China, India, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, North Korea, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
“No, American,” a Chinese friend of mine snapped at a group of young men sitting near us in a restaurant. “They said that you were from a place that is not very good,” she explained to me. The explanation was not needed, I understood what they where saying: they thought I was from Xinjiang province [...]
TAIZHOU, China- I began walking south on Hailing Bei Lu with the intention that I would not stop until I’d reached the banks of the Yangzi (Yangtze) River. I estimated the hike as being between 25 to 30 kilometers, and had a day pack on my back filled with some essentials, as I knew that I would [...]
“So China has changed very fast, right?” I encouraged Professor Liu to speak. “Yes, very fast,” he replied. “Is life better now?” The professor torqued his hand quickly back and forth and replied noncommittally, “In some ways, yes, in others I’m not so sure.” We were riding a train that was speeding towards Nanjing, and [...]
“How old are you?” I asked Riuwu, an accounting professor at a university in Nanjing. We’d just met on a train returning on the Nanjing – Natong extension, and this is a common question to ask a new acquaintance in China. Asking people here how old they are in this culture is also a must in many [...]
Unless on a very long journey, when a train ticket vendor asks me what class I want to ride in I say one thing without hesitation: “The cheapest you have.” In China, this often means hard seat class. Riding hard seat in China is not as bad as it may sound — you’re not being [...]
If any place in the world deserves to be called ancient, it’s Yangzhou. This city is so old, in fact, that when it was first conceived the Romans were just coming up with their 12 tables of law, the Maya were devising their first solar calendar, Alexader the Great was over a hundred years away [...]
I remember a China where the streets were full of bicycles. I remember peddling in virtual seas of thousands of other cyclists, how rush hour was a critical mass of bicycles zooming every which way, where bike lanes became roaring highways. The bicycle was the top commuter vehicle in the country, and there were hundreds of [...]
“It’s not a simple right or wrong, it’s a whole new way of thinking.” -Edward Burtynsky, from Manufactured Landscapes on the industrialization of China. TAIZHOU, China- At times it seems as if China is one colossal construction site. The old is being replaced with the new and the new is being replaced with the newer. The [...]
Question about the best places in China for teaching English: Wade, I need your help. You and Andy are BY FAR the realest traveler writers out on the market. You don’t feed bullshit… Your opinion… What are the 5 best cities in China?? I am submitting my information to Angelina’s. Thanks mate!! This is a [...]
I once took China’s one child policy at face value: a one child policy would mean that people are only allowed to have a single child, right? It all made perfectly clear sense until my first incident of travel in China in 2005. I found that there were far more brothers and sisters than a [...]
Simply put, a dumpling is a cooked ball of dough. But I must be straight when I say that if someone plopped a ball of boiled dough in front of me I would be hard pressed to call it a dumpling. It’s a good thing that most dumplings are stuffed with minced meat, seafood, vegetables, [...]
TAIZHOU, China- I went into a noodle house and ordered a bowl without looking at what was floating in the pots first. I’m in China and I should have known better: almost all parts of animals are not only eaten here but relished. Organ meat, intestines, stomach membranes, feet, heads, faces, anuses, penises are consumed [...]
“Whoever takes the first shot will face the full wrath of the consequences,” roared an upper tier rep for the Chinese government on the television news last night. Earlier this week a Chinese government boat prevented the Philippines navy from arresting a group of Chinese fishermen off the coast of an otherwise insignificant atoll in [...]
The taxi driver is perhaps a natural predator of the traveler. They stand above us on the food chain right up there with pickpockets, money changers, and touts. It is for this reason that I get into taxi cabs a touch on guard — I make sure the driver knows that I know where I’m going, that [...]
TAIZHOU, China- A test to see how well a city is run is to count how many blocks you must walk with garbage in your hands before coming to a municipal trash can. One or two blocks is good; up to five is average; 10+ means you may as well just toss your trash on [...]
