Post up: It’s failure time!

I’m dealing with my latest instance of professional failure by posting it.  I actually hadn’t thought that I was really much in the running for this, an International Council for Journalists fellowship: Faith in Media: Improving Coverage of Islam and Other Religions.  Nothing really except for my layman’s interest in the subject and my experience [...]

genocide haiku

I’ve yet to write successfully about Cambodia, a subject which extends far beyond the country’s horrors but never, for me at least, out of their sight.  Here’s my latest attempt, with the photograph, from our visit to Tuol Sleng in July, that prompted it.   The former high school’s first floor is filled, room after room [...]

Roti street sweets in Chiangmai

Here is some yumminess at Chiangmai’s famous night bazaar, hundreds of stalls of, often, schlock, but not a few cool things too and all together a great deal of lively atmosphere and browsing — given enough time and diligence there are some great deals to be found especially inside some of the three story indoor [...]

Dervish on Mt. Phousi

I love this picture. A novice monk — obviously not a dervish, but in a movement that recalls one, at least to me — on a little crag of Mt. Phousi, in Luang Prabang.

Monks and modernity in Chiangmai

Why the sight of monks texting, or using bluetooths or some other form of mass technology always seems, if not incongruous, at least noteworthy, I don’t exactly know.  Probably because of the juxtaposition of ancient (monks) with modern (cell phones, bluetooths, etc.).  Monks use tuk tuks, of course, a form of cultural custom and mechanical [...]

Tuk tuks and sticky rice

Out we head from Kanchanaburi, leaving this solid, hardworking little city, my grandfather’s grave and the Kwai River behind for now, setting a course for the Gulf of Siam (sounds so much more exotic than the Gulf of Thailand, doesn’t it?).
It proves another good test of our traveling bones.

We leave our hotel — the Noble [...]