Tag Archives: philosophy
I really love the internet
A young girl sits sprawled across the carpet on her bedroom floor, a pillow under her elbows propping up her chin, and head tilted towards the open pages of the book. It’s her sixth book this week, and another library trip will soon be in order. She’s not too worried though; she has the special […]
Tailoring Time in Hoi An
I didn’t bank on visiting the tailor when I was in Hoi An. It was promoted as the place to have clothes made in Vietnam, but I had told myself that I was on an adventure, didn’t need the clothes, and I was looking ahead to stocking up on work clothes once I had returned […]
One more year of it
When I went hiking in Sa Pa, I met a writer – a real one. Admittedly, he’d spent the last two years teaching English in rural Japan, something else I would give a limb to do, but his actual field of work and study was to write, rather than teach. He was writing a book. […]
Shreds of fabric and the Killing Fields
“You’re going to be walking on the dead bodies, so I’ll ask you to meditate with me before we continue.” Jesus Christ. I was already shaken from my visit to S21, the genocide museum, and now I was about to walk among the shallow graves of thousands of tortured men, women and babies of the […]
Security Office 21: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Warning: This is a long post with some fairly graphic reflections. It was hard to see and harder to reflect on, with my further comments on the difficulty of this at the end. All the same, I still wanted to communicate the nature and the history of a place that affected me in such a […]
Spare change will not save the life of a child
A woman wearing a large sun hat pulled her small speed boat up to the side of the longboat we were on. She stared at me, pointed at her child, and out with monotony, “one dollar.” Her words were echoed with the same monotony by her two children in the boat, a moaning, almost crying […]
The concept of beauty
The girl in this photo is apparently nowhere near as beautiful as the women we might see in the North of Cambodia, or in cities like Phnom Penh. She is from a village in the South of Cambodia, in a tiny ecotourism village called Chambok, and the melanin that creates the smooth dark sun protection […]
How to make silk
I guess I lived in ignorant bliss when it came to buying and enjoying silk. I never thought for one second that the worms that spun their cocoons might lose their lives in the process. Indeed, after twenty four days of solid, whole-hearted eating, and a further few weeks of cocoon-spinning, every single silk worm […]
Things I love about the Thai way
Massages are for good health In the West, the idea of a massage is either for sports therapy or most commonly, relaxation. With the price of a Thai massage at about US$6.50/hour it’s definitely something we frequent while we are here. After a particularly intense massage on the beachfront of Koh Samui yesterday, I am […]
Dreams of driving in Dubai
This is a rollover from my old World Nomads travel journal. Funny how another year’s gone by and very little has changed. I can drive to a mall now. Only the local one. Supervised. On a Friday morning. Sigh. At 5.20pm tonight I was chopping baby chat potatoes in my kitchen, loading up a tray […]
Bridging the gap, and thoughts on the middle class
We’ve been in Cairo for four days now, and the one thing I’ve noticed is that Egypt is not the kind of place where you can wander around, take a few happy snaps and just move on. No, this is the kind of place that forces you to think. You have to sit to take […]
Monday Moment: Stacking Pebbles
For those of you in the Western world, Monday signifies the return to the working week. I feel for you. I do. Seriously. Because right now I’m somewhere in Egypt. I can’t even really tell you where. The fact is, it’s just so nice to escape the world of work and to do lists. It’s […]
