Category Archives: Travel

Where you from? Part 1

NOTE FOR READERS: I had the good fortune to travel to Vietnam some 5 or 6 years ago. This article, in two parts, was written then and published somewhere that I cannot now recall. I am sharing it here pretty much as it was written up then and as such some things mentioned are already a part of history. Nevertheless the article is overall as relevant today as it was then. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Paradise by any other name …

Many years ago, in a conversation at an international tourism convention, a Sri Lankan delegate remarked passionately, ‘you have to be born lucky to be born in Sri Lanka.’ The true meaning of this assertion becomes clear to you, within a day of your arrival on this teardrop island south of the Indian subcontinent massif. Sri Lanka by another name could well be called Paradise.

The oldest living city in the world

I visited Syria in 2011 with my family. It was a peaceful, safe and friendly country. To our experience the people were by and large happy and contended, even if the regime by Western reckoning was authoritarian. How much has happened since then. An ancient and beautiful country has been destroyed by international vested interests who created, financed and armed a rebel army to overthrow the government.
In this section, I share with you an article that I had written back then on returning from Syria. I cannot recall with certainty if it was published in some newspaper. Probably was.