With the summer hiring scene quickly approaching and a load of college graduates and other job seekers on the lookout for well-paying, yet stimulating, employment, thousands are flocking to ESL recruiters with opportunities in South Korea. Like most prospective teachers, before I went to Korea I had gathered the bulk of my “reliable” pre-arrival information from [...]
TAIZHOU, China- When I think of shopping malls I think of sparkling white tiled floors, sharp looking, new smelling middle class shoppers, air conditioning, and fixed prices that are clearly marked on every item. So it was a slight surprise when I learned that I could get a lower price for many items in Chinese shopping [...]
Unfamiliarity with Mandarin or the Chinese writing system sometimes makes getting good, cheap meals in restaurants in China a challenge. There are probably three ways to overcome this hurdle: 1. Only go to restaurants with English menus in tourist towns and/ or eat street food. 2. Charge into the kitchen of a restaurant and point [...]
“What kind of restaurant would you like to go to?” we were asked by my wife’s supervisor upon arriving in Taizhou. They wanted to take us out for dinner on our first night in town, but this question oddly dumbfounded us. Our generalizing minds assumed that as we were in China we should eat at [...]
TAIZHOU, China- In China, when a dog is on a dining table it’s generally been glazed, cooked, chopped up into little pieces, and served on a plate or floating in a soup. So when I looked up from my coffee in a McDonalds and saw a little pet dog wearing a sweater and sitting on [...]
TAIZHOU, China- It is with trepidation that many Westerners approach hospitals in China. Rumors, tales, and news reports of nurses reusing hypodermic needles, hospital related Hepatitis C outbreaks, unsanitary conditions, a lackadaisical approach to infectious disease, and the lack of privacy in Chinese hospitals abound. But going to the public hospital is exactly what a foreigner must do stay in China. [...]
TAIZHOU, China- Over the critical mass of sounds that can be heard in the streets of China — the sirens, honking horns, people in front of shops screaming through blow horns about promotions, screeching car tires, electronic bicycles braking, and clothing outlets blasting pop music — is the sound of what is basically a cargo [...]
I have an ever growing list of research/ travel projects planned for this next year in China. I intend to travel out of Taizhou at least twice a month to visit other parts of the country and investigate various topics to write about. But I’m also interested in what the readers of this website would like to [...]
TAIZHOU, China- It would be a vast understatement to say that my two and a half year old, light haired, Caucasian daughter attracts a lot of attention in China. To be honest, she attracts mobs. Wherever she goes people stop and try to talk with her, they take her photo, shoot videos, pinch her cheeks, try to [...]
TAIZHOU, China- There is a scrumptious layer of gray muck spread liberally over the once white (I’m guessing) tiled floor, there is the salty mucus of instant raman noodle flavoring petrified in mid drip down the kitchen cabinet doors, there is an entourage of biodegrading vegetables and in the refrigerator, and hundreds of sucked on and spit out peanut shells and [...]
SHANGHAI, China- I love my wife but I don’t want to watch her take a crap. This, apparently, is not a shared sentiment in China. My family and I walked into a hotel room in the outskirts of Shanghai to discover that the bathroom walls were completely constructed transparent glass. The shower, sink, and, yes, [...]
TAIZHOU, China- I once thought that spending a large portion of each year in China would be part of my annual travel pilgrimage. For a few years between 2004 and 2007 I traveled in a big circuit encompassing China, Mongolia, Japan, Southeast Asia, and India. In the center of this great Asian circumabulation was the [...]
Bombarding us with news of North Korea’s paranoid antics, U.S. media channels tend to downplay the consequences of such trifles as economic treaties. Yet while many Americans noticed nothing more than a favorable decrease in the prices of their phones and cars over the past few years, the controversial U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement ignited enough [...]
The recent passing of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il received substantiaily less fanfare from both those abroad and those south of the border than one might have suspected. While North Koreans mourned excruciatingly – a phenomenal display of chest-beating, swooning, and hysterical writhing – for days on end, setting Kim’s petrified body on perpetual display, neither Washington [...]
