Borobudur: Icon of Indonesia

Iconic symbols are a theme I will be referring to often. For example, when you think of Paris, what image comes to mind? Probably the Eiffel Tower. Rome? The Colosseum. London? Big Ben. New York, LA, San Fransisco? The Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood Sign, and the Golden Gate Bridge. I can go on and …

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McDonald’s Malaysia: Golden Arches Over The South China Sea

This post was nine months in the making. Just as Malaysia is split into two distinct parts, my visit to Malaysia was separated by over half a year. I visited Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo in January and I visited Peninsular Malaysia in August. I could have written the post back then, but I wanted …

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The Happy Prosperous Restaurant of the Golden Arch

For all the new readers, you can get the background on why I’m writing about McDonald’s here. McDonald’s Taiwan is the first McDonald’s I’ve experienced since New Zealand to have a completely unique item on the menu: the rice burger. The rice burger is a burger where the bun is replaced with rice and the …

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Preah Vihear: My Trip To A War Zone, Part 3

Read part 1 and part 2 first. The Temple We paid the dirt bike drivers $18 to take us round trip up the mountain. I don’t think they get much business lately. On the way up we saw periodic small groups of soldiers sleeping or bathing. They didn’t appear to be at Defcon 5. We …

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Behind the Lens – Bangkok Red Shirt Protester

In the spirit of VH1, I am going to start taking time each week to tell the stories behind some of my favorite photos. This week I want to tell the story behind the photo of the red shirt protester I took in Bangkok in 2010. I arrived in Bangkok in early 2010 to take …

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My Day as a Photojournalist

Over the last three years I’ve taken somewhere around 60,000 photos. I’ve taken photos from the air, from the inside of caves, in deserts, in jungles, on islands and on mountains. I even spent one memorable day on the Great Barrier Reef as an underwater photographer. Until last week, however, I had never found myself …

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Operation Street Food – Day 2 (Tropical Fruits)

Another day of street food has come and gone. Here is what I had to eat on Thursday. Lunch Jackfruit – 20 baht (US$0.60) bag of chicken skin and 2 chicken wings 42 baht ($1.27) bag of longkong – 50 baht ($1.51) Dinner Skewer of chicken gizzards and grilled fish – 20 baht (US$0.60) I …

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Visiting Wadi Rum

In my humble opinion, the greatest movie ever made is Lawrence of Arabia. Shot on location in Wadi Rum on 70mm film, a forerunner of IMAX, it is a fantastic story with amazing acting, directing, and cinematography. It tells the story of TE Lawrence and the Great Arab Revolt in WWI against the Turks. I’ve …

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Jerusalem Syndrome

There really is something called Jerusalem Syndrome. Wikipedia describes it as a: …mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by, or lead to, a visit to the city of Jerusalem. It is not endemic to one single religion or denomination but has affected …

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