Author: melmalinowski
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Myanmar (Burma) December 2017
My next trip is a short excursion to Myanmar (Burma), to the northeast of Thailand. About the size of France, it has about 52 million people, mostly Buddhists. I will begin in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), and then spend Christmas week on the beach to the northwest on the Bay of Bengal. I am saving the…
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Dengue fever December 2017
One of the risks of being a global nomad is exposure to illnesses not common at home. I’ve been to 73 countries now in my life, and managed to avoid malaria and other serious tropical illnesses–until recently. I am in recovery from an episode of dengue fever now. One of my readers asked that I…
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Sri Lanka December 2017
My next destination is Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon). Judy and I had been south of there, in the Maldive Islands, and north of there in Central and North India, but somehow never got around to visiting. Sri Lanka is a smallish island country, about 150 miles x 270 miles, with a population of…
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Philippine Islands November 2017
Judy and I had missed out on the Philippines, perhaps because it was not on the main United Airlines routes. So now I will go spend about 3 weeks here, visiting just two areas: Manila and a world-class snorkeling and diving area to the south near Cebu, Dumaguete and Siquijor Island. Manila is reputed to…
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Okinawa, Japan November 2017
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I’ve arrived in the most southerly islands of Japan now, Okinawa, about 400 miles south of Kagoshima. Okinawa had a rather peaceful local populous that had somehow avoided the civil war years that Japan had endured. That ended when Japan invaded in the 1600s and easily conquered the islands. It bears some similarity to Hawai’i,…