Adventure is not dead, and Sam Bove is my living proof. It is rare that I meet another traveler who not only dreams up fantastic journeys, but actually does them. In the vein of Richard Halliburton, Bove seems to seek an understanding of the world through direct and close experience, and he is not hesitant to use unconventional means in this pursuit. Though only 21, he has already undertaken multiple adventures through the world, having ridden a bicycle from Oregon to Central America and back up to Florida, walked across Italy, sailed yachts through the Caribbean, built a boat by hand and sailed it down the Mekong River, and is currently planning to buy a horse and ride into the mountains of Chiapas.
The Sagrada Familia. Angkor Wat. The Acropolis. Westminster Abbey. The Sistine Chapel. Wherever in the world you find yourself, you are likely to be drawn into some of the most elaborate and breathtaking structures you will ever see, most of them created with divinity in mind. More than 20% of UNESCO’s world heritage cultural sites [...]
Over 1,000 previously unknown species have been found in the Mekong basin in the past decade. In 2010 alone, scientist have found 100 plants, 28 reptiles, 25 fish, and seven amphibians that were previously unknown to science. The Mekong river and its surrounding watershed is one of the most bio-diverse regions on the globe. Though [...]
The Mekong River is currently under siege by a proposal for a major dam on the river’s main stream in northern Laos. Recently, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam agreed to put construction of the Xayaburi Dam on hold until an official impact assessment can be made of the potentially adverse environmental, social, economic, and food security effects of [...]
Construction of the Xayaburi Dam, the first of eleven dams planned for the Mekong River, was postponed on December 8th, as Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam concurred that more data is needed on the potentially adverse environmental and social impacts of the project. Many environmental and social groups working in the region applaud the decision, [...]
As an American, I get a lot of flack these days about how awful the current state of my country is, how there are no jobs, how there are jobs but people simply aren’t looking hard enough for them, how Wall Street controls the universe, and how gosh darn lazy those Occupy-[metro here] protestors are [...]
A half century has now passed since Korea was bifurcated along the 38th Parallel, and the contending sides could not have developed along more opposing paths. As North Korea absconded under the cloak of a dictorial regime South Korea opened up to the West and is now booming with commerce. What was once a single culture is now two very different societies. What is the future of the Korean Peninsula? Can the two sides reunite, or are they now too different? Does anyone care anymore? With those who can even remember a unified Korea passing into old age and decreasing in number, vagabondjourny.com’s Korean correspondent, Tiffany Zappulla, asks these questions.
How to Use Social Media and the Internet in Disaster Response strategies An old friend, Steve Mendoza, recently went missing in the Sendai earthquake in Japan. He was teaching and living in Minami Sanriku — one of cities that the earthquake and tsunami hit the hardest. From looking at news reports, it became quickly apparent [...]
Sendai Earthquake/ Tsunami and search for Steve Mendoza live blog This is a live blog post — meaning that updates will continuously be published on this page as more information comes in — about Vagabond Journey’s Japan correspondent and regular commentator, Steve Mendoza (USA), who was near Sendai during the earthquake and tsunami that hit [...]
How can an Indian citizen get a visa to England/ UK? The process that an Indian citizen to get a visa to England/ UK seems very drawn out and complicated. It seems as if you must first procure the proper application papers, which you can download from UK visa applications, and then you must be [...]
How do I work my way from Australia to India Hello, Starting a vagabond journey off in Australia is a good move. As an Australian friend of mine once said, “Australia is meant to be the easiest country in the world to find work in.” To back up this statement is the fact that if [...]
Visiting a Hermit and Not Finding Him: A Journey up Cold Mountain Path The Cold Mountain Road is strange no tracks of cart or horse hard to recall which merging stream or tell which piled-up ridge a myriad plants weep with dew the pines all sigh the same here where the trail disappears form asks [...]
I saw the red flags of North Korea blazing the stands as Brazil played the Communist nation on the football pitch below. I don’t think I have ever seen this flag before, let alone watching it being displayed prominently on international television. Has North Korea began to open up to the world? Has their first [...]
