By way of a Buddhist festival that we stumbled upon here in Bangkok, we found some fitting wishes and words of wisdom for the new year. In the festival pamphlet, designed very much for locals with a nod to us non-Thai speakers, we discovered a list of wishes and matching offerings for each of the nine participating wats (temples). From this list, we inferred something rather noteworthy. Continue Reading »

The new house, commanding magnificent views of open sea and bathing beaches, and mountains and forest gardens, and houses. North of the Iltis Huk church, at foot of the big hill, on south slope. Wish you could enjoy it soon with us. Big love, Daddy

- a note on the back of a photo of the house in Qingdao, China, written by my great-grandfather to one of his children on July 31, 1937.

Armed with the photo of the house and the description above, we hopped on a bus Continue Reading »

Myanmar (Burma) is a country noted for its oppressive government and lauded for the kindness of its people. This September, though, the political situation heated up again under protests and a corresponding government crackdown.

We’re back in the neighborhood of Southeast Asia again and we have the opportunity to visit. Do we go this time or give it another pass? Continue Reading »

Having been on the go for one year, we required some stillness in order to evaluate how this journey of ours is going - not just from a travel perspective, but from a personal and business perspective. Beijing seemed as good a place as any to perform this exercise. Continue Reading »

That’s Christmas in Bangkok to you and me. Krung Thep (City of Angels) is the Thai name for Bangkok, Thailand - the location from which we happen to be writing this post.

We first imagined this post being entitled Wishing You a Very Chinese Christmas, but a quick decision five days ago altered our trajectory and landed us in sunny Bangkok instead. Continue Reading »

If you click around our first installment of photos from China expecting images of kung pao and red lanterns, perhaps you’ll be surprised to find chick pea salads and women in head scarves instead. Continue Reading »

While we were relieved to see an English menu at a local dumpling joint in Qingdao, we were alarmed by some of its offerings. This time, we could really use your help. Continue Reading »

When we travel, we aim to maximize our depth of understanding of a place relative to the limited amount of time we have to spend there. We try to plan our visit to each location around the people we know, the recommendations they make and a list of sights that we’ve developed independently through our own research. Planning our visit to Kyrgyzstan was no exception. However, the wide cross-section of people, sights and activities to which we had access provided us the opportunity to dig more deeply than usual.

Opportunities to question one’s assumptions and to view oneself and one’s environment from a different perspective defines the intersection of travel and personal growth. As we learned more about Kyrgyz culture and life in Kyrgyzstan, we found ourselves at that crossroads examining our definitions of family and community. Continue Reading »

We’re here in Beijing, China and the only things going up more rapidly than new buildings are Christmas trees (mostly fake, of course). Last night, we became nostalgic while strolling past another giant shopping center Christmas tree, this one shielded by a roof that houses the world’s largest LED video screen (250 meters long by 30 meters wide).

Though the proliferation of Christmas decorations in Beijing is remarkable, their presence just doesn’t capture the holiday spirit like a European Christmas market would. So, we offer a walk down European Christmas Market memory lane and our “Best of” European Christmas Markets list. Continue Reading »

A couple of our online store customers have brought to our attention that, while they are pleased with the printing and artistic quality of the photographs, the calendars in our online store do not have the name and location of each image. Unfortunately, this is a technical limitation of Cafepress.

We also agree that this would improve the calendars, so we’ve put together a list of titles to go along with the most popular calendars. Print out the relevant list and write in the titles by hand or just keep the list handy for each time a new month begins.

Also, some people have complained that the Uncornered Market t-shirt selection was doggist and feminist, so we’ve added men’s t-shirts to please men, women and dogs alike. Continue Reading »