I think everyone has their own image and, when they’ve been there, experience of Bali. It can be idolized as Paradise on earth, and it also can be seen as dirty, trendy, over-hyped. I didn’t know what to expect in the four days I planned to spend there, so I can say I wasn’t disappointed. I confess I am writing this piece after my Voyage of Rediscovery has come to an end, already back at what passes for home for…
Those are the famous Petronis Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s buzzing capital city. You may recall them in the nail-biter film Entrapment, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery. The film was made in 1999, a year after the towers’ completion, and they were the tallest buildings in the world at the time, a title they held until 2004. Silly me, during my recent brief time in KL, as Kuala Lumpur is commonly known, I thought they still were the world’s…
In my novel Don’t Try Any of This, second volume in the Little Rosie Trilogy, the main character arrives in Bangkok and expresses the differences she sees in the city from Paris, where she has been living. “Bangkok is so different from Paris. I can see that right away, from the moment we arrive and step out of the plane. And I see more of the differences on our first day here, a day of R&R after that long…
I am writing this long delayed piece while in Malaysia, two countries and a third of the world past my time on Gran Canaria, part of Spain’s Canary Islands. Not counting plane stops and brief diversions, I’m now in my eighth country and at the end of my ninth week, two more countries and weeks to go until I return to what I currently consider home. Trying to put everything in perspective, to put all the pieces together in…
Prior to touching down at Gaborone nearly three weeks ago, I had some knowledge of Botswana, knowing it to be one of the more successful of African countries since gaining independence from Britain in 1966. I had earned a Certificate in African Studies as part of my Masters degree in Mass Communication, but this was my first visit to the continent south of the Sahara. A visit I had long anticipated and looked forward to. Though, like battle, our preconceived…