Thailand Travel Warnings Do people really believe that they should not go to Thailand because of the travel warnings which say that it is a dangerous place? Because the televisions show people protesting and battling government troops? Apparently, yes, tourism has been dropping drastically since 2008, since the recent wave of color coded political problems [...]
The following photos are from Taiwan. They were taken by Chaya during the spring of 2008. If you would like to see more Travel Photos, go to Vagabond Journey Photos. For more images from Taiwan, go to Taiwan Photos. Buddha Statues in Taiwan Hundreds of Buddhas Flowers, Plants, Trees in Taiwan Buddhist Prayer Flags and [...]
Travel Photos are like maps, they are easy to dream into. I have been collecting and publishing travel photos for a long time. My wife Chaya and I try to publish 50 a day, and we hope that our daughter Petra will one day get one of those big plastic little kid digital cameras and [...]
The following are links to 358 photos from India. They were mostly taken during 2007 by Chaya.
We are back to trying to publish 50 travel photos a day. To view the main collection of Vagabond Journey.com travel photos go to, Travel Photos.
SOSUA, Dominican Republic-We are back to publishing 50 photos a day on Vagabond Journey.com. The following are links to new travel photos from Chaya’s pre-Vagabond Journey travels. They encompass her travels in South Africa, Thailand, and Ecuador and are displayed on pages of 10 photos each.
Can I connect flights in China from the USA to Thailand? Do I need a transit visa? – Hello Russ, I apologize that I am answering this so late — I put the Travel Help portion of vagabond journey.com on hold while I was working on Archaeology projects in Arizona — but, if you did [...]
Infant Potty Training Diaper Free Baby – How to practice elimination communication with an infant and potty train them before they begin to rely on diapers. Is is considered disgusting in China for a person to piss or shit in their pants. By “person” they also include babies. Children in China do not need to [...]
Searching for Indian Woodcarver Photos Attn: Any traveler who has traveled in India with the good senses to take photographs. Need: I am currently looking for a few photographs of Indian wood (sandalwood preferably) carvers and/ or the wares that they produce to accompany an article that I wrote to be published in Abroad View [...]
JAIPUR, India- I was picked up in the morning at the front gate of the Rajasthan Hotel by the master wood carver, Umesh Singh, and we rode off on his motorcycle through the busy streets of Jaipur. As we criss-crossed lanes of exhaust spewing traffic, dodged holy cows, honked at broken down beggars, and plowed [...]
HANGZHOU, China- I first met Loren Everly in the windswept, desolate city of Ulanbaatar, Mongolia. We were both staying at the Golden Gobi guesthouse and bonded when I offered him an orange (a real delicacy in the non-fertile shrublands of the Gobi) and, out of sheer courtesy, he refused to accept more than half of [...]
BYLAKUPPE, India- In 1959, on the heels of their beloved Dalai Lama, tens of thousands of Tibetans abandoned their Chinese occupied homeland and sought refuge in India. Recognizing the atrocious nature of the Chinese invasion and subsequent colonization, along with the uncomfortable political situation in which they were placed, the Indian government absorbed the mass [...]
Tattoo in the New Japan By: Wade P. Shepard After hearing that Tsukasa was dying, I went back to his studio to find out how everything stood. It was true: the master was in no condition to tattoo. The apprentice seemed to coldly shrugged this news off though, as if it was to be expected. [...]
KYOTO, Japan- It was the apex of spring in Japan: the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the fierce winter winds had died down to a gentle, welcoming hum. I was on a bus with an acquaintance headed to Kitaoji Dori, a fashionable district in downtown Kyoto. There, I would be formally introduced to [...]
Tibetan Nomad Arunachal Pradesh Tribals Senior Thesis This stop in New York City has just come a little closer to its end. I finished my undergraduate thesis and most all of my work tonight.————–Wade from Vagabond Journey.com in Brooklyn, New York City- December 13, 2005 Travelogue — Travel Photos ————– My thesis was on the [...]
