Blogs from Asia - page 15979

his is going back a few years, well 6 to be exactish. It all started after I joined the San Diego cricket club back in 99. I was quickly promoted the the first XI where I was a bit of an all rounder. Only being 18, I was by far the youngest in the team. The others players were a mixture of Indians, Englishmen, West Indians, Zimbabwians and of course me. I was playing a game up in Burbank at Woodley where I had a fairly solid knock of 35. I was spotted by some scouts who recommended me to play in the upcoming U19 cricket world cup in Sri Lanka. The rest is all history. http://www.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/1999-2000/OTHERS+ICC/U19-WC2000/SQUADS/U19-WC2000_AMERICAS-SQUAD.html I was flown into Colombo at the beginning of January 2000. I was picked up by some guy with ... read more

Just in case someone might read this who doesn't know us ... we're a family living in Cary, North Carolina. Our kids are Andrea and Benjamin (ages 12 and 9 as of fall 2009). By 1996 Melody & I had been to London and Australia mostly on business. That fall we took our first real international vacation, when we used frequent flier miles from our business trips to fly around the world for about six weeks. We ended up visiting Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Germany, and France. It was on that trip that we developed a style of travel that we’ve used since, with our children, on trips to: Turkey in 1999 and 2001, Hawaii in 2004, California in 2005, Yucatan, Mexico in 2006, and Malaysia in 2009. On these trips our ... read more

Arrived after our 14hour flight that just seemed to go for ever. Aido got food sick from the airplane food which didnt get things off to a healthy start. Being jetlagged, it was tough being thrown into the middle of a very humid Hong Kong. Hundreds of people running around with hardly a space to move. Some of them wearing the Michael Jackson sars type mask trying to dodge every germ that that was in the air. After a bit of sleep everything got easier. First thing was to sort out our remaing vaccines which we got from the nearest hospital. Although they were eyeing up my lung, liver & other organs as if they could be fobbed off on the black market here. Sights we visited while here. Central District - the buildings were funkin ... read more

It finally feels like the trip has begun. We had a ridiculously early flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. I didn't really know what to expect... I had heard that the place was turning into a backpacker's Mecca but was pretty run down. Taking a look out the plane's window, the entire country seemed to be brown; it reminded me of an aerial photo of the North Korean country side. While the airport was pretty modern, with a somewhat unorganized customs system that rendered me $20 lighter and took up a page of passport space. We found a taxi and were off. The city was basically a disaster area, with beautiful colonial razer-wire-defended buildings and puddles of questionable liquids in the street. It appears that there's not public sanitation system for the ... read more

That's it. The last gong has gonged and I returned to real life after 10 days of vipassana. Such sweet golden sound... (though probably even the honking of a truck would have sounded lovely had it symboled the end of meditation sessions). All in all it was a very interesting experience, though it definitely wasn't life changing (one important thing I learned is that an hour is alot of time and that two hours is even more). I tried to think how to describe the atmosphere in the course, what it is most similar to in the outside world, and I came to the conclusion that it most resembles a group of hattifatteners (for those of you who haven't read Moomin books - go read them!). Everyone walks around expressionless (though after a couple of days ... read more