Blogs from Asia - page 12991

I’d really been looking forward to this weekend. A chance to get away from Madurai for a couple of days and see a different side of India. Sachiko and I were off to visit a neighbouring state called Kerala where we were to visit a national wildlife park called Periyar Tiger Reserve in the town of Thekkady. Wanting to maximise my time in India and see as much as possible I had asked Ganesh if he could arrange for Sachiko and I to see some of the rural work done by Aravind en-route. Ganesh arranged for us to visit a village eye camp being help in Kelavadakarai, then to pay a visit to one the the Aravind Vision Centres in the town of periyakulam and then to tour the smallest of the Aravind owned hospitals at ... read more

Following a Guidebook to Hoi An When you can get you head around the names of places in Asia things become easy. Before that however, you can get into a lot of trouble. The differences between Hoi An and Hanoi; Da Nang, Ao Nang and Dalat; Dong Hai and Dong Ha might seem linguistically miniscule but when you look at them on a map you realise that a small mistake in pronunciation might result in a bus taking you thousands of kilometers away from where you want to be. This problem was especially troubling for me when I was in Hue as I was still without a guidebook and thus also without a clue as to where would be a fun spot to visit next. In order to finally put an end to my random wanderings ... read more

So today were meant to get our train to varanasi, and yes note the word meant. Day started off very athletic by around 3pm we had already trekked about 4 or so kilometers to get to an ATM and have a general walk about. half way through our journey Maria noticed a big white fluffy dog and thinking it was very cute, which it was, she said tom look at that cute dog, so i did. it was about 2metres away from me when it started barking viciously chasing me off his territory. sadly all i could think of was Rabies. That evening, we were due to catch a train to our next destination, Varanasi, as arranged by what was an official government tourist office in Delhi. We soon after booking it all recognised we had ... read more

The title of this entry is more than a little misleading. First, we will visit our friends Jean-Christophe, Tinna, and Gilles in the city of Taichung (Taiwan) before taking off from the capital Taipei to go home to Canada. So, we do have a brief visit in one more country before heading home. Second, the Philippines is anything but a single stop destination. The tourism industry is the least developed that we've seen, and we have had to make several overnight stops in cities we would never choose to be in. That said, the title stands as this was the last place we had earmarked for touring. But let's take a step back to March 9th... Jen and I left flew out of Hanoi on March 8th. We landed in Hong Kong for a 26 hour ... read more

About our Work Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development was established in 1992, by a group of local Khmer students who, at the time, were studying English behind the Royal Place. Peter Pond, an American and his foster Khmer-American son, supported these local youth in establishing an organization that would educate and empower poor people while encouraging them to become active volunteers in their communities. They named the organization “Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development”. Initial funding for the start up of CVCD was given by generous individuals and by the King of Cambodia who donated $ 2000 USD. Today, CVCD has a budget of about $250,000 to support its projects and administrative costs. Currently, CVCD has 4 major programs to train and support Cambodia’s poor. We described the Primary School Program in our first blog. This program, ... read more