November 2004 My final visit to Australia was to the rarely visited "top end". We were exploring Kakadu National Park and other famous...

December 2013 I had only been at King Khalid University for a semester. I barely traveled outside of my neighborhood by that point. ...

jungle trek Rafflesia. February 1997 We were actually staying at the swank 5-star Tanjung Aru Resort when we visited Kota Kinabalu. The...

December 2019 May 2020 Upon arriving in Duhok I was happy to find that my new digs were close to the Rixos Hotel which had decent coffee in its bar/coffee shop overlooking the city. [see: Friday morning coffee ] However, the Rixos was a five-star hotel with prices to match and I longed for a real coffee shop. Luckily, the librarian at American University of Kurdistan, told me of a place called "Buon Gusto" that was in reasonable walking distance of my room. Not only that

January 1993 When the world finally "discovered" New Zealand via the movies, I was not surprised. On my visit the country very much...

March 1985 On my Spring Break trip to Kyushu seeking warmth and sunshine from a still cold Sendai, I ended up in Kagoshima on the...

September 2017 On a visit home to my "address of record", my sister/cousin EHJ indulged me to go for a walk nearby, "someplace new". I...

March 1981 Sophomore year at Georgetown held a lot of new adventures for me. I was a member of the "French House" on campus, which was...

December 2007 On our second visit to Vietnam, the drive to Ho Chi Minh City was punctuated with visiting Cham Archeological sites. The...

December 2019 the end approacheth I had spent a very full day in Fez and mostly enjoyed it. It had exceeded my expectations in some...

Kochi, February 2010 Kathakali is a major form of classical Indian dance. It is a "story play" genre of art, but one distinguished by...

September 2014 One of my all time favorite street foods from the Indonesia years was "gorengan" (literally, "fried stuff"). I always...

April 2019 On my rain-plagued visit to Vienna while working in Iraq, I discovered a branch of the National Library [see: Austrian State...

January-February 2012 The best laid plans.... My dear friend from Tamil Nadu whom I came to know in Singapore, MP, was desperate for me...

March 2012 It was may last day in Dhaka and AH and I were visiting a nice park in the upscale Gulshan neighborhood of Dhaka. Dhaka has...

July 2019 Dresden was beautiful before it was fire-bombed near the close of World War II. Along with the Frauenkirche, one of the...

İncili Köşk August 2020 Built into the old Roman walls of Byzantium in the late 16th century was a pleasure palace on the Bosphorus for...

Tower of Saint Vincent August 2017 The project was started on a basaltic rock outcrop a short distance from the riverbank, using some of...

Bangla Market, Khamis Mushait (not my photo) [from FB post: February 7, 2015] I stand by the Abha Khamis main road with a Bangla friend...

Texas State Capitol. January 1984 little blue dot Long before Americans viewed the country as red and blue, the red and blue divide...