Greetings from Istanbul

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It's spring awright!!!





Location: Istanbul Istanbul

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Northern Thailand: Elephant Riding

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H, my colleague gave me a puzzled look when I told him that I was not at all keen on riding the elephant.     I would go home with pleasant memories of having had an amazing fun playing with the baby elephant and a personally rewarding experience of working with the kids.     For H, riding the elephant was the ultimate reward for volunteering at the Elephant Home. The Elephant Home is an eco-tourism and conservation park north of Chiang Mai, Thailand in the village of Maetaman.   Part of its profit supports the local community by supporting reforestation efforts and contributing to the local economy.    They offer one to five-days elephant training programs and two to four weeks volunteering programs. (Check out the link below for the many programs they offer).   While the many so-called elephant camps in Northern Thailand take in 1500 to 2000 tourists a day, the Elephant Home takes no more than 15 tourists a day, so it could offer a more intimate experience.   Tourists and v
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Greenland: Among the Icebergs

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As a photo enthusiast, I really am fascinated by nature and landscape photography.  And I'm a big fan of Camille Seaman, who is famous for photographing icebergs.  She captures the effects of climate change by merging the realms of science and art.  Camille said, "Art is not only important, it is necessary for us to communicate what is happening with our planet.  Without art I don't think we will ever truly be able to communicate what climate change is".  Nine years ago, I was so inspired by Camille's work "The Last Iceberg" that I wrote a poem about it. (Reprise below) Still inspired by the beauty of nature, I recently traveled to Greenland to photograph and see the icebergs up close and personal. I literally only saw "the tip of the iceberg/s" (pun intended) because 85% (the bottom part of an iceberg) is submerged in water. I saw icebergs that vary in shapes and sizes: iceberg taller than a building, some with hollow caves and appeared to be
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Alaska: Port of Call Ketchikan

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Ketchikan I just had time to muse about my wonderful experience exploring the Inside Passage and some parts of the Tongass National Park while on a cruise to Alaska with my sisters. Our first port of call was Ketchikan, a very small town famous for three things: rain, salmon, and totem poles. So, most of the shore excursions involve rainforest, fish and totem poles. The weather forecast on our arrival was rain, but for a city dubbed as the “rain capital of Alaska”, it was beautiful and sunny when we arrived. The arch sign “the Salmon Capital of the World” greeted us as soon as we got off the ship. I gathered from the sign that Ketchikan was a small enough to explore on our own because only small towns would build or put out signs as tourist attractions to draw crowds. We could have explored the whole town on our own in no time, but we already pre-booked a walking tour. We arrived a couple of hours before the scheduled tour, so we walked around to check the shops out (mostly souvenir
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