Category Archives: Culture The top end of West Virginia is about as far north as you can get and still be in the south. You needn’t drive many miles to get from wooded, mountainous areas inhabited by tough mountain folk to genteel old towns of stone and brick buildings with iron lattice railings and faux wooden shutters. People […]  During my early years in Thailand, I was invited to conduct some teacher-training in the southern province of Ranong. This was pretty exciting for me as it was my first foray off the main tourist tracks and into the real Thailand. My hosts kindly took me on a tour of the area: beautiful coastline with mangrove reserves and […]  Being a visitor in a place is very different from living there. It’s not so much that we forget where we are, or that we necessarily even take it for granted, but that the business of day-to-day living takes so much of our attention. I was reflecting on this as I ambled out from our hotel, early on […]  Pattaya, 145km south of Bangkok, on the Eastern Gulf Coast of Thailand, was called by the Lonely Planet’s Thailand’s Island and Beaches (mine’s the 2006 version, but things haven’t changed): “A living testament to unchecked tourist development run rampant…” In it’s current incarnation, this city of bars and beaches was born of the American GI R&R action […]  August already! We are back in Bangkok and back at work this week – so it’s a good time to try to catch up some on “Wanderings” from last month. One of the highlights of my short stay in Paris two weeks ago was a much-anticipated trip to the Rodin Museum. A word of […] |
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