A bastion of alluring art and drama, Ubud is Bali's cultural epicenter and gateway to the island's enchanting heartland, where village streets are stitched together by temple after temple of a syncretic religion overlaid with as many unique characteristics as the Balinese themselves. This is the 'other' Bali. While conversations about the island tend to arouse …
Category: Southeast Asia
Exploits in Southeast Asia
Facebook Addiction Disorder in Malaysia (Newsweek Japan)
While waiting for Facebook's astronomically dizzying IPO, I started to do some research about FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder) in Malaysia. After making a pitch to my Tokyo contact for Newsweek (Japan), I was assigned a story to be printed in an issue that, perhaps unfairly at times, does a bit of social media demonizing. Nonetheless, …
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Thaipusam, Batu Caves, Malaysia: A Burdensome Path
I won’t pretend to understand everything that Hinduism stands for. When faced with such a foreign belief as this, I’m inclined to fold. That’s how attending Thaipusam made me feel at least: present, yet oddly unaware. Since moving to Malaysia about eight months ago, I had etched out in my mind a specific set of …
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Myanmar (Burma): Muslims, Jews and Nazi “fashion”
Every once in a while I decide to expand on some of the more telling anecdotes born out of my travels. This happens to be one of those times. --- The Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue sits on a lively corner in downtown Yangon that opens up onto an alley where merchants tinker with a miscellany of metals …
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Graphic cigarette warning labels in Southeast Asia and Taiwan: Are they effective?
Over the past three months I've amassed a few cigarette boxes from my travels with large warning labels that -- when placed side by side -- string together a grotesque gauntlet of images ranging from gangrene-ridden feet to cancerous mouth sores (not all of which I've blessed your eyes with above). First implemented in Canada …
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Justin Calderón 