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The quote: There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won´t. (Rabindranath Tagore)
Its raining, its pooring, the old man is snoring!!!
It’s a ship, although it looks like an aeroplane. When it seems like the sky is infinitely sad and won"t stop crying, one of the solutions to not also end up crying is to get inside a cave; which could be a relative solution because sometimes it rains even more than outside.
Since the Monsoon keeps insisting in spoiling my fun, this week I visited the caves of two of the most emblematic National Parks in Sarawak, Niah and Gunung Mulu, this last one has been given the status of World Heritage Site of the UNESCO. With an added value for me because I found a virgin cave and millions of... Kuching, the year of the Cat
The Cat, symbol of Kuching. We don’t want to confuse Chinese Calendar followers, this is not the year of the Cat. In fact, February 2006 will see the beginning of the year of the Dog and Chinese communities in Borneo are already arranging the celebrations.
The heading of the journal is a tribute to one of my favourite songs, The year of the Cat by Al Stewart. It says: "in a country where they turn back time” and that’s how I’ve felt in the capital city of Sarawak, Kuching, which means cat in Malay as well.
Boat sponsored in the river of Kuching. It takes its name from the fruit cultivated... Borneo, one of pirates coming up!
El mono narigudo, endémico de BorneoThe history of Borneo quickly brings to mind the episodes about Malay pirates attacking the ships that traded between China, Japan and Europe, as well as the ships of the “white rajah”, James Brook, who defended his economical privileges in behalf of the British Empire. Sandokan and James Brook are regular characters in Emilio Salagari’s novels.
Up to the 19th century, the Malay edge of Borneo was under domination of Brunei’s sultanate. The Europeans had previously traded with North Borneo but there was no permanent settlement.
In 1841, the sultan... The Nuts’ Club I was thinking of giving this diary the title of “The Club of the Travellers”, but because many people call us “nuts”, I decided to call it The Nut’s Club. I live a life of travelling. So in memory of the sane ones who do not understand our way of life the title will remain as is.
For the longest time, -I believe that I was born with it- I do not try to look for reasons, or to justify to others and to myself what I do and why I do it. As Mallory said when he was asked about why he wanted to climb the Everest, the second decade of the (20th) Century, he simply answered, “Because it’s there ".... Trip to happiness
Around this time of the year, Christmas, and about to begin my new journey to Southeastern Asia, it seems like happiness has to be an “obligatory state”. Also with first anniversary of the Tsunami still recent, I can"t stop thinking about the relativity of the concept of Happiness.
I have just finish reading the book of Eduardo Punset with the same tittle as this diary, where he gives some keys about happiness and its search. He, as a good erudite, deepens in scientific investigations to achieve to an obvious conclusion and that is that happiness is not a mathematical formula, but if... The Words of the Wind
A Spanish proverb claims that “words are blown by the wind” and in order to prevent this from happening, I’ve been doing two things: The first one is traveling along with words and the wind, thus becoming part of them. The second is planting them in cyberspace, a soil that appears to be barren and cold.
However, during these 5 years that Vagamundos.net has been running, this has been proven wrong, because some of the words written in the 245 published logs have taken roots in people’s hearts and have blossomed friendships, affection and romances that have changed my life for ever and, most... Vagamundos awards
When the trip takes a few months there are many things happening, it´s like a compressed life where everything happens to fast and you have to accept it the way it comes.
You live good and bad moments, places and peoples can amaze, surprise, dissapoint or make you indifferent, sometimes just because that wasn´t your best day and, in those cases, it was better to close your eyes and count 10, 100 or 1000.
In this section I emphatize what most impacted me during the six monts in 2005 in my trip through China, 2 ex colonys as Hong-Kong and Macao, and 6 countrys of the asiatic southeast... Spring in Shanghai, Gardens in Suzhou and Heat in Nanjing Sunsetting in ShanghaiMy return to Shanghai 5 months after my first and gelid visit ment getting together with old friends and also the realisation that this city doas not change its place but it changes its landscapes, yet that the skiscrapers appear like mushrooms after rain, and where some months ago laid a neighbourhood and a square, the constructing machines have ocupied its place in crazzy racing towards the sky which seems very similar to the one of Babel tower.
I hope they won"t recive the same burden.
It also was the encounter with a presummerly climate which was changing... The Imperial Gardens and Palaces of Beijing The monument of the Heros in Tianammen. Even though I didn"t find Beijing such an interesting city as Shanghai, one mustn"t skip it on any visit to China, not only for being the capital of the country, but also for the amount of treasures it has, yet that in the city and on its surroundings there are up to 6 places belonging to the UNESCO World Heritage.
Besides the Great Wall, the Imperial Palace or the Bound City, as it was named before, the Summer Palace and the Themple of the Sky give us am idea about the absolutist power of the emperors in China and their passion for the gigantism.
... The Great Wall of China The Great Wall. As many pictures of the Great Wall of China that one could of seen, everyone would be overwhelmed the moment of having it before their eyes, because it looks like an unattainable monument for its majestically, inconceivable on its construction and impossible on its conservation.
