Which of the following would you rather be: King, Prime Minister, Prince, President, Emperor, Chief, Pharaoh, or Sultan? ‘King’ would be cool, but don’t you think a little overplayed? And too many people have the tainted and failed the crown already. ‘Primer Minister’, that just sounds toolish. Poor Monaco, ‘Prince’ is a total rip-off. ‘President’ could be fun but it seems a bit too business-like, no? ‘Chief’ reminds me of fat policemen and I think endless donuts would lead to diabetes. ‘Pharaoh’ comes in close I rec [View Full Entry]

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Has anybody ever wondered why it’s called an Ottoman? I always associate Ottomans with Laz-E-Boy chairs, but now that I have arrived in Turkey this association seems grossly incorrect. Because if Turkish work ethic benefits at all from the perseverance with which Turkish men pursue foreign women, their economy could very well be the only one to withstand the recent global meltdown. The flight from London to Istanbul at three and a half hours is as long as the flight from Hong Kong to Bali, but doesn’t it seem so much further of a trip? At least to me, it seems [View Full Entry]

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I don't think I realized how much I loved London until I came back. As I left any of my decent presentable clothes back in Paris with Fred, I came with a backpack of clothes for the Middle East. I didn't party like it was 1999 or anything of that sort, these three days were really more about paying long overdue visits to friends, in my Havianas. The rest of this will read pretty random, but that's more because I just fit friends into certain times of the day and did whatever we went with then. That's how I ended up [View Full Entry]

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They say it is the City of Love. They say it is the City of Lights. They have never mentioned that it is also the City of Matters that Confuse. The past two days have made me feel as if I tried to go about solving a not so hard mathematics problem stoned out of my mind, and somewhere along they way I decided to down some shrooms as well for fun. I repeated 5 phrases in French about 200 times, and hey, if I don't want to go back into Finance it seems I have a promising career ahead of [View Full Entry]

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It is amazing that despite France being rather expensive overall, a good bottle of wine could run you no more than 7 Euros, whereas in Hong Kong these cost you an arm and a leg. We’ve spend the last few days at the Chateaux de Bradshaw, located in the quaint town of Fayence (know for its boulangeries back in Medieval times) half an hour outside of Nice in Provence. Picture your quintessential house in the South of France - and this is it. Walls covered with ivy and vines, great big green lawns enclosed in large walls of manicured bushes. Pebbled [View Full Entry]

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Now what kind of a trip to the Cote d’Azur, French Riviera, the South of France, Aix en Provence, home of L’Occitane, would be complete without a trip to Grasse, home of famed parfumeries? Let me first start by laying to rest the age-long question of “Are the French really dirty?” Now just for the record, I love French people. Some of my favorite people in the world are French, some of my closest friends are French, and I absolutely love French men. However, why do you think France is so renowned for their perfumes? Back in the day, French royalty [View Full Entry]

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What do you get when you mix really sexy cars with fabulous Europeans, mega-yachts, the French Riviera, and a lot of screaming testosterone? I should preface this by stating that regardless of how this is written, it will inevitably come across sounding hoity-toity. For that, I apologize, but who are we kidding... this is the Monaco Grand Prix. The subject matter doesn’t quite lend itself to a humble, penny-pinching, off the beaten track travel narrative. Formula One racing could quite possibly be the most moneyed sport in the world. And the Monaco Grand Prix is quite definitely the [View Full Entry]

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I remember back in the days of American suburbia when the ice cream trucks would roll through the streets, the tinkling music wafting into every home that conjured images of dancing popsicles and twirling strawberry shortcake bars. Sitting inside watching TMNT (Turtle Power!), my head would twitch up and I could already feel the chocolate goodness covering my mouth and maybe a little shoved up into my nose. I run outside, chasing after that big ice cream truck, running alongside of it as far as I can with quarters jingling. Sometimes the truck stops, other times I feel like the driver [View Full Entry]

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The port town of Kaw Thuang seems like it has been forgotten a long time ago. I've been many places in Southeast Asia and I can say this was one of the smelliest, dirties, most trashed up little towns yet. I haven't been to India yet, but it is what I imagine the Ganges looks like, only all the people a little yellower instead of browner (and of course not as big or as crowded.) Trash piled up to nowhere on the banks of the water, trash piled up on the streets but not hidden away like in Indonesia, just you [View Full Entry]

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Now, questionable security at border crossings are not that uncommon in this world. Questionable in the sense that maybe you make the tall grey arch beep a concert and they flat out ignore it, questionable in the sense that maybe those X-ray screeners aren't really even turned on (and their "guns" look like halloween props), questionable in the sense that you think the sole security screener is clearly abusing cheap cough syrup on the job while you prance through with your huge metal beltbuckle, 2 pound bling around your neck, and maybe your gat sticking out of your underwear. But, has [View Full Entry]

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