American Groovy Early on in 2005, when I was traveling through Northern India with Stubbs, I unexpectedly found a photograph of myself in a Nepali newspaper in Darjeeling. I can not read Nepali, and, as the article came out when I was leaving the region, I was unable to find out what it said. Read [...]
Wisdom of China In my travels I have put in a lot of time studying about China and everything Chinese. I now have the tendency of beginning statements of intentional wisdom with “The Chinese say . . .” or “The ancient Chinese believed . . . “ This is a bad habit, and one that [...]
Enlightenment at Ryoan-ji Rock Garden, Kyoto Japan Early in the year 2004 I was in Japan with my sister, Nicky. After a little turbulence in Tokyo we decided to pan out a little in the much calmer seas of Kyoto. So we went and settled into an apartment and chilled out in the beautiful old [...]
English Teaching Job Urumqi Xinjiang China I very, very nearly left this New York City fiasco behind and took the first flight out to Urumqi in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. The prospect of a high paying math/ science teaching job reached my ears and I jumped on it.————–Wade from Vagabond Journey.com in Philadelphia, [...]
Opening Ceremony Beijing Olympics I was impressed with the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics; I was happy for China on their “coming out party” to the world. It was an interesting performance and keenly showed the degree to which China can organize and control large masses of people. It was almost frightening. Thousands of [...]
Chinese Migration, Business, and Global Conquest“Chinatown is not a place where the Chinese run to to take shelter from the locals; it is a place that they build up to keep the locals from getting to them. . . and I can say that it is very racist; they don’t like to inter-mix.”-From an interview [...]
Chinese Four Tigers Market in Budapest“I want moon cakes!” exclaimed Kaitie from the Loft Hostel. “I want moon cakes!” When Kaitie says that she wants something, she means it. A trip to Chinatown was in due order. I have lived and traveled in China for a long time, but I cannot say that I had [...]
Around the World Travel to China: an Excercise in Patience Some reckless soul in the Loft Hostel in Budapest left a National Geographic China Special Issue laying out upon a table. I was immediately drawn to it, and opened it to find my own love of East Asia boiling up within me. Every morning I [...]
Travel Photos from China Below you will find travel photos from China that are on the photograph pages of Vagabond Journey.com. These photos were taken in 2005, 2006, and 2007 from all over China. I had a think for the Middle Kingdom for a long time and I found myself traveling the length and breathe [...]
Mongolia PhotosThe following are links to photographs from Mongolia. They are of ranches, Ulaanbaatar, livestock, Mongolian people, and the Golden Gobi Guesthouse. I traveled in Mongolia during the spring of 2007. Click on the below links to view the photos: Mongolia Travel Photos Ulaanbaatar Mongolia Temple Photos Ranches, Cows, and the Countryside of Mongolia Golden [...]
Fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam The following links lead to photos of the fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam. There are also photographs of Hanoi, Vietnamese beaches, and the boats of Halong Bay. Click on the below links to go to the photos. Hanoi and Halong Bay Vietnam Halong Bay Vietnam Fishermen of Halong Bay Vietnam [...]
Tibetan Refugees in India Photos The following links lead to photographs of Tibetan refugees in the Bylakuppe camp in southern India. I took these pictures in the autumn of 2006 when I was doing research for an article on exile Tibetans called Seekers of Refuge in a Land of No Return that was published in [...]
Chinese Food: An experiment in travel fiction It was my first time in China and I was already nervous about eating the food. Before leaving home, my mother warned me not to eat the vegetables because they are grown in human manure, which could give me hepatitis, my father made jokes about how Chinese cows [...]
China Poems Hangzhou is a nice city to leave with a smilecranes made it homepeople building more citylike they areantsthey kind of look like ants too Another year without roses, another year-on the run Shangri-la, I laughsilly tourist photographHan Chinese in masks Yunnan Blues Tan khakis and-a Shangri-la of every town,in this land Wade from [...]
“Man builds houses not only for shelter,but also to define and show himself to others. In this sense, the architecture he produces is the best indicator of how he perceives his world. Architecture which is a measure of the complexity, the maturity, and the health of a given society; architecture which serves to interpret the [...]
