One morning on Ko Chang, Thailand, while sitting by the sea and preparing to breakfast on a pineapple pancake and a pineapple shake, I read a puzzling line in Simon Winchester’s book Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883. Winchester pointed out that the 1969 film Krakatoa: East of Java contains a glaring geographical error in […]
What Fortune-tellers Cannot Predict
In his book A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East, Tiziano Terzani recounts a scene in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in which he is at a fortune-teller’s house, sitting in a dark room lit by an oil lamp. Over the door and written in chalk (and presumably in Khmer) is, “Carnal passion, jealously, […]
Connected To All Outside The Airplane Window
Travel long and far enough and over time you’ll have looked out several airplane windows. Through the oval frame you will have seen the glaciers of Alaska and the rice fields of Bali, the Pyramids of Giza and the temples of Bangkok. You’ll have gazed upon the White House in winter, the Eiffel Tower the […]
Constant Change In Cairo, Egypt (And Elsewhere)
If you are looking for Egyptian antiques in Cairo – and by antique I mean something from around fifty or one hundred years ago, not something from King Ramses’ bedstand in 1292 B.C. – you can find an array of items among the shops like the one above near the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Egypt has […]