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A Brief Return to BangladeshI'd enjoyed a lovely two weeks in Nepal – if you ignore the people killed in the bus crash on the highway to Pokhara – and had forgotten all about my adventures getting to Kathmandu via glorious Biman Airways – the flight didn't crash, so what does anything else matter? – when I received an e-mail from my travel agent in Bangkok regarding my return flight. I was staying at the Magnificent View Hotel in Kathmandu, conveniently located just outside the Thamel tourist district, next to a vacant lot where homeless squatters begged for rupees in the frigid winter air and pariah dogs practiced their barking. Add comment (0)
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A Brief Sojourn in BangladeshOn a recent trip to Asia I found myself needing to fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu. It soon became evident there were only two ways to get between these cities, either Thai International or Royal Nepal Air. Brief inquiries narrowed my choices. Evidently Royal Nepal enjoyed the use of two airplanes, one of which occasionally flew and the other was used for parts. They had a nice Web site, but when you moved your cursor around the site, nothing happened. I soon found that Thai International's site wasn't much better. I was able to get right down to the point of buying a ticket when the site froze up. It took a week to discover the obvious; the flights were sold out.
Floating Coffin of Tonle SapAt $25 a ticket, it’s only the rich or Westerners touring Angkor Wat who can afford the fast ferry that runs down Tonle Sap, 180 miles from Siem Reap down to Phnom Penh. On this particular morning in late fall, the 120 seats of the main cabin were full and the roof packed with another two dozen Westerners keen for an adventure. So we were well over capacity. But in Cambodia, it’s not like there is anybody in charge of such minor items. The sun was shining in a pastel blue sky, and off we went, only an hour late.
Writing in a CybercafeI cannot conceive of my life without a computer. I get very strange if I can't sit down and write, or communicate, or work, on a regular basis. On my last trip to Asia – six weeks, including Nepal, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Cambodia – carrying no laptop of my own, I tried to write my stories “on the go,” using any cybercafes I came upon. Not such a good idea, as it turned out.
Charity Begins on the Road
There were six of us, riding on the backs of scooters. We were lost somewhere in the ghettoes of backstreet Phnom Penh, the old capital of ancient Cambodia. Being lost or in a ghetto was no problem. Much of Phnom Penh is desperately poor, and being lost merely meant a driver had to ask directions. We were on a mission, just another detour on the journey that is life, therefore, not really lost at all. Certainly Marc Gold knows where he is going. I knew if I followed closely, I might end up on the same path, too.
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