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(Dana) A group of ladies from the Akha Ghepia hill tribe are gathered to make a headdress for their friend who will marry this week. One bends bamboo into the hat frame. Another stretches the hand-spun, hand-woven, indigo-dyed cotton fabric over the frame. Several other women sew coins onto ribbon pieces, thread colored beads and […]

(Dana) In 2014, hundreds of thousands of visitors to Myanmar followed the standard tourist loop, including the stunning sites of Bagan, Mandalay, Inle Lake and Yangon. As I learned in 2014, the former Burma is a fantastic country filled with lovely people and perched on the brink of a tourist explosion. In 2015, I wanted […]

(Dana) In January, Cambodian Living Arts annual board meeting took me half-way around the world. To justify the expense and travel time, I opted for a second week away and detoured to Myanmar. Where? Myanmar…the country formerly known as Burma. Like many Americans, I had the impression that Myanmar was still romantically undiscovered. After all, […]

(Alex) The Huli wigmen are the fiercest, most warlike tribe in all of Papua New Guinea. Ironically, the main goal of the Huli wigmen is to look and act like the beautiful endemic Bird of Paradise. The men do their best to “be” the beautiful birds. First, the men cover themselves in a shiny oil […]

(Andrew) I was not looking forward to this village stay even though Papua New Guinean people are very friendly. We left our lodge on the Karawari River and boarded a very long motorized dug out canoe. We passed many small villages and I hoped that none were ours because I was looking for the 5-star […]

(Reis) We pulled into a muddy lot in the Middle of Nowhere in the Papua New Guinean Highlands. We climbed out of our private Public Motorized Vehicle (ironic, huh?), and nimbly stepped through the mud to a set of rundown grass/mud/stone stairs. We climbed with great care, not wanting to slip and fall. We entered […]

(Greg) We have been on the road for almost a year, putting ourselves into the middle of some of the wildest, most untouched places on Earth. We are pretty salty veterans, so I thought it unlikely that we would be wide-mouthed and pie-eyed by anyplace or any people again. Then we came to the Sepik […]

My daughters are looking at pictures they just took of young kids in a river village. While laughing proudly at their work, they sing a song they made up about Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup, sung to the tune of Shoshaloza, a popular South African song. I am writhing on a small bed in that […]

(Andrew) Our flight landed in Singapore airport at 10:00 pm from Jakarta, Indonesia. It left the next day at 11:00 pm to Port Moresby, PNG. A full 24 hours in Singapore! As a compromise for having a longhouse birthday (see Reis’ post), Dad agreed to take us to Universal Studios Singapore, even though it was […]

(Reis) As we boarded the boat in Pangkalan Bun, Borneo, the smell of oil filled the air, and we were off. Along the Aruk River, passing by village upon village and boat upon boat, we raced. We sped by outhouse after outhouse with holes directly into the river. Passing by many logging stations, with gigantic […]