The Great Wall wasn’t born as a conceptual piece of art, with what China would want to be preserved from external attacks, as in the VII century B.C. China was dominated by feudal men, that built walls on their borders to be protected from the Hunos attacks and from their own neighbors.
To see the... Phi Phi and the Tsunami. Back to Life
December 26th, 2004. Photo courtesy of Hi Phi Phi. It was Sunday, 10:30am on December 26th, 2004.
The Phi Phi Island, in the Andaman Sea on Thailand’s South-East coast, 35km from Phuket and Krabi, was stretching off after the Christmas celebrations.
It was a very hot day and people were already at the beaches, enjoying the white sand and the turquoise waters, filled with tropical fish.
Phi Phi. May 8th, 2005Although the main religion in Thailand is Buddhism, any excuse is good enough for a party and in Phi Phi, counting all tourists and foreigners working for dive centers, more than... Thailand, Land of the Free Men
Thailand is an exceptional country in many ways. It’s the only country in South East Asia (and almost the only one in whole Asia) that was never colonized, although it was occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and therefore in 1939 it officially adopted the name Thailand, which means “land of the free men”.
It’s no coincidence that it is also the most developed country in the area, as they had no colonial governments to overexploit and exhaust their resources.
After having traveled for three months in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, entering Thailand is a shock: suddenly you realize... Mission Burma
I’m not too fond of dictatorships, regardless their inclinations. Having lived (but thankfully not having suffered, as I was already 15 years old when Franco died) in a country that suffered one of the worst military dictatorships in the world, built on the ignominy of a civil war with one million victims, I’m quite sensitive on this issue. As Paco Ibañez used to sing, “military music never made me get off my feet”.
Although my 2005 trip did not include exemplary democracies, (read China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are all under the military yoke and even Thailand went through a coup... Northern Laos: Rivers, Mountains and Tribes
River setting. I traveled through Laos thoroughly from south to north, going through tracks full of water, potholes, dusty roads, sudden maneuvers in order to avoid cows, dogs, ducks, turkeys, etc.
The part I liked most was the north.
It was a unique experience, both on landscape and the human terms, as by all accounts it was the most authentic part of Laos.
Sunrise in the river. On one hand, the landscape that one sees while navigating river Nam Ou for 7+2 hours from Luang Prabang to Nong Khiaw and Muang Ngou is arguably the most spectacular in whole Laos, featuring mountains covered... Luang Prabang and the new Buddhist Year
Sunset on the Mekong. The old capital of the Kingdom of Laos lies for over a millennium along the Mekong, competing with it in terms of peacefulness.
Built on a peninsula formed by the junction of the Mekong and Nam Kham rivers, it constitutes the only World Heritage Site of Laos, a distinction it definitely deserves, as it is a fascinating city.
Unlike the capital, Vientiane, a city where one wishes to escape from upon arrival, Luang Prabang warrants a visit that becomes extended without noticing it; you don’t realize how you have spent your days here.
Traditional Laotian architecture... Laos, No hurries That Luang, temple in Vientiane. A perfect geographic definition of Laos is that it’s longer than a day without food, thus bus trips tend to be the same.
Road conditions aren’t too much help either.
From Paske to Vientiane, the country’s capital, it’s 700km on route 13 (superstitious people should give this one a miss) and the bus usually takes 15 hours.
Metallic Buddha. It’s not due to low average speed (I wish this were the case; animals cross the roads continuously), but rather because stops last forever, as merchandise needs to be carried on the roof, drivers need to eat, chat with... 4.000 lslands on the Mekong My 1st "bus" in Laos. By this point I could consider myself an expert on Mekong River, as I have travelled along it or navigated it in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and now Laos.
The frenetic activity of the river in Vietnam, featuring a delta as busy as the streets of Saigon, contrasts with the peacefulness of the river in Laos, perhaps adapted to the attitude of its inhabitants, who are never in a hurry for anything.
Dawn in Pakse. After a short visit in the east of Thailand, used as a transit point between Cambodia and Thailand in order to upload the Angkor pictures at vagamundos,... Laos, Land of the Million Elephants
Laos is an invented country. It has never existed as such and the closest it got to that was when a Khmer king named it Lan Xang, which literally reads “land of the million elephants”. A beautiful name undoubtedly, though not a truthful one, given the fact that I haven’t managed to see one single elephant in the 10 days I’ve spent here.
The existence of Laos as a country is owed to colonial geostrategy and policy, rather than to its identity as a nation.
It has almost always been part of the Siam Empire, but the expansionist French policy in Indochina forced Siam (Thailand) to cede them...
Information about China: [back]
Information about Vietnam: [back] Information about Cambodia: [back] Information about Laos: [back] Information about Thailand: [back] Information about Myanmar: [back] Information about Malaysia: [back] Information about Indonesia: [back] Information about Brunei: [back] Information about Singapore: [back]
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