Category: Elsewhere - eng
That’s the title of a new series of photos and videos I posted on Flickr .
In Cambodia much more remains of the Khmer Rouge than the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng prison, the two well-known and horrifying reminders of their brutal reign. In Anlong Veng and Pailin,...
The stunning architecture of the Angkor period. The horrific Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Cambodia is extreme. The sheer magnitude of the temple ruins is incomprehensible. So is the scale of the brutality.
As if there are no constraints on the people, no limit on good and no limit on evil....
A series of trips over the past two years. Lost count. From my pied à terre in Luang Prabang to Bangkok. To catch a cheap Air Asia flight to China or a plane to Holland, or to move on elsewhere in Southeast Asia or meet friends in Bangkok.
It can be done within 24 hours now that the...
During a break from travel went to Canada for a holiday. Family visit.
On the flight from Amsterdam views of inaptly named Greenland. Does the earth's curvature become more visible further up north?
Later we cross the Rocky Mountains. They'd be Rocky Hills using Himalayan standards,...
My friends’ daughter of five eats sachets of milk powder.
I eat packets of instant noodles – dry, soaking makes them inedible.
I like to listen to Laotian radio that I can’t understand. The soft female voices presenting, the intonation, the monotonously rhythmic music.
The first post with this title was uneventful.
Here is another reality.
Yaba kids high on speed ride their motorbikes high speed through Luang Phabang these days.
It is the Hmong who do the trading – says a young lawyer. Don’t know if that is just his...
Just when I walked out of my hotel a brawl erupted fifty meters on near a meat stall. Blows and shouts and a plastic chair flying and then a guy getting away, limping but powered by adrenaline fast enough to stay ahead of the guys chasing him. For a bit, then they caught him after all, and the...
While at the subject of people issuing visa’s: credit to those at the consulate of Vietnam in Luang Phabang who hand out a self-produced map detailing road connections between Laos and Vietnam, distances and border crossings open to foreigners.
Helpful, as as always I was of course...
Gone are the days of full-page visa stamps in passports – in East Asia anyway. Visa now come in the shape of stickers. Nice a visa extension in Laos still comes as a stamp. Nostalgia…
It was worth the extra visit to the Immigration Offices. ‘My boss has a meeting...
Living a simple life here. No air conditioning – just acceptable. No hot water – just acceptable too. There is a laundry machine. The TV is broken, there is no internet – good, it makes me read more. Murakami, Coetzee, Dutch author Verstraten’s book about Korea. To read...
Since French colonial times Laos has been known for its calm. Comparing the people to their Indochinese neighbours it was said that the Vietnamese planted rice, the Cambodians ate it and the Laotians watched it grow. Its unassuming people gave slow-paced Laos a soothing charm.
That charm is...
South of Luang Phabang scattered on the river's banks villages hide amid trees and bushes.
Ban Nong Bua Kham is a new settlement, in fact three villages put together. The government made the villagers move down to the river to stop encroachment on the forest. It paid for the...
I made the trip to the sources of the Mekong and Yellow River in July, though blogposts here date from September. More ‘live’ from Laos now:
I have traveled along the Mekong in Qinghai and Yunnan; and in the north and south of Laos and in Vietnam; and along the stretch...
The finals in Brazil are still almost three years away. But the soccer World Cup of 2014 has started. In Asia in preliminaries of preliminaries many countries have been eliminated already.
Nepal didn’t make it. They drew 1-1 at home against Jordan but something went wrong in...
I knew of Malaysia as a multi ethnic state of course with an indigenous Malay majority and Chinese and Indian minorities. And that is also how I remembered the country from my first Asian trip more than 20 years ago.
But on a recent visit to Kuala Lumpur I was surprised to see how truly multi...