Erik 2006

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 North of the province. Sadly, little of the wealth generated by the mine has so far reached the people, but added pollution has. The vast area of land the province covers is sparsely populated and ... read more

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 by a driver from Celebes Divers, who drove us to our huts at the beautiful Mapia Resort, South of Manado. Over the next 7 days we explored the many dive sites around the Bunaken National ... read more

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 to fly via a third country, as no direct commercial flights exist between the US and Cuba. On Friday evening we left the United States on an Air Canada flight to Toronto. I was surprised ... read more

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 some of the highlights... We arrived at Kansai-Osaka airport on Friday aboard an All Nippon Airways flight from Beijing, and left on Wednesday on a United Airlines flight to San Francisco. For what it's worth, I ... read more

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 Festival... We arrived in Harbin on Friday morning from Beijing. Perhaps it was not one of the most logical places to visit. Except for the winter months, the city's sights are largely restricted to some ... read more