Can Anyone Read Nepali? So I was traveling in the north east of India with Stubbs back in 2005, and I was just standing around in the market watching some ladies buy oranges when a guy with a big old camera came up to me and asked if he could take my picture. I obliged [...]
The Dispersal of Language in China and the Creation of Standard Mandarin The story of the Chinese language stretches far back into the annals of prehistory and is, therefore, deeply shrouded in the opaqueness of antiquity. Simply put, any attempt at understanding the Chinese language from a historical perspective is tantamount to entering into a [...]
The New World Looks Ahead, Not Back: The elderly left behind with their times in the new India We piled into a mini-bus and took off through the traffic wretched, exhaust poisoned streets of Bangalore. It took us over an hour to get to the outskirts of the city where we came upon the retirement [...]
“Smoke is an indication of work . . . therefore, we are proud of our smoke.”Reactions to the thoughtless acquisition and utilization of introduced technology in Southern India. “Developing countries must not and will not allow themselves to be distracted from the imperatives of economic development and growth by the illusory dream of an atmosphere [...]
A Respectable Development?The Tribals of Arunachal Pradesh: Then and Now “. . . we are faced with the phenomenon of a rapid material, social, and educational development of a tribal society which has found a place in the modern world without so far losing its identity as a distinct ethnic entity.” -Christoph Von Furer-Haimendorf (approx. [...]
Anecdotes from the Indian Notebook Gave Mira a nose piercingTraditional Indian way just meant dirtyWe found out thoughWent to an old time jeweler and she said she wanted A traditional nose piercing done in the traditional way“You know, where the piercing is put through the acupuncture point”Indian piercing man made a special tripTo jewelry shop [...]
“What is the Good of That?”and other reasons why I cannot stomach the faith of commerce “….the idea is that no society is ever complete, neither are its needs exactly the same as those of other societies.” -Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi Varun (or Victor for work purposes) declares: ‘An air-conditioned sweat shop [...]
A Visit to a South Indian Archaeological SiteAnd a head first jump into the folk-lexicon of village Karnataka It was mid-September and the beginning of a very temperate South Indian Autumn; a group of students and I were on a visit to a local archaeological site just outside of Bangalore city. We all packed into [...]
Hitchhiking in Japan with Mr. Fuji So I was standing on the side of the road in the mountains of Japan’s Shikoku Island in the middle of spring 2004. I was hitch-hiking the 88 temple Kabo Daishi pilgrimage, and a mini-van nearly ran me over as it quickly stopped to offer me a lift. I [...]
Travel Tip #6- Avoid International Bus and Train Services Sometimes, while traveling, you just want to cross a horizon in one foul swoop, and quickly get from one country to another. In many large cities and prime tourist locations there are buses and trains companies which cater to this desire by offering services that cross [...]
In Search of a Tattoo in the New Japan (Part II of II) After hearing that Tsukasa was dying, I went back to his studio to find out how everything stood. It was true: the master was in no condition to tattoo. His apprentice seemed to coldly shrugged this news off as if it was [...]
Interview with the Traveler: The Wanderings and Musings of Loren Everly By: Wade P. Shepard I first met Loren Everly (http://www.loreneverly.org/) in the windswept, desolate city of Ulanbaatar, Mongolia. We were both staying at the Golden Gobi guesthouse and bonded when I offered him an orange (a real delicacy in the non-fertile shrublands of the [...]
Now Introducing: My CharactersMeknes, MoroccoSeptember 20, 2007Homepage: http://canciondelvagabundo.googlepages.com/North Africa Page: http://canciondelvagabundo.googlepages.com/northafrica It is overwhelmingly interesting to me how blog storylines inherently weave in and out tales, yarns, and anecdotes of various real life people that the writer interacts with. People who, for whatever reason, either communicates continuously with the writer, or have made such an [...]
