Southeast Asia has long had a love affair with mega-malls. Often it has been a relationship borne out of convenience, for these vast air-conditioned commercial hives offer ideal respite from the perennial heat and Biblical downpours that are so much a part of life in the region. While I have never been a full-fledged fan …
Continue reading Chinese New Year Mall Madness in Kuala Lumpur
Let's serve up a hypothetical situation: While out grocery shopping, you see a sizable person trying to shuffle his/her way down a cramped frozen food aisle. There after, you take a second look at the gallon of double dutch ice cream (with extra marshmallows) in your hand, and then a cursory look at the calories …
Continue reading Green vs. a spendthrift shade: analyzing the eco-resort trend
Poorly pasted together and full of pixelated photographs, my Myanmar Lonely Planet has been following me forlornly ever since I picked it up some four years ago from a child book hawker in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Besides my China LP (covered in brown paper to hide its entry from Chinese customs), it stood alone on …
It's a balmy afternoon on a sun-drenched island in the world's largest archipelago, Indonesia. And as island life goes here, things are quiet. The only sounds that interrupt the peaceful swash of the turquoise tide are the crinkling of palm fronds in the wind and the occasional over-sized lizard tap dancing in the brush. At …
I passed the closing hours of Ramadan last week in Jakarta, where the indefatigable prayers of imams tolled out from loudspeakers mounted on minarets nonstop into the night at such a pitch that they continuously jarred me out of sleep. Back in Kuala Lumpur, the final prayers of the season rung out until 11 or …
Justin Calderón 