I had not planned on stopping in Kuala Lumpur but to due to conflicts in scheduling and the intricacies of traveling, I had no other choice, so I was stuck in KL for a couple of days with nothing specific to do. Kuala Lumpur is not necessarily one of my favorite places in Malaysia but it’s endurable. I probably like it a little more than Singapore, but I’m not sure. One thing for sure though. This place doesn’t inspire me to write negatively about it as much as it does Singapore because the place, at least on the surface, seems a [View Full Entry]

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Cambodia. It’s the end of my prolonged stay here in a country that I barely knew. There are a lot of things in Cambodia that I haven’t really seen. I have seen very little of it as a matter of fact. Siem Reap is one. The area around the temples of Angkor is another. These two places are hardly representative of what Cambodia is really all about because there are too many tourists, and you know how places can be corrupted by tourism; too many hotels, too many foreigners behaving poorly, and too many enterprising locals who don’t really give a [View Full Entry]

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I get on my knees and pray We don’t get fooled again - by The Who, a rock band The toughest thing about writing is when the events that happen all around you are so boring that you would rather not write about them at all for fear of producing work that’s uninspiring, unimaginative, and completely dull. Aspiring fabulists who are unable to capture the magic out of an ordinary mundane situation of every day living should not waste their time with the written arts. The reason that I’m writing all of this down is because writing, for me at [View Full Entry]

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A train of elephants comes parading out of the south gate of the Angkor Thom compound as I was walking down the short causeway that leads to the entrance. The elephant drivers are all wearing green uniforms fashioned in traditional Khmer clothing. Tourists eagerly point and click at these humongous creatures lumbering out of the south gate of Angkor Thom. One foolish tourist got so close, practically a foot away from the elephants hind legs, that she could have been easily stomped on if she had moved in any closer. An inch of a step closer would have definitely crushed her [View Full Entry]

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I woke up relatively early in the morning of my second day in Cambodia, a nice partly cirrus-cloudy morning with no trace of the rain that came pouring down in the Siem Reap flatlands the night before, just after ten in the evening. Kampuchea is the Khmer translation of the westernized Cambodia. In French they say Kim - Budge but it is spelled Cambodge. I would’ve thought that the French pronunciation is Cam-bow-jay, but then again, my French is very poor, so that’s why I think that way. My personal way of pronouncing it though is Cam - Bodge, like abode [View Full Entry]

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I’m still trying to adjust my bodily functions to the local time. I haven’t quite adjusted yet although I’ve been in Southeast Asia for almost a week now as I’m writing this entry into my little notebook while complaining about bodily functions not adjusting to the local time. Thus I have this tendency to fall asleep at odd hours of the day, like at nine o’clock in the morning, and be totally revved up at three in the morning when most of the populous have already rested for the night. It’s quite frustrating, really. I have been traveling off and on [View Full Entry]

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Mabuhay Gardens It is now Sunday morning in Southeast Asia, The Philippines, at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Centennial II, strictly for Philippine Airlines. The flight from Frisco to Manila took about twelve hours, direct, without any stoppage in Guam. Now I am sitting here at the Mabuhay Lounge in NAIA Centennial II, waiting for the last leg of my flight from Manila to Singapore to depart. I will be in Singapore for a couple of days to see some friends and just to rest before I fly again to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I plan to just hang out in Cambodia [View Full Entry]

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The Red Eye from Frisco International Right now I am reading the San Francisco Chronicle - The Chron. This is the first leg of a triple stop flight from Frisco to Siem Reap, Cambodia, via Manila and Singapore. I try to fly first class or business class whenever possible or affordable on a flight that is more than four hours long. This is because I’ve had my share of agony in coach or economy class in overseas flights. The seats are wide, there’s plenty of leg room, there’s complementary champagne, the food is better, and the service is terrific. I’m not [View Full Entry]

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Another whack job in the orient On my umpteenth time of eating at Kinamot Restaurant I began to notice that there was a Westerner who frequented the place, an old guy with gray hair, about sixty years old or so, or at least he looked like it, sitting alone in a table for two on the far end of the veranda. What the hell he's doing here I'll never know. He could be American, he could be European, Australian, whatever the hell he is, I don't care but you don't normally see white people walking around alone in the Philippines. They [View Full Entry]

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Maasin is a bustling little town - or city, as the inhabitants of Maasin will insist - with quite a bit of sophistication, or at least more than I had expected from a place that on the map seemed a million miles remote from civilization. Although the major modes of transportation are your usual jeepneys and motorcabs, there are also plenty of privately owned vehicles. There are two local colleges in town. One is St. Joseph College which is associated with the Catholic Church and the other is the College of Maasin which is associated with the United Church of Christ [View Full Entry]

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