Category: Political reality
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Santayana Was an Optimist
We really liked the Baltic States and found the people we met to be among the nicest, warmest, and friendliest we have met during our travels, but we were troubled by some things we discovered in Lithuania. Because I didn’t realize how cool the Baltics were, we only planned to be there for three weeks,…
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Russia Is a Geography, Not a State of Mind
Our trip across the Russian Federation was quite the adventure. We traveled about seventy-five hundred kilometers in thirty-six days across five time zones on the Trans-Siberian network of railways and local trains, cars, and buses. Along the way, doing a lot of walking, and using public transportation, we explored ten cities, three villages, and the countryside around…
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Vietnam Mon Ami
Our trip to Vietnam was bookended by museums in Hanoi (the Ho Chi Minh Museum) and in Ho Chi Minh City (the more war-focused War Remnants Museum and the Reunification Palace that was the seat of the Saigon government). For many Americans, the Vietnam War remains a horrific chapter in American history. In his autobiography,…
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On the Ground in Myanmar
After 50 years of a military dictatorship that isolated Myanmar from the world, Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a clear majority in last November’s elections. Even though the new party had not yet taken power, the people we talked to were very open and excited (although still justifiably cynical) about…
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On the Rivers
It was in Cambodia where I first became fascinated with rivers and boats. Granted, our boat traveling down the river to Battambang was, to be kind, a bit rustic, but traveling down the river a lot of things slowly unfolded, things that I may not have noticed, or even seen, thundering through a village in…