Articles By: SilkandStones
Getting Around Hanoi in a Cyclo
Getting around Hanoi involves walking (wonderful), bicycles or motorbikes (scary), cars (expensive and time consuming), or hiring a cyclo. Above is a photo of Mr. Lap, my cyclo driver this summer.
Kayaking in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
I’m in the back row in the blue shirt. This is a group of friends and clients on a trip that I designed and led to Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos a few years ago. I’ve been traveling extensively in Southeast Asia, and delight in helping others travel successfully and learn about these countries.
Learning from Bao, the Carpenter in Siem Reap
’m working on a service project at an evening school on the outskirts of Siem Reap. The school is a collection of open air sheds, a group of young volunteer teachers, many of whom sleep on cots in the back corners of the open air classrooms while they also go to college, and students who are the poor neighborhood children who can’t afford to pay for private English classes
A Tale of Two Ethiopian Villages
This is a tale of two villages: Alem Tefari and Satano Dima. Both are in western Ethiopia, almost to the border with Sudan. This part of Ethiopia is off the beaten path–quite a ways off. The road from Addis Ababa west to Dembi Dolla, the nearest town to these villages, is paved for a few miles out of Addis
Taking in the Tribal Homes in Hanoi
My two favorite museums in Southeast Asia are: the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore and the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. The photo is taken at the Hanoi Ethnology Museum and captures one of the several stunning tribal village structures located there. Skilled villagers were brought to Hanoi with their traditional materials, tools, and methods to construct these buildings. As modern materials and building methods replace the traditional ones, these buildings are becoming rare finds
