Chi Lin Nunnery and Nam Lian Garden, Hong Kong Chi Lin Nunnery is an elegant wooden temple built without nails in the Tang style. Adjacent to the temple is the tranquil Nam Lian Gardens, a reconstruction of a Tang-era garden. Stroll on a curving walkway past pavilions, ponds, hills, and sculpted pines. It is a […]
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Walking in Your Footsteps On the forest floor, little light gets through, even in the middle of the afternoon. There isn’t much underbrush. The air temperature is cool and a little bit damp. What I notice most is the quietness. Prehistoric quietness. I am walking through a redwood grove. It is the biggest contiguous old
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Quebec City has long been a destination I‘ve wanted to visit. Old Quebec, or Vieux-Québec, has a well-known reputation of rich history being the only city north of Mexico that has retained its fortified city walls. I would further say that along with Guanajuato, Mexico, Quebec City is the most European of cities in
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I didn’t quite grasp the magnitude of the temples of Angkor until I witnessed them for myself. Guidebooks cannot prepare you enough for the massive scale of which this site encompasses. Before I visited I imagined I would only glance at the most well-known, Angkor Wat, and then be on my way. But Angkor Wat
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Rio de Janeiro Brasil In March, 2010 I went to Rio de Janeiro for a UN conference. Not without reason this city is so often selected for world meetings. I spent about one week there, staying with a couchsurfer at Jardim Botânico District. The district got its name as it grew around the city’s world-famous Botanical Garden, which
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Almost 7,000 years ago, the 12,000-foot-high Mt. Mazama blew its top, caved in on itself, and eventually formed the United States’ deepest lake. Today it is known as Crater Lake, although technically it lies in a caldera. Crater Lake is the crown jewel of the Northwest’s Cascade Range. Its depth of 1,943 ft. (592 meters)
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Cinque Terre Italy The Cinque Terre or The Five Lands are five villages in the Liguria region of Italy: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. I recently visited two of them, Manarola and Riomaggiore, during a short vacation in Tuscany and Liguria. These towns are incredible; they have a special atmosphere of small medieval seaside settlements that have kept their historical face because of the surrounding
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Photo of the Week: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan In all my travels, Turkmenistan has been, by far, the oddest place I’ve visited. Culturally, the Turkmens are “cousins” of the Uzbeks, and I found many similarities in the everyday lives and customs with their Central Asian neighbors. The languages are also similar, both routed in Turkish. These are
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When I visited Egypt four years ago, I expected frustration and annoyance. I supposed I’d be hustled by street urchins and harassed by touts. I thought it’d be a junior India of sorts. I was wrong. Granted, you’ll get annoyed if you follow every seemingly friendly Mohammed to his cousin’s souvenir shop. But if
A few years ago I spent a couple months in Israel and the West Bank. For one of those months I volunteered in the city of Nablus for a month, teaching English and participating in other community projects. Living in the region was an invaluable way to understand the current events in the region and
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