I am perfectly safe.
All of the activity is taking place over an area of one to two square miles of the downtown area. I’m about two miles from the closest redshirt roadblock and another mile or so from all the clashes. Walking around the neighborhood in my area, I would never know that anything was going on in the city. Continue reading “Living Under A State of Emergency”
This Week’s Guest is Sheila Scarborough of Tourism Currents and Family Travelogue.
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Continue reading “This Week In Travel – Episode 34”
I had 905 entries for the JVC camcorder giveaway. I let Random.org do its thing and the winner was Jocy who blogs at http://www.anchorsadrift.blogspot.com/. She said she’d use for the videocamera for the following:
Hello. I’m moving to Cambodia to pursue human rights work on forced evictions/land confiscation issues. I’d use this camera to document that work, along with travels throughout the year.
I can think of many worse uses for this camera.
Congratulations to Jocy and stay tuned for another great giveaway I have planned for April!
I’ve done glorified visa runs before. My trip to Papua New Guinea was really just to renew my Australian visa which was expiring after 3 months in the country. I decided to make a real trip out of it, so it was more than just getting a passport stamp. Likewise, last month I went to Singapore because my Thai visa was running out, but I also spent 10 days there with my college roommate Dave and met with people in Singapore.
Last Saturday I flew to Singapore and back to Bangkok in one day. In fact, I never even left the airport in Singapore. That, my friends, was a real deal, in-out, quickie, good old fashioned visa run. My flight arrived in Singapore around noon and I was checking in for my flight to Bangkok at 4pm. Continue reading “Visa Run”
This week’s guest was Robert Reid of Lonely Planet who was fresh off his performance earlier in the day on the Today Show.
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Continue reading “This Week In Travel – Episode 33”
In honor of the release of the Apple iPad (which I will not get to see for another month) I’ve released a series of iPad wallpapers. Just click on the image to access the full size wallpaper. Save it to your iPad then set it as your wallpaper. Let me know if you install it on your iPad in the comments.
I carry around a lot of electronics. Way more than most people who travel. For the first two and a half years of my trip I lugged around a big six outlet power strip that I was using on my home computer. It was a generic model I picked up a Home Depot and was built for the garage. It was big, it was heavy and I was more than happy to get rid of it.
I honestly never gave much thought to my power strip. The power strip is probably the lowest item on the totem pole in your traveling pack of technology. Nonetheless, when I was contacted by the folks at Monster Cable back in December and asked if I wanted to try their 6 outlet travel power strip, I jumped at the chance. Continue reading “Travel Gear Review – Monster Cable, Outlets To Go Power Strip”
For the third year in a row I did an April Fool’s joke on April 1. For the third year in a row, an abnormally large number of people seem to have fallen for it, at least for a little while. This year I was sort of shocked at how many people said they fell for it, some of whom said they believed it for several hours (they clearly didn’t read the comments!)
Probably the greatest April Fool’s day joke ever perpitrated was the 1985 Sports Illustrated article by George Plimpton: The Curious Case of Sid Finch. He tells the story of a Harvard drop out who goes to Tibet and comes back years later after having learned to throw a baseball 150 mph. It had all the great hallmarks of a great April Fool’s joke. It gave some subtle clues that it was a joke (take the first letter of each word in the introduction), it was hard to believe but not so crazy that it was impossible to believe, and at no point did he give away the joke in the entire article.
I had actually this joke in mind for months and was even going take it one step further. I was going to find the ugliest ladyboy I could find in Bangkok and shoot a video, such that anyone who saw it would realize that the ladyboy was in fact a man. Unfortunately, my video camera is broken, so I went with what I did. Continue reading “Anatomy of an April Fool’s Joke”
My new photo essay is now up on the WashingtonTimes.com. It is a look at my time in Jerusalem during Holy Week 2009. Being in Jerusalem during Holy Week was an amazing experience and one of the highlights of my three years of travel. It includes photos from the Western Wall, the Good Friday procession down the Via Dolorosa (Way of the Cross), and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
