BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR



HERE'S TO 2015
FILLED WITH TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE!!!




YEAR IN PHOTOS 2014


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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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Morocco: The Road to Erfoud

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Morocco Road Trip, Part 1: From Fez to Erfoud I must admit, I came to Morocco with one thing in mind: to photograph the golden sand dunes of the Sahara Desert at sunset, and I’m not even a photographer. To get to the Sahara I expected an arduous road trip, a few stops here and there, one night at a hotel, one journey and then another. However, the whole trip was totally a pleasant surprise. We stayed in Fez for a couple of nights and visited the oldest (8th century) Medina. Tired from exploring and walking through a maze of more than 800 very narrow streets of El Bali Medina the day before, I expected to sleep during the whole journey to Erfoud where our five-star campsite (hotel) was located near the Sahara Desert. Well, I did not sleep during the ten-hour journey because I was so enthralled by the scenery - a gradual collection of landscapes that meld together to create a real sense of Morocco. This segment of the journey gives the literal meaning to the saying, “It’s not t...
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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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