Recently in Travel Category

Toward the end of September, Heng and I spent nearly two weeks with Elderhostel in Peru. Our focus was on little-known civilizations on South America's Pacific coast which followed, by several millenniums, the rise of Middle Eastern civilizations and the construction of pyramids in that part of the world. The better-known of the local cultures was the Inca. But they were not alone. Their accomplishments built upon the knowledge, expertise, and skills of other contemporaneous cultures that they conquered.

While the Inca are renowned for their impressive stone structures, other civilizations living in deserts in the north constructed their own pyramids not of stone but of another locally available resource: dirt. These were as long as half a mile long and 170 ft high. An illustrated description of part of what we saw and learned during this trip follows. I have also included a description on some of the techniques used by the Inca to accomplish their feats of cutting, dressing, transporting, and raising and setting in place precisely tailored stones, some weighing more than 100 tons. But some mysteries still remain to be solved.

Note that in the following presentation, left clicking on small photos will almost always lead you to larger, clearer photos and, occasionally, additional information. You can then return to the main body of the text by clicking the "go back" arrow in the upper left of your browser.

Rachelle and I spent the last couple of weeks of 2006 touring Europe, spending Christmas in Rome and New Year's in Paris. I finally got around to uploading the pics, and I could write a lengthy description of the fun we had, but I'll let the pictures do the talking...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43804711@N00/sets/

Almost a month ago I had the chance to travel around the world to China. Some of our outsource work is being done there, so a few of us from work spent a week there to help tutor some of the guys. We first stayed in Hong Kong, only an hour drive away from mainland China. It is an amazing city, and we managed to take a quick day tour around Hong Kong island to see most of the sights. It was fairly easy to get around, as English is an official language as well as Cantonese. Going an hour north to China, however, was completely different... almost like going from the U.S. to Mexico. English is not an official language, and the border crossings are quite intimidating (so no pictures). We were no longer in the "safe zone" of English-speaking Hong Kong. We did have a driver and English-speaking hosts so we managed to survive for the week!

Click picture for more pictures!

Never having been to China before, I had all kinds of pictures in my mind. I imagined rural huts along a river, lots of noisy motorbikes, and an occasional concrete building. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago my vision would've been accurate. The China of today is growing in more ways than one. The border city we visited, Shenzhen, was merely a fishing village a few decades ago. Now it's a huge metropolis of over 8 million people. At the fancy hotel where we stayed, we overheard a few different accents, from American English to British to Eastern European. We weren't the only ones outsourcing! With the population size that it has, China has a seemingly infinite work force of people eager to feed themselves, and eager to prove to the world that they are very capable (and all at a much cheaper price). We could sense this from the busboys who helped us with our baggage, to the waiters and waitresses serving us dinner, to the employees of our outsource company. China will be a huge competitor in the workplace for decades to come.

In early September, Bounheng,my mother, and I spent a couple of weeks with family and friends in Switzerland and England and visiting a few places in between. Below are a few photographs, with brief narrative, of some of the sites we visited as "tourists".

In the posting that continues below, left-clicking on the small photos will enlarge the image and then clicking your browser’s back arrow will let you return to this short presentation.

The end of May 2006, Heng and I spent a few weeks visiting Alaska, a state more than twice the size of Texas but averaging about 1 person per square mile. (By comparison, Maryland has 500 people per square mile.) Needless to say, tranquility reigned!

We spent a week hiking in Denali (Mt. McKinley) National Park and Preserve with an organization called Elderhostel. The remainder of the time was spent visiting south-central Alaska where we climbed a number of glaciers in this land of superlatives. This Web page presents a number of photographs to share with you our experiences.