Over the past few years I have spent extended periods of time on both sides of the Thai-Malay border living in the two neighboring countries that bisect the Malaysian Peninsula. Sitting up my last night in the garment factory/townhouse I have been lodging at on and off in Bangkok for the last month before heading back …
Category: Travel
Colombia: Ground with gusto
Stepping out of the tower next to the Colombian Stock Exchange in northern Bogota, I walked in search of a bank down a clean-swept sidewalk seamlessly covered in mid-morning shade by a few of the columns of earth-tone brick buildings that so define the city’s skyline. I had been increasingly in need of an ATM that …
Songkran: Thailand Water Festival Do’s and Don’t’s
During my recent trip to Bangkok, exiting my hotel at the end of Sukhumvit Soi 3, where Little Arabia hands the sidewalk back over to Thailand, it was a feat of wit and dexterity to out-maneuver the gauntlet of often freezing water being discharged from hoses, water pistols and occasionally chucked from buckets. Little children …
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Discovering the ‘other’ Bali in Ubud
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 …
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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Justin Calderón 