Archive for the ‘Way Way Off the Beaten Path’ Category
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
1st time is happenstance, 2nd time is coincidence… Let it be known that Gerard Butler now reads this blog, and I quote from June (left in photo): “It was funny how he mentioned he had read The Monsoon Diaries, because he kept saying how he usually doesn’t look into these things that mention him. I also mentioned [...]
Tags: coincidence, gerard butler, serendipity, wtf
Posted in Fail, Morocco, Serendipitous!, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2011: Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Portugal | 7 Comments »
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
Usually I would resort to these titles to grab your attention, but if you look at the picture above, you’ll see it’s more than a gimmick. It’s for real: 5 minutes ago we ran into Gerard Butler in the maze of souks within the Marrakech medina. Being born, raised and having lived in Manhattan for [...]
Tags: gerard butler, goodbyes, jason mraz, koutoubia, koutoubia mosque, marrakech, morocco, wtf
Posted in Fit for Foodies, Morocco, Serendipitous!, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Winter 2011: Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Portugal | 5 Comments »
Friday, November 25th, 2011
About a month ago I was still debating where I wanted to go for Thanksgiving weekend. To make a long story short, it was seeing a picture of Guatemala’s Lake Atitlan that helped me decide. Consistently rated as one of the top 2 things to see in all of Central America, this lake bore [...]
Tags: atitlan, celebrities, double booking, fortunate accidents, guatemala, lake atitlan, panajachel, richard morgan, serendipitous, serendipity, Steve Aoki, sunset, sunset views
Posted in Fall 2011: Guatemala & Belize, Fit for Foodies, Guatemala, How Did You Do That?, Public Transportation, Serendipitous!, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
Does this make us famous? We go on at the 64:00 and the interview lasts about an hour. We talk about how we pay for our travel, where my favorite places are, and of course getting into North Korea as an American.
Posted in Publicity, Way Way Off the Beaten Path | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011
There are some things on a trip that are just asking to be done. When we noticed that elevator buttons skipped the 5th floor of our hotel in Pyongyang, or that if you google “Yanggakdo Hotel” it auto-fills it to “Yanggakdo Hotel Floor 5″, we knew something was up. And we also knew nobody was [...]
Tags: 5th floor of the yanggakdo hotel, creepy, dprk, north korea, pyongyang, spies, spying, what is on the 5th floor of the yanggakdo hotel, yanggado hotel, yanggakdo, yanggakdo fifth, yanggakdo hotel 5th floor
Posted in Let me tell you a Story..., North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come | 36 Comments »
Sunday, August 14th, 2011
The cult of personality. That’s the term giving to folks like Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mussolini, Castro, and Kim Il-Sung. It’s the idea of using mass media and propaganda to fuel the notion that a single human being is a god-like hero, a savior of the nation, and ultimately infallible. Detractors are not taken [...]
Tags: children's palace, dprk, gymnastics, kim il-sung, kim il-sung mausoleum, kim il-sung palace, north korea, performing arts, pickled dictators, pickled presidents, pyongyang, young children performing
Posted in North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path | 2 Comments »
Sunday, August 14th, 2011
What trip to Pyongyang would be complete without seeing the structures that represent the very soul of North Korea? We take a look at central Pyongyang and Kim Il-Sung square, the heart of its communist movement and the 16th largest city square in the world. – At time of posting in Pyongyang, it was 82.4 [...]
Tags: 1968, 1984, crossing the street in north korean, crossing the street in pyongyang, dprk, firing a gun in north korea, getting in trouble in north korea, juche idea, killing a pheasant, kim il-sung, kim il-sung square, memorial to the korean worker's party, north korea, north korean film, north korean movie set, north korean movie studio, north korean shooting range, pueblo incident, pyongyang, s.s. pueblo, shooting a gun in north korea, spy ship, tower of the juche idea, u.s.s.pueblo, uss pueblo
Posted in Mythbusters, North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path | 5 Comments »
Saturday, August 13th, 2011
Now playing: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Hand Over Bruise Well, I just got into the most isolated country in the world without a hitch and I’ll be coming out with a lot of stories. There’s a lot of material to go over in terms of what I’ve seen in the last 4 days. I’ll [...]
Tags: 5th floor, 5th floor of the yanggakdo hotel, american in north korea, americans in dprk, americans in north korea, entering north korea, fifth floor, fifth floor of the yanggakdo hotel, getting into north korea, getting into north korea as a foreigner, getting into north korea as an american, north korea, north korea tourism, pyongyang, u.s. citizen in north korea, visiting north korea, visiting north korea as a foreigner, visiting north korea as american, visiting north korea as an american, what is on the 5th floor of the yanggakdo hotel, yanggado hotel, yanggakdo hotel 5th floor, young pioneer tours
Posted in How Did You Do That?, Let me tell you a Story..., Mythbusters, North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come | 10 Comments »
Saturday, August 6th, 2011
I had to wait until I got out of Myanmar to post this without getting prematurely deported or thrown in jail. I got a small rush writing this while still in the country, but I didn’t want to take my chances before leaving Myanmar for good (as if posting this in China or North Korea [...]
Tags: aung san suu kyi, aung suu kyi, authoritarian control, big brother, george orwell, government, house arrest, military junta, Myanmar, propaganda, propoganda, regime, state-controlled media, the lady, voldemort
Posted in Let me tell you a Story..., Myanmar, Mythbusters, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Travel Warnings, Way Way Off the Beaten Path | 3 Comments »
