I always meant to learn to scuba dive but the timing was never right. School in New England, freezing temperatures and swimming pools. Tulane University had cheap PADI courses, but I was caught up with school and never got around to it. I was too poor when I first got to Cambodia, and then the […]
Author: Faine Greenwood
Flores Day 1: Volcanic Islands and Whimsical Signage
I always get most excited about travel when I’m forced to fly via a smallish turboprop, the kind of airplane voted most likely to Fall Burning Out Of The Sky for the past 50-odd-years-running. They are wobbly, shake about when a particularly large person gets on, an offer little to nothing in the way of […]
Bali: Hmm, Not Bad
When I first thought of going to Bali, I rejected it. The island, I was sure, was chock full of bloated Australian tourists nursing skin cancer and middle-aged women in the throes of Eat Pray Love sickness — there would be nothing for a cool, Anthony-Bourdainesque Traveller Capital T like myself there. The place would […]
Off to Bali
I’m off to Bali and Flores this morning — a day or two in Bali attempting to collect some odds and ends, and then a flight to Labuan Bajo for a bit of — strange sounds so perverse, but that’s pretty much the overriding impulse here. Yes, there will be Komodo dragon spotting. There must […]
Angkor Again: Exotic Friends
To feel jaded about one of the planet’s most impressive monuments, is perhaps, to be tired of life. Or it is just a normal state of the human condition: when confronted with wonder, we are inevitably prone to sorting it away into neat boxes, to (cleverly) making it less and less wondrous every single time […]
The Obama Drones/Cambodia Analogy: Ur Doing It Right?
Obama’s Nixonian Precedent – New York Times Drones invade our dreams in 2013, our blogs, and the sputtering discourse on television and on airwaves. Now the pundits have rediscovered the Cambodian carpet bombing nastiness of the Vietnam War era, and are making analogies left and right comparing small-scale drone strikes to the constant onslaught of […]
Ieng Sary is Dead – So It Goes
I began the day with the news that Mam Sonando had been released, which segued smack dab into the news that 87 year old Khmer Rouge Tribunal defendant Ieng Sary had died. A busy day. A day that can be defined as both productive and profoundly sweaty, in a way that only Cambodia in March […]
Mam Sonando Appeals Court: A few rays of hope for supporters of the radio host
PHNOM PENH – Hundreds of Cambodians turned out on March 5th and 6th to attend appeals hearings for 72-year-old Cambodian radio station owner and pro-democracy activist Mam Sonando, who is currently facing a widely decried 20-year prison sentence on charges of sedition. The hearings lasted until midday Wednesday, when court observers reported that the prosecution […]
Devouring Dogs: Coldhearted Arguments Against Canine Consumption
As so many Westerners do, I feel distinctly icky about eating dog meat. * I have long attributed this to my Western ideals, my long-standing personal fondness for dogs, and a keen appreciation for how useful the critters can be as helpmates and companions — but I didn’t have much logical underpinning to that whole “eating […]
Dead Soldiers Of World War II at Taukkyan Cemetary, Yangon
There is a small panoply of Places You Never Knew Existed at most major tourist destinations. They may garner a small cameo in the Lonely Planet or on Wikitravel, but they are un-visited for a reason: far away, of limited interest to the non-profoundly nerdy, of a nature somewhat unappealing to a person mostly interested […]