Once you get past the idea that Greece is always warm and sunny, winter travel in the Pelponese is great==no crowds, local folks just going about their business of farming, fishing, goatherding. Olives, oranges and lemons are ripe literally for the picking, and early spring flowers are out. Opening hours are short, with many places closing at 3pm for the day. We met very few tour groups, almost all European student study tours with one high school group rather improbably from Buffalo NY. Many coastal places are shut for the season. Old Epidaraus grows from a winter population of 2000 to 5 times that in summer. I was stunned by ancient Mycenea, a major civilization in the 13th-15th century BC. We had seen some of its most amazing finds in Athens, including exquisite pottery and gold ... read more

The many temples of bagan were mystifying. not as well preserved or restored as those at Ankgor, their sheer number overwhelms. As we biked along, everywhere we looked we saw a seemingly endless skyline of stupas, faded by the thick orange dust in the air. rarely if ever have i been so dusty. ... read more

Today we made an overwhelming journey, from Pakse in southern Laos, third largest city in Laos, where Thai imports and culture sneak across the border, across the Thai border, to Ubud the nearest Thai city by a new international VIP bus. We went into Ubud by songthaw from the bus station for lunch, landing randomly in the middle of town and picking by default what turned out to be a very simple and friendly soup and noodle place where other patrons got up and recommended their dishes to us by shaking their plates. We went back by tuk tuk to the airport, and now we are in Bangkok for the night, steeling ourselves for Burma. Bangkok is a modern city by any reckoning, with 5 expressway lanes of traffic (each way) to prove it. We are ... read more

Greeetings from the many beautiful Mekong islands of southern Laos. This computer has a riverside view of the Mekong and is powered by car batteris. Part of DOn Det has noisy smelly diesel generator powered eectricity part of the evening, and a water tank. The rest of the island is very quiet once dark prevails. Tourism is largely confined to one part of the island and residents largely ignore the almost exclusively foreign tourists. Steve is off kyacking and I am about to rent a longboat to see some of the smaller islands. Tomorrow we travel to Pakse Laos near the Thai border, cross the next day into Thailand and have dinner and a visit with our friends in Bangkok. I find I need lots of process time to absorb everything I see. Laotians like their ... read more

It's Sat night in Hanoi, and we just visited 2 places of worship: a local Buddhist temple with a small, all female group chanting and kowtowing, and one of the largest Catholic churches in Hanoi, a full house singing mass in Vietnamese, very moving. Such a contrast of sights and sounds and scents! We just returned from an overnight boat cruise in Halong Bay, thousands of karst limestone islands, as far as the eye can see and then some. This is now a wildly popular trip with both Vietnamese and foreigners, I counted over 30 overnight boats parked at the caves we visited. And this in an unseasonably cold and damp off-season! In Hanoi we also took in a traditional North Vietnamese art form, water puppets, slapstick humor, splashing, set to traditional instruments, drums and singers. ... read more