Tag Archives: people I was in Japan several years ago with three other reasonably well-travelled adults. We had arrived into Tokyo late in the evening and were tired and hungry. We went to a shiny restaurant of chrome and formica across the road from the hotel and were met at the door with a “Hai!”, given menus, and shown to […]  I believe in grabbing opportunities that cross my path when at all possible. This is how, with virtually no turn-around-time, I went last week from the under-funded schools and bumpy back roads of the Northwest to a luxurious ’boutique’ resort at the other end of Thailand, and how, with hill-dust still ingrained in my feet, […]  “How long does it take to get to the school?” I asked Khru Apichart who had just turned off a minor road into an even more minor road. “About 45 minutes,” he replied. Then, with a twinkle in his brown eyes, he added: “Twenty minutes when I don’t have passengers!” He was very proud of […]  Luxurious resort accommodation in developing countries offers up some interesting dilemmas. On the one hand, development for tourism brings money and job opportunities into otherwise under-developed communities. On the other hand, it highlights the contrasts between the have-very-littles and the have-a-lots. The Bintan Resorts complex, on the north coast of Bintan (Negeri Segantang Lada), the largest of Indonesia’s […]  If you have very little to start with, it takes very little to make a big difference. Attapeu province in the southernmost part of Laos provides access to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail and two National Diversity Conservation Areas – and very little else. During the French administration it was a base for Nation Liberation […] |
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