Landlocked in Laos The country of Laos sits right in the middle of the southeast Asia peninsula. To the north is China and Myanmar to the south is Thailand and Cambodia and to the east is Vietnam. This is a landlocked country that is not really an organically grown entity, but is rather the construct of the French colonialists who decided that in between all of those countries there was still room for one more…
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh Today we are leaving the fun-loving, R&R haven of Bangkok and heading back into the jungle of my youth. No, I did not fight in the Vietnam War, I was just young enough to avoid that nightmare, but not so young that the draft and all that it meant in its life-changing transition did not touch me. While Jim Morrison was telling everyone to “Come on, come on, come on…
Bangin’ Out Bangkok Today was our day to spend an entire tour bangin’ out the sites of Bangkok. Unlike the last time I was here, many years ago, Tuk-Tuks and mopeds no longer dominate the streets the way they used to. There are still two types of Tuk-Tuks in Bangkok, the kind that the common working people of Bangkok might use as an economical way to get places where public transportation can’t get them, and…
Good & Plenty Today was a big day for me on this trip. We had booked a full day tour out to the far western region of Thailand, some 3-4 hours drive from our hotel in Bangkok. That is only 115 miles, and the roads were decent, but Bangkok traffic is always an issue. We had a young lady named Angela (her Anglicized name for our convenience) who was our tour guide today. Her partner…
2% Off Chimps On a grand tour of SE Asia like we are currently on, there is always more down time than one expects. Sometimes it has to do with sleeplessness due to lingering jet lag, and sometimes its just the group dynamics of letting everyone have their space to carry on with their daily needs. In addition, travel delays in places that are unfamiliar are also to be expected. Yesterday we arrived in Bangkok…
Braving the Batu Cave I’ve mentioned already that Mike booked this entire trip for the six of us. He is literally answering his phone as “Brower Travel Services” at this point. Well, for Kuala Lumpur, which was a fill-in stop between our adjustment days in Singapore and hitting one of our main event stops in Bangkok, he just booked us to see the Petronas Towers, which are literally steps away from our Mandarin Oriental Hotel…
Bangkok Bound Tomorrow we fly from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok. That means we are going from a Muslim state to a Buddhist state (Thailand is 94% Buddhist). Our stay at the Mandarin Oriental here has been very pleasant. The facilities are very nice and the service is excellent. These people know who they serve and as I look up at the ceiling of our room I see another sign of that. There is a small…
Come In Rangoon I don’t remember where I first heard the expression, but like many good jokes, there are two guys sitting at a bar when a large-breasted woman walks in and draws their attention. The joke ends with a man with his hands on the woman’s breasts pretending to twist the dials of an old radio transmitter, saying, “Come in Rangoon…”. In some ways there are few places in American culture other than perhaps…
Singapore Sling We’ve arrived in Singapore after a long set of flights half way around the world. We are sixteen hours ahead of our hilltop (it is 8:30am Thursday here and 4:30pm Wednesday at home). Time zones here in Asia are even more unusual than my favorite weirdo time zone state of Arizona. Take a look at an Asian time zone map and you’ll realize it has more to do with geopolitical groupings than east/west…
Boning Up On Asia At this moment I am somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on a JAL flight from LAX to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Since I had only ever flown into Narita Airport in Tokyo, and that was last about 17 years ago when Kim and I went over for a half-business, half-leisure trip that took us to Tokyo and Kyoto, I assumed that Haneda was the new airport for the city. I was…