Bootstrappin’

They don’t have the whole “electricity” thing figured out yet in Nepal. The power lines here are a tangled mess of coroded wires, hanging like cobwebs, loosely strung in every which way with no semblance of a plan. The guy in the photo above is working on the power lines, apparently ignoring all the little [...]

The Dabur Foods Company owns rural Nepal. The tiny towns that dot the Annapurna Circuit are relatively untouched by modern commercialism and marketing, with one exception: Real Fruit Juice ads. The the yellow logo of the Real Fruit brand is plastered EVERYWHERE along the Jomsom Trek portion of the Annapurna. (Otherwise, there isn’t a billboard [...]

These goats don’t know it, but they’re headed for the dinner table. While we were trekking around the Annapurna Circuit, the Nepalese people were in the middle of the 15-day national festival of Dasain. Dasain (sometimes “Dashain”) is a Hindu harvest festival, where families gather together, feast and make merry, recite mantras, and worship the [...]

I’ve just spent two months in China, and despite Beijing’s best efforts to improve translations nation-wide, I’m happy to report that Chinglish is still everywhere. There’s nothing better than awesomely hilarious mistranslations! The opposite of Recycling Bathroom notice

Yaks are pretty much the coolest animal of all time. Sure, they may just be big woolly cows with sweet horns, but they’re a way of life for everyone in rural Tibet. The nomadic yak herders live in tent encampments in the windy Tibetan planes, surrounded by their herd, and yaks are the source of [...]

I just got back from the Giant Panda Research Center in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China…and holy crap, pandas are cute! The video above shows a few of them munching on bamboo early this morning. But having spent the morning learning about the panda bear, I’ve come to the conclusion that pandas are an anomaly of [...]

This afternoon, I was wandering around Xi’an when I came across a lovely little art market, wedged into the alleys just inside the South City Wall. It’s one of those things I really should have discovered sooner, having spent the last three days walking all over the blocks just surrounding the market, but somehow I [...]

There have been a few times on this trip where, while wandering a city, just minding my own business, I’ve turned a corner… and inadvertently stepped into a completely different world. Today was one of those days. I stumbled into Xi’an’s Muslim Quarter this morning, and felt instantly like I was 1,000 miles away from [...]

They sure love Chairman Mao in China. Not only is there a statue of him in every city, his face on every single one of their RMB bills (except for the worthless ones; those are reserved for the ethnic minorities)… but he also makes an appearance on t-shirts, watches, buttons, playing cards, figurines, handbags, hats, [...]

Hong Kong’s skyline is world-famous, and for good reason. It’s one of the tallest, it’s colorful and unique, and it’s got tons of amazing vantage points (these photos were taken from the boardwalk across the bay in Tsim Tsa Shui, Kowloon). And every night at 8PM, there is a light show where the buildings come [...]