

Of various travel destinations you often wind up with restaurants that aren’t offering their full menu. Read more “When Traveling in the Off Seasons”
But I tried to spice them up a little. Read more “Pictures of the Taj Mahal All Look The Same”
These pictures are jumping the line a bit because I’m excited about them. Read more “Three cool pictures I’ve taken”
Where you shouldn’t order pizza. Read more “There Are Certain Places”
Is the big building in Taipei. It’s supposed to look like bamboo. It dominates the skyline. That other building only looks comparable because it’s closer. Read more “Taipei 101”
The Pingxi Lantern festival is an incredible experience. It was worth standing in the cold for about four hours; which we did almost accidentally. Read more “The Pingxi Lantern Festival”
Travel in India for a month. I have such an appreciation for how things are in the US now. Here are some cultural things I never appreciated.
The Philippines has this really terrible policy of murdering drug users and extorting their families and ANOTHER terrible policy of requiring booked onward travel plans from all tourists who enter. Read more “Then we went to Taiwan”
…About all these places Heather and I have been: everyone still uses ringtones. Sometimes even text ring tones! In public, on the bus! Everywhere! And everyone uses the same one.
People talk about how squat toilets are sooo different in India. But there is no accounting for how foreign a person has to be to enable the ring tone on their phone.
Between Indian and US culture is the public response to any kind of fight or disagreement. In the US the response is to watch what’s happening out of the corner of your eye and maybe discuss it under your breath with your friends. The only reason you would get involved in any conflict would be to choose and join one side of the fight, right? In India, if a guy is arguing loudly with a cop in the street men will walk all the way up -way past US standards for personal space- just to watch what’s going on. No corner of the eye pretending to respect people’s privacy, they pull up a front row seat because they want the gossip. I can only imagine how disconcerting it must be to be an American who finds themselves in a confrontation in public only to find that several Indian men have crowded up close to watch.
They have one type of beer. Kingfisher. It’s like $5 and it sucks. Still sold? Too bad no one sells it.
In Coron. Very picturesque. Speaking of pictures these don’t show up as sharp as I’d like in the blog posts, if you’re on a fast connection and like a picture click on it to see it in full resolution glory. Read more “The Beach Island Hopping Tour is Nice.”
…in the country you’re visiting. You don’t know the situation, it could well be that they are being run by a pimp and if business is good he will hire more children to beg; children who then can’t be doing things like being in school. You should instead give later to appropriate charities. HOWEVER. If a kid brings to you in his arms an adorable puppy for a picture, and you take that picture, then you have to give that kid some money, lady. Fee for services rendered. You should not have taken that picture but since you did, your principled stance of “oh no..no money” and feined patting of your pockets only serves to add just a little bit more injustice to an already terribly unfair life. You are a jerk.
Leaving Taj Mahal one of the 7 wonders of the world:
“Is good.”
“Yes, is good. Big.”
“Yes. Big.”
“Maybe…chai?”
“ahhh….too much too much”
“ah chai good price!”
“okayokaynoproblem.”
is simpler.
Here are some more pictures from Tour A. Read more “El Nido P.2 In Which I Find More Pictures of El Nido”
It’s called El Nido and travel bloggers and Tripadvisor reviewers are often like “it’s already ruined” “too touristy” Read more “Heaven is a Place in Palawan”
After Singapore we went to Thailand, first to Phuket, which was okay and in which I got sick. Read more “Pictures of Thailand”
Here’s a bunch of pictures of animals from the Singapore Zoo and the Jurong Bird Park! Read more “Singapore Zoo and Two Pictures of Chinatown”