Washington, DC: Memorial Day Images

Memorial Day Parade

Memorial Day Parade

Lincoln Memorial

Vietnam War Memorial

Smithsonian Museum of American History

Smithsonian Museum of American History

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The Banaue Rice Terraces: A Living Cultural Landscape

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My interest in exploring the northern part of the Philippines started from looking at a piece of art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, California.   Among the display of ceramics and pottery engraved with gold and other decorative stuff,  a wooden carving of a male figure squatting on a platform with the lower arms on top of each other, resting upon his knees, caught my eye.  According to the docent, the wooden sculpture was called "Bului" which literally means "granary guardian" in the "Ifugao" tribe dialect. The carved wooden sculpture was set on a platform on top of another platform, a mortar.   Our docent explained the significance of the wooden mortar (which was used with the pestle, to separate the husk from the rice, sort of rice mill) and linked the story to the Rice Terraces in the Cordillera Mountains of the Philippines built 2000 years ago by the “Ifugao” tribe. So two years and three hundred kilometers north of Manila later, we explo
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Transylvania, Romania: The Land of Dracula

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When we hear the place Transylvania, we almost always think about Dracula, the bloody vampire, that always makes a good Halloween story. So, when I visited Transylvania early this year, it's hard not to associate the places, like the Bran Castle to the famous novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker.  It’s said that Bram Stoker’s inspiration for the Dracula was a historical character Vlad Tepes or Vlad III, the ruler of Wallachia in the 15th century. During Stoker’s research on the region of Transylvania, he came across the brutal accounts of the atrocities committed by Vlad III, also known as Vlad Dracul, aka Vlad the Impaler. He was known for committing brutal acts of war and was under constant threat of attack from the Ottoman and Hungarian forces. During his infamous retreat from the Ottoman forces, Vlad the Impaler had the bodies of his enemies and his people alike impaled on large spikes in the field surrounding his county.   The inspiration for the made-up character ma
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The Amazon, Part 3: The Tree Killer Tree

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"There are 121 ecosystems in the world and 80 of those can be found in the Amazon, and it is in the Peruvian Amazon that you will find the green biome , more than two-thirds of the world's plant species,” said Vics, our naturalist-guide.   Through our small boat excursions, we were able to see the most bio-diverse part of the Amazon, the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, the largest wetlands in the world.  We went through its narrow rivers, tributaries and black waters and lakes to hike the “Amazon Jungle”. Day-3: Jungle Trek Strangler Tree or Tree Killer Tree From the Turmalina, we hopped into a small boat.  The boat hardly moved, we just used it to get offshore.  We walked a tiny bridge and short pathway to get to the lake.  We then crossed the lake using a catamaran to get to the edge of the lake where we found the entrance to the trail.  Within minutes of leaving the larger river, we entered a narrow trail into the canopy of trees, killer vines, kapok and ceda
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