Hours later we arrived into Siem Reap, which is in essence a large boomtown perched on the northern shores of the Tonle Sap. It is a tourism center of Cambodia and this is evident in the many, many, many Western faces crowding the city center’s pleasant streets and the global assortment of restaurants. Not to… Read More Onwards to Angkor
We boarded an early morning bus headed out of Saigon to Cambodia’s largest city, Phnom Penh. The drive was nice and slow, moving along through the countryside and across smoothly paved roads making for a pleasant enough ride fueled by pistachios and choco-pies while watching the water buffalo outside. Near the end of the ride… Read More A Holiday in Cambodia
Leaving Hanoi, we hopped rides on the back of a pair of motos whose ambitious drivers careened around slower vehicles, in a race against time to get us to the train station. We boarded our 30-hour train bound for the bottom end of the country, prepared for a 2 night and 1 day excursion down… Read More Saigon: Where Americans don’t get stared at
Our second stop involved flying into Hanoi at night, landing in the dreary darkness near the airport and passing through the messy, sprawling outer boundaries of the Vietnamese capitol in a fast-moving taxi. We were deposited in the care of a young Vietnamese woman from our guesthouse in the midst of a swirling whirlpool of… Read More I love the smell of motos in the evening
Initially our plan had been to go to Guilin, a city in southwest China surrounded by the limestone mountains that make its famed karst landscape. I however underestimated the demand on the Chinese railways for the holidays, and found that ambitious travel agents had snapped up all the available tickets within a day after they… Read More Tour d’Asia, Part 1: Kuala Lumpur
About halfway or a little more through the big trip of the school year, with the aid of a 5-week break from work thanks to the Chinese New Year festivities. Kathleen met me in Hong Kong on 12 January, and from there we have since been to Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Saigon, Phnom Penh, and now… Read More Notes from the Road
So in the midst of the busy-ness and activity that consumed my normally free and easy 13-hour work week in the beginning of January I never got around to putting down my thoughts and experiences for these two cities. Needless to say that writing now, nearly a month and several countries later, the fine details… Read More Delayed Updates- Suzhou/Hangzhou
Last week I was liberated from my teaching duties of the term, which culminated in Andrew and I spending several minutes after our final class signing autographs for some students. This was a definite first, and a little funny. I think some students were worried they may never see us again, I’m sure at least… Read More Adventure Free Time – Shanghai Edition
Thanks to some quirks in Europe hundreds of years ago and the expansion of Western influence at the turn of the 20th century in Asia, I was able to celebrate New Year’s Eve in China much as I would at home. People littered the streets late into the night on a scale that surpassed vastly… Read More So this is the New Year
I have heard from a number of people curious to know what exactly a typical day consists of here. The majority of my writings have rambled on about the trips I’ve managed to squeeze in in my time away from Shenzhen, so I suppose explaining a ‘normal’ day in China could be of interest to… Read More By Popular Request
Zak Abroad 