http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia The blog will chart my Freeman Asia Fellowship Sat, 05 Aug 2006 01:46:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Freeman fellows met as a group our final day in Vietnam to review the SE Asia tour. We discussed what we had seen and heard over the course of a month in Asia. It’s clear that SE Asia is experiencing a remarkable period of growth. All of the countries we ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=608 We arrived in Taipei, Taiwan, the evening of July 6, 2006. The airport arranged for us to stay at a hotel that evening, since our flight to Honolulu would not depart until the following afternoon. A Vietnamese woman from Canada told me about a free half-day tour of Taipei the ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=589 Saigon is officially named Ho Chi Minh City, after the Vietnamese military leader who defeated the French in the IndoChina War and later led the North Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese and the United States in the Vietnam War. (He died in 1969 years before that latter war ended.) Most ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=569 We celebrated the Fourth of July with an all day excursion in Vietnam in search of the South China Sea. We had traveled more than 1600 miles along the Mekong, on the Mekong, and high above the Mekong for nearly a month. We had explored the people, cultures, and issues, ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=551 SLEEPING BABY If Cambodia today is a little bit screwed up, it has a good excuse: It had a bad childhood. Ever since the fall of the Khmer empire, Cambodia has been attacked, exploited and even brutalized by foreign powers, including the Thais, the Vietnamese, the French, and the Japanese — ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=519 If the ruins of Angkor represent the high point of Cambodian civilization, than the “killing fields” most certainly represent its low point. A brief history: Cambodian communists, the Khmer Rouge (“red Cambodians), came to power April 17, 1975, after wining Cambodia’s civil war. Led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge ruled ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=501 ANGKOR WAT FROM ABOVE The French naturalist Henri Mouhot visited ruins of Angkor Wat in 1860, wrote a book about it, and died the following year. Historian Arnold Toynbee later wrote a book about Mouhot titled, “See Angkor and Die.” It summed up not only Mouhot’s life but the way that ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=435 A VILLAGE IN CAMBODIA We awakened June 28, 2006, with a long day of travel ahead of us, including meals in three countries: breakfast in Vientiene, Laos, lunch in Bangkok, Thailand — at the airport — and dinner in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The flight to Bangkok was uneventful, though I was ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=403 I finally became a millionaire June 26, 2006. I went to the currency exchange in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and converted $100 into Lao “kip.” At an exchange rate of more than 10,000 kip to the dollar, I walked away with a ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=381 We rose early June 26, 2006, to “feed the monks.” It’s a tradition in Luang Prabang. The monks of the village walk down the main thoroughfare and bystanders put food into the monks’ bowls. We had each been given a bowl of “sticky” rice and instructed to put a small ... http://www.michaelgormley.com/asia/?p=360