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Global warming is happening every day. I happened to witness it firsthand during our recent visit to Svalbard.

The city of Hue is located approximately in the middle of Vietnam and was the seat of royal power from the 19th and into the 20th centuries.  There were thirteen kings who reigned from Hue.  Many of the ancient structures were destroyed during the Vietnam-American War, which have since been restored.  The photos show scenes from the Imperial Palace as well as the three hundred-year-old Buddhist pagoda.

Welcome Blog Readers Old and New

My blogs are intended to share my international travel experiences for readers who might never visit the places I describe. I try to include historical, political, and cultural observations when I am able to do so without too much background research. Photos are included in the associated gallery.

Welcome to a quick visual tour of Abu Dhabi. All of the photos below were taken in the course of a two hour bus tour of downtown Abu Dhabi, which is the capital of the seven member confederation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Ayutthaya lies about a two hour's drive north of Bangkok.  It was Thailand's capital for approximately four hundred years, founded in 1351.  It was burned by Burmese invaders in 1767, which resulted in its abandonment and the establishment of Bangkok which remains Thailand's current capital.  

Below is one of the oldest Stupas, built in the 14th century, in the same era as the construction of Cambodia's Angkor Wat, the world's largest UNESCO world heritage site.  Stupas are Buddhist cylindrical structures containing the ashes, bones, or remains of religious figures, and are intended to function as pilgrimage sites for worship and meditation.

Welcome again to India: Above, two views of the Gateway to India  India assaults the senses and the intellect. The smells, the sounds, the crowds, the traffic, all these constant phenomena reinforce the necessity to live consciously . . .

Shinto is Japan's "native" religion, dating back at least two thousand years.  The Shinto temples in Kyoto date from the eighth century, when Kyoto was the most powerful city in Japan.