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Welcome to the Asia & Pacific page. Here are ome tanalising snippets of available articles, all of which can be tailored to your requirements. Email for more information about these and other destinations/story angles or forthcoming adventures. JAPAN Elusive Enlightenment The monk's face glows in the firelight, the darkness beyond its reach silhouetting lips moving in recitation. As he feeds prayer sticks into the consecrated flames the light flares, revealing two saffron-robed monks beating a drum and bringing cymbals together to his left, and about thirty seated people crowded around the square altar, watching and listening. Some faces in the audience look serene. A few look half asleep, which is understandable given that attending morning prayers in Koyasan, on Japan's mountainous Kii Peninsula, involves rising from your temple-inn futon before daybreak. VIETNAM Hanoi Heartland Small and bent with bunions, her feet rest atop black velvet scuffs. Her silver hair is pulled into a bun wrapped in beaded black mesh. A gold-and-jade ring and jade bracelet adorn the bird-like hands with which she removes a plastic box from the drawstring bag between us. As we share a bench
beside Hoan Kiem Lake, in the heart of Hanoi, I watch the elderly
Vietnamese
woman daub red areca nut and white slaked lime on a betel leaf and fold
it into
a quid. But she doesn’t pop this parcel in
her mouth; she puts it aside and prepares more stimulant, adding several
threads
of tobacco to a chunk of nut in a metal canister, and grinding them to a
course
paste with a spatula. Backpackers who breakfast on banana pancakes from Bangkok to Bulawayo, and five-star tourists who start each day with an American buffet, deny themselves one of life’s great adventures. Tucking into foreign food can take courage, but there is no better way to get into a country’s soul than via its stomach. And that’s why my friend and I decide to eat our way through Vietnam, starting in the capital... INDIA In The Pink in Rajasthan Think pink if you will be in India for Holi, because of all the powders thrown and water splashed during this free-for-all festival of colour, red/pink is the longest lasting. Sacrifice some old clothes, or buy a white shirt and pants, and accept that you will sport punk-pink hair at any business meeting or social event scheduled within three weeks, for Holi is as fun as India gets and should not be missed... Himalayan High - Sikkim Twenty to five in the morning and my tent crackles with frost as I unzip. There to greet me is Orion, reclining on a mountain range painted black across a sky turning apricot and blue at its eastern extreme. Cold reaches in and grabs my fingers, which are ungloved so I can write. Breathing produces vapour clouds like cartoon speech bubbles. At least my legs are warm, protected by double long johns and sleeping bag. My top half, too, layered in a thermal top, shirt, two polofleece jumpers and the down jacket that World Expeditions provided for moments like these. Welcome to the north-east Indian state of Sikkim. SOLOMON ISLANDS Pushing Up Daisies Sixty-five years after American amphibious craft rumbled ashore and disgorged their human cargoes on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, yellow and pink daisy-like flowers bloom around the 6-wheel vehicles, ferns flourish in their rusty corners and crevices, and fig trees poke limbs through their turrets. In time, tropical plants and humidity will reduce these relics of the famous Guadalcanal campaign to a kind of metal mulch, but for now they are integral exhibits on a World War II tour out of Honiara, the Solomon Islands capital. Go to Top of Page |
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