Our World

In 2007 an organization to Save the Asian Elephant began to hold art exhibits of fiberglass elephant sculptures decorated by artists and celebrities. The first of these was held in Rotterdam and over the following years in Milan, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and London. At the conclusion of the indoor/outdoor exhibitions there is an auction of the [...]

Christmas does come to Thailand each year as the Thais do like holidays so they manage to celebrate as many as possible. However though the businesses do try to create the Christmas scene it is not quite the same. Last year we went to Hong Kong the week before Christmas but found that some of [...]

This weekend was loaded with events here in Chiang Mai. Once a year there is a gathering of monks from throughout northern Thailand. In the past it had been billed as 10,000 Monks but this year the ante was upped to 12,600. Thai and non-Thai people rise before dawn to distribute offerings to the monks. [...]

There are places in the world that have been at the center of history for thousands of years and others that through a convergence of circumstance rise from nothing to find great importance. Melaka until the 15th century was a small fishing village but geography began to transform it into the most important trading center [...]

The Fall of 2011 has been a very bad period here in Thailand. In early October the north of Thailand experienced very heavy periods of monsoon rains. This resulted in flash flooding that did great damage to the hill villages nestled in the mountains and took hundreds of lives. Chiang Mai suffered flooding in the [...]

CHINA relentlessly continues to expand its economic reach into Southeast Asia as it seeks markets and resources to feed its economic growth. In Laos there is an even greater example of this reach. The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone is a one hundred square kilometer property that lies directly across the Mekong River from Thailand [...]

The rains here in the north of Thailand have finally abated so it seemed like a good time for a road trip to the far north of the country. It has only been about six months since we last went north but we were to find a great deal of change in that short period [...]

We first visited Burma (Myanmar) in 2004 when we made our way from its far north after exiting China to the capital in Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) and found it to be unlike anywhere else we have seen in Asia. Cutoff from the rest of the world over the last seventy years by war [...]

We spent a couple of days in Osaka, Japan’s second city, but there was not much of interest . There was lots of shopping and a very lively entertainment section of town that glowed brightly at night. Energy conservation was not evident in Osaka while in Tokyo many of the large advertising displays along the [...]

Japan as a nation had its roots in a small area in the central part of the country where its first two capitals Kyoto and Nara can be found. Relatively small cities that had little strategic importance they escaped the devastation of World War II. This resulted in a great concentration of traditional Japanese . [...]