Repricing the Universe FIRST TRIP FILLER STORY IN CASE I DON’T KEEP UP About 20 years ago a guy came on the scene in New York City, and he became a bit of a phenomenon. His name was Jimmy McMillan and he coined the expression the “The Rent is Too Damn High!”. He formed a political party with the same name and ran for the Mayor of New York City in 2005 and 2009 and…
The Long Goodbye Today we are in Cambodia, tonight we will be in Bangkok, and tomorrow we will be back on our hilltop. The flight over to Asia took us 32 hours door-to-door with 20 hours of that in the air. The flight east tomorrow will take 15 hours in the air you should require about 22 hours at most door-to-door. But we are really starting our journey back today, so take that into account.…
Angkor What? There are some places that every tourist seems to go or have on their bucket list to go to. Such seems to be the case with Angkor Wat. Last year when we were at Abu Simbel in Southern Egypt, very near the Sudan border and literally at the far reaches of most touristic travels I have made, they had a panorama on the walls of the visitor center that showed the placement of…
Reaping the Whirlwind Today we are heading towards Siem Reap, Cambodia, the city where Angkor Wat is located in the place where over 1 million people once lived 1,000 years ago. When moving from Vietnam to Cambodia, it’s hard not to think back to the history of these lands back when I was moving from school to Wall Street in the 70s. When I think of Cambodia, I think of three things, I think of…
Good Evening Vietnam It’s our last day in Hanoi and the weather continues to be overcast and a tad chilly (50s), which is not do bad for touring, but might not be the best Chamber of Commerce conditions to make you love a place and put it on a must-return list. This trip has not rocked my world like Egypt and Jordan did last year, but since I am most inspired by antiquities, I should…
The Heart of Darkness 125 years ago, William Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness about a voyage up the Congo River (not named, but assumed) to meet up with a trader, Kurtz, who had gone native. It is the story of colonial rule in the darkest sense. The story was adapted during the Vietnam War and made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola into the quintessential war movie called Apocalypse Now. What made these…
Good Morning Vietnam Good morning, Vietnam (with fond remembrances of Robin Williams). Before heading off to a long 3-hour bus ride to Ha Long Bay, on the northern part of Haiphong Harbor, in the Gulf of Tonkin, (all names that invoke 1960s newsreels), Mike and I went out to find an ATM. The streets of Hanoi in daylight are every bit as ragged as they seemed last night. Suddenly, this trip has changed from a…
Better Call Jane and John While on this trip it is impressive that we have big flatscreen TVs in every room, but the evening movie selection is not always so broad. Good thing I loaded up my iPad with the 5-seasonal series that represents a prequel to Breaking Bad, called Better Call Saul. It is a finely crafted story about a lawyer’s (actually two lawyers’) slippery ethical path and the unrequited love that accompanies it…
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…