Our van pulled away from Thailand’s beautiful northern city, Chiang Mai, on the pot-holed road heading towards the neighboring city, Chiang Rai. At our midday lunch stop for a Thai buffet, a large billboard advertised Cabbages and Condoms, a Bangkok restaurant that promoted family planning. (It must be in a
In today’s colloquial parlance, the phrase “salt mine” conjures up unpleasant or even grueling work. “Back to the salt mines!” goes the phrase as one returns to work after a break. So you can imagine my puzzled reaction to see the Turda Salt Mine near the top of our Romanian
Watch a virtual presentation of my work for the Photographic Society of Philadelphia. My talk, titled “Faces are Windows into Cultures Around the World,” uses informal portraits of people I’ve taken around the globe to highlight local architecture, religion, customs, and a sense of place.
“What are we going to do with all these bones?” Sixteenth century Franciscan friars must have asked themselves this challenging question once the bones were dug up from cemeteries and local churchyards throughout Évora, Portugal. The bones and skulls of thousands of dearly departed must have created quite a huge
Six different species of chartreuse plants glow in the garden right now: a small tree, a shrub, two perennials, and two ground covers. Altogether, they make the garden pop. Each one attracts the visitor’s attention to admire its form, distinctive leaves, and in some cases, dramatic flowers. They brighten spaces,
Just over two years later Rick and I joined Eva and Suresh, our Indian travel pals, for a month in their home country, including a nine-day visit in the middle of the journey to the island country of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), located off the southern tip of the subcontinent
When we pack our bags and hit the trail, Rick and I enjoy traveling by ourselves, or sometimes with longtime travel buddies Eva and Suresh. A lot of preparation goes into a travel adventure long before we board the plane. On trips to destinations that are culturally more familiar, like
El Peñol, a 656-foot granite rock, juts out of the earth. No ordinary rock, El Peñol, a Colombian National Monument, attracts thousands of people daily, many who climb the 708 steps for spectacular views of the region. On its top, vendors sell handicrafts, trinkets, and tee-shirts. One pays for the
Originally a farming town, Guatapé’s future changed forever with the construction of a hydroelectric dam in the 1970s that catapulted the town’s importance as the chief electric production center in the country. The dam created an endless network of interconnecting lakes, with hotels, exclusive homes, marinas and other recreational facilities.
Our first morning in Colombia. We arrived in Bogotá yesterday late afternoon, and we’re ready to explore this capital city with our guide Tomás Vargas. Eleven-and-a- half million metropolitan residents fill an eastern Andean plateau at an 8600-foot elevation, and oxygen-sparce air challenges breathing for us sea level dwellers. Our