Shanghai Test Video Albion, New York, USA http://canciondelvagabundo.googlepages.com/ This is a video that I shot to test out my new camera in the shopping district of Shanghai during the May-day festivities. Holidays in China are intense: the cities become packed with people beyond capacity and it is often extremely difficult to maneuver in the streets. [...]
The following is a revision of an article that I wrote from a visit to the Bylakuppe Tibetan Refugee camp in Karnataka, India. Abroad View magazine selected it for publication in their spring 2008 print edition. Seekers of Refuge in a Land of No Return:Conversations with Tibetan Refugees in Bylakuppe In 1959, on the heels [...]
So I bought a ticket back to Asia. Going to walk some pilgrimage routes down the ol‘ Buddha trail. My flight comes into Seoul, and I hope to be out of that monstrosity and into the green green hills in short order- for there are mountains to walk and trails to tramp. There are Three [...]
Boston, Massachusetts, USAAugust 8, 2007 Wet with morning dewI go in the direction I want-Taneda Santoka Chinatown in New York City. After another long week of digging holes out at the Archaeology site I excitedly took the train into Boston to begin the weekend. I did not have much money to my name; and if [...]
Boston, MA, USAJuly 15, 2007 “How did I put myself here?” I asked myself after six hours of clearing briers and cutting down trees with only a machete in the hot summer sun. I had enough money in Asia to last me another eight months without work….a month later, I find myself in the USA [...]
Upstate New YorkJuly 24, 2007 “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.”-Moorish proverb “Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.”-Pascal “To live in one land, is captivitie, to runne all countries, a wild roguery.”-Donne’ third ‘Elegie The “Cancion del Vagabundo” website is now up. It can be visited [...]
Upstate New YorkJuly 10, 2007 “. . . even a rolling stone requires an occasional handful of moss.”-Harry Franck, Working North from Patagonia Alpacas in Bosque de Piedras, Peru, 2001. As I ended up back in the USA I figure that I am afforded the opportunity to think through some of my previous travels and [...]
“What I’d really like would be to have a couple of horses in one of the villages along the desert. And some girl who would be willing to ride…you know, she’d have her mustang, I’d have mine.”-from “The Drifters” I arrive in Thailand with a heavy head. In a spurred moment I sent off an [...]
Halong Bay. It is said that travelling is hard. If that is so then traveling with other people is even harder. In travel, everything about a person seems to come out of their deep recesses and flows up to the surface. Therefore, you must really love your travel companion. I have always found it extremely [...]
“How can you be a beggar if you have extra money?”-Santoka Taneda I rode out of Nanning on a posh tourist bus that would ferry me across the border and right on to Hanoi. I had to scourge the town to find this ride for a decent prices. The cost of things are rarely fixed [...]
So I went to the U.S. Embassy to try to find out what I can to about the fact that I am consistently being harassed by immigration officials at ever border I cross because they are confused by my beard. Yes, that is right, it seems as if they cannot imagine my face, as it [...]
Hanoi, VietnamJune 6, 2007 I really need to do something about my passport photo. It is of a cute young man who is around 18 or 19 that does not look much like the rugged, bearded, and bald 26 year old who uses it. Yes, time and the road has not aged me well. But [...]
Nanning, Guangxi Autonomous Region, P.R. ChinaJune 4, 2007 Man on river collecting bottles. Market scene. “Too much contact with people brings conflict, hatred, and attachment. To rid myself of inner conflicts and hatred I must walk.”-Santoka Taneda I am getting back into the tropics after being away for a long while. I am finding that [...]
Nanning, Guangxi Province, P.R. ChinaJune, 4, 2007 “And so I stand among you as one that offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating [...]
Nanning, Guangxi Province, P.R. China6.2.2007 “All that my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over.”-V.S. NaipaulSantosh, In a Free State The “no-seat” area by the [...]
Hangzhou, China5.29.2007 “Plan had I none, as yet, for continuing my journey. . .But plans are quickly made in the vagabond world.” -Harry Franck, A Vagabond Journey Around the World Though I fell in love with Mongolia I felt that it was time to leave. Feelings strike out of nowhere and I have to listen [...]
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