After my trip to the volcanoes of East New Britain in August, I was ready to see more of this beautiful country that I now call home. It didn't take long for me to get lucky. First, I was asked to travel to Kiunga and Daru in Western Province for work, and then I visited Madang over the Independence Day weekend with friends. I visited Western Province for 3 days in the first week of September. The province is one of the least developed in the country, yet is home to the immensely profitable Ok Tedi Gold Mine in the mountainous [View Full Entry]

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Rabaul, on New Britain Island, used to be one of the pearls of the Pacific. Despite frequent volcanic activity, the German colonisers, and later the Japanese invaders, had turned the town into one of the largest and one of the most attractive towns in Papua New Guinea. This reality changed rather abruptly in 1994 when the volcano Tuvurvur exploded, with little warning, completely destroying Rabaul. The town was covered in several meters of ash, and in the weeks after the eruption, the roofs of Rabaul's buildings caved in one by one... I have lived in Port Moresby for 6 months now, [View Full Entry]

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After months of waiting for my contract and visa, I finally moved to Papua New Guinea in January 2007. So far, it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience (and I'll hopefully publish an entry on life here soon...). Nonetheless, after spending 4 months in Port Moresby, I was quite ready for a little break. The opportunity came when I met up with my parents and brother for a scuba-diving reunion in Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. From Papua New Guinea, I flew to Singapore, where I met up with the family, before flying on to Manado. We were picked up at the airport [View Full Entry]

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Moroccans gather around storytellers and comedians, while tourists sit down for dinner at food stalls serving anything from couscous to sheep's head. Henna artists and fortune tellers wait for customers, as orange juice and dried fruit sellers try to get the attention of passers-by. Unknown scents and the snake charmers' unbearable music are in the air. Welcome to the Djemaa El-Fna, the central plaza and 'heart' of Marrakech, at nightfall... Enjoy the hustle and bustle of this circus for as long as you can, for it is unlike anything you've ever seen before. Once you've had enough, retire to yo [View Full Entry]

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Every year for the past 14 years, the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution calling on the United States to end its trade embargo against Cuba, originally introduced in 1961, several months after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Every year for the past 14 years, the United States has ignored this call by up to 182 nations. While I don't want to go into the rights and wrongs of the embargo and the government of Fidel Castro, the embargo did influence our travels: In order to get to Havana from Los Angeles, we had [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in California just over a week ago, on Wednesday... it all started with: Culture shock!! California developed quite a reputation internationally while being at the forefront of the social revolution of the 1960s, and never shook off its image of being laid-back, liberal, and in all a great state to visit or to live in. I was expecting to feel right at home in San Francisco, enjoying what is sometimes described as its "European" feel, after spending the last couple of months in Asia. At the start, it wasn't to be.... Since then, I've come to really enjoy my [View Full Entry]

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Kyoto, Japan's former imperial city and arguably the country's cultural heart, is supposedly home to over 2,000 temples and shrines. I wonder who counted them, and whether anyone has managed to visit them all... We certainly didn't! On our way from Beijing to San Francisco, we spent a couple of days enjoying Kyoto's sights and its laid-back atmosphere. After several weeks in China's big cities, the peacefulness of its temples and gardens provided a very welcome change of pace. Unlike before, I won't talk in detail about every place we visited. Instead I'll just sum up their names, and mention [View Full Entry]

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Beijing... the fast-changing capital of the most populous country in the world, and the only Chinese city I had visited before I came to China this time. My parents took me and my brother to Beijing for a family holiday ten years ago, when I was 13. It was my first visit to Asia, and has since inspired me to come back to Asia several times to see more. Returning to Beijing, I was wondering whether it would still resemble the city I remembered from so long ago, and whether it could live up to my memories... We arrived in Beijing [View Full Entry]

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Harbin, normally best known for its Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival which takes place in January, appeared on television sets around the world last November as the water supply of the city's 3.8 million inhabitants was cut off for several days. An accident at a chemical plant in a city upstream from Harbin had polluted the city's main water source, the Songhua river, with a 80-km long benzene slick. Since then, with the water supply back to normal, the city has once again retreated from the world stage, and it will probably remain largely forgotten in Europe until the next Ice [View Full Entry]

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Since Xi'an was founded 3,100 years ago, it has served as China's capital during 13 dynasties; in total for over 1,000 years. It used to be the Eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road trading route, which connected China to Central Asia and beyond. The result of the city's important role in the Orient's history is a staggering 35,000+ historical sites which can be found in Xi'an and the surrounding Shaanxi province. Most famous of all is the "Army of Terracotta Warriors", which was discovered in 1974 by local farmers, and which has helped Xi'an to refind some of its former [View Full Entry]

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