Category Archives: TRAVEL

Not So Silent Night

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Virtually every event in Guatemala is celebrated with fireworks–mostly noise makers. And Christmas is the biggest celebration of the year. Whatever Christmas bells there may have been were drowned out, but our ears are still ringing. We left the lake a week or so ago to spend Christmas with the family of my godchildren in the highland city of Quetzaltenango. Though it is Guatemala’s second largest city, it feels relatively sane and safe…except at Christmas. In the days leading up to Christmas we had roamed the streets of the city, past gaudy decorations, sparkly christmas trees, inflated reindeer, and sidewalk … Continue reading →

Getting There

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We arrived in Guatemala after a long but uneventful trip. The flights were bilingual all the way–on the first two legs Air Canada announced everything in both English and French. We got a TACA flight out of L.A., and everything was in English and Spanish. Not very good English, either. We were two of just a handful of gringos on board and even the flight crew spoke English only reluctantly. I am happy to report that we sailed through security with only cursory inspections. The closest either of us came to one of those dreaded TSA pat-downs is when I … Continue reading →

Travelin’ Shoes

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Time flies when you’re not doing anything worth writing about. But that is about to change. Faye and I are on our way back to Guatemala for a couple of months. As I have noted before, Guatemala is familiar territory for us. But things change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. The rainy season this year was particularly bad. Mountainsides collapsed, wiping out roads, covering homes and killing people. The little village Faye and I met in was hit pretty hard, and the main road has been closed for repairs the past couple of months. So it is with some … Continue reading →

A Little More on Myanmar

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This trip to SE Asia is just about over. We’re back in Bangkok for a few days of sightseeing and shopping, then we fly back to the Great Frozen North (where, from what we hear, it has been unseasonably warm. Though, if history is any guide, temperatures will plunge and snow will begin falling as soon as we step off the plane.) This will be my last post for this trip, but I wanted to say a little more about Myanmar. A reader took issue with my perceptions of the country saying, basically, that I was missing the trees for … Continue reading →

Stupa-fied in Myanmar

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We’ve been in Myanmar almost three weeks. It feels like the place we were looking for on our trip to SE Asia. How could one not like a country with Spirulina Beer? We got on the plane in Bangkok not knowing quite what to expect upon our arrival in the Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. Myanmar has the reputation of having one of the most authoritarian and oppressive governments in the world, a military regime that came to power in 1962. What would the oppressed people be like, and how would we be treated, we wondered. A lot of travelers … Continue reading →