I love the luxuries I have available to me at my fingertips when I'm in the comfort of my own home. Meals cooked on stove, laundry done in a washer and dryer and a dishwasher doing my dishes. The feel of a warm, dry bed and clean shower with hot water is always nice too. However, after a long winter stuck in the house, by time spring arrives, I'm sick of these walls and the luxuries within them! The May 24th weekend arrives, the first long weekend to kick off summer. Time to ...
I’d enjoyed a lovely two weeks in Nepal, if you ignore the people killed in the bus crash on the highway to Pokhara, and had forgotten all about my adventures getting to Kathmandu via glorious Biman Airways (the flight didn’t crash, so what does anything else matter?) when I received an email from my travel agent in Bangkok regarding my return flight. I was staying at the Magnificent View Hotel in Kathmandu, conveniently located just outside the Thamel tourist district and next to a vacant lot where homeless squatters begged for rupees in the frigid winter air and pariah ...
"Fly Trans-Love Airways, get you there on time."
- The Animals, 1967
On a recent trip to Asia I found myself needing to fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu. It soon became evident there were only two ways to get between these cities, either Thai International or Royal Nepal Air. Brief inquiries narrowed my choices. Evidently Royal Nepal enjoyed the use of two airplanes, one of which occasionally flew, although landings were not guaranteed, and the other was used for parts. The Royal airline had a nice website with a lovely maroon tinge to it, ...
I moved to Italy—a 20-year old mono-glut. To know. To explore. To learn. To play.
If Italy is a boot, then Puglia is the province of the heel. It is the land of mezzogiorno, the mid-day sun. It is famous for sun, wine, tomatoes and olives. A province of the poor south, Puglia is seldom visited, except as the superfluous space between Naples and the port from which to make the crossing to Greece. Yet it is Italy in it’s undiluted form: passionate, real and timeless. My destination.
January 2002
Alternate travel arrangements had to be made when I arrived with ...
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I spent an incredible 13 years in a place dubbed the “pearl of the orient,”
meeting interesting people, visiting exotic places, but over time I
became more aware of who I was, and what it meant to be Canadian.
East meets West
Hong Kong is a difficult place to describe. The Hong Kong Tourism Board
calls it “Asia’s World Class City,” but I have my doubts. I suppose it
depends on what one considers “world class.”
How do you describe a place that has one of the world’s largest stock
markets, a landmass of 426 square miles (smaller than the Oahu), a landscape
consisting mostly of mountains, one of ...




