bus, doesn’t it? Not a cramped mini-bus. Not an overloaded local truck. Not even the expected 2,000 bags of rice on top raising the centre of gravity to about a foot above the roof. But for those who paid $30 to sit on its floor, ahhh, they did not think it was so cute. READ MORE |
| April 18, 2004 | How drunk can you get? | My first splash of Boun Pii Mai (Lao New Year) comes at me through the open windows of my bus to Luang Prabang. Children squeal in laughter as they stand on the side of the road with hoses and pails and toss water at any vehicle passing by. READ MORE |
| April 21, 2004 | Oudom Xai: Sometimes it doesn't pay to have a map. | Leaving Luang Prabang, I head north to cross the border from Laos to China. I decide to visit two towns on the way -- Oudom Xai and Luang Namtha -- just to squeeze as much of Laos in as possible before I leave. READ MORE |
| April 24, 2004 | Jinghong - an introduction to Chinese toilets | I had heard all about Chinese toilets but unless youre used to
living in tenement housing, there isn't much to prepare you. The worst of my experiences came on the first day in China, in Jinghong. READ MORE |
| April 27, 2004 | To bus or not to bus | There should be some standards for map dots. You know, like DIN numbers on film or something. Here I am, selecting what cities I'd visit in China based on the smallest dots on the map...READ MORE |
| April 27, 2004 | Experincing Kunming and getting pissed on a train | Kunming was even bigger than Jinghong. A huge metropolis of a zillion people scurrying around on bikes amid the taxis, buses and motorbikes. Using my guidebook, I choose a budget hotel in the "old" part of town...READ MORE |
| April 28, 2004 | Buying a bus ticket in Nanning - sometimes it pays to be a nuisance | Tired of seeing huge cities and paying ten times more for hotels than I did in Southeast Asia, I decide to make my next destination Guiping, a small town chosen at random from my guidebook...READ MORE |
| April 30, 2004 | Guiping - in which I am a star... or a freak | Guiping is exactly what I was looking for. The one hotel in town that caters to tourists (possibly the one hotel in town) offers me a lovely single room...READ MORE |
| May 2, 2004 | Hong Kong | What's to say about a city whose buildings are so densely packed together, the streets are darker during the day when the sun is shining than at night when the neon lights are on. READ MORE |
| May 6, 2004 | Guangzhou | I had expected to hate Guangzhou, perhaps as much as I had expected to like Jinghong. Another unfulfilled expectation. READ MORE |
| May 8, 2004 | Yangshuo: Running into "Dad" | So here I was, thinking I'm pretty smart about getting to the well-known town of Yangshuo. I forewent the standard express bus from Guangzhou to Guilin (seven hours, 150Yuan), where I would still have to find a connecting bus to Yangshuo, and managed in broken Chinese to find a night bus that went directly from Guangzhou to Yangshuo.READ MORE |
| May 10, 2004 | Heaven on a rice terrace |
I have found a little paradise in the craziness of China. Just two hours north of Guilin is the area known as the "Dragon's Backbone" or Longji Rice Terraces. Wooden buildings and stone pathways that wriggle through the small villages (and these really are small), and thousands of curving rice paddies make this area world famous. READ MORE |
| May 12, 2004 | Guilin: The most beautiful city in the world? Not! But... |
In one of the tourist brochures you get at the local CITS (China International Travel Service) in Guilin, there's a picture of Bill Clinton (or maybe it was Jimmy Carter) riding a bicycle through some villagey looking area and a quote calling Guilin "the most beautiful city in the world". READ MORE |