I have a ton of blogs in my feed reader (around 110), so only a third are actually travel related. One such unrelated blog is the famous Boing Boing. A few days ago they reported that the academy award-winning documentary A Story of Healing has been released under a creative commons license. I had never heard of it before then. If the story hadn’t featured a woman in a non quai thao (traditional hat), I would have probably skipped it.
In 1997, a Dewey-Obenchain film crew accompanied an Interplast volunteer surgical team to An Giang province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The filmmakers donated their services to document the team’s experiences and produce “A Story of Healing,” which earned the 1997 Academy Award for best documentary, short subject. The 28-minute film is followed by a short epilogue (after the credits) which follows-up on two patients 16 months after their surgeries.
And with that I bring you A Story of Healing.
Filed under Timen Talks, Asia, Vietnam.
Before Ian asked me to be a judge in his 5 Hilarious Travel Photos contest, I was planning on entering myself. But now I’m a judge, so I obviously can’t win. But when I take a look at the current entries, I realize that I could have never won in the first place! The other entries are hilarious!
All that said, I’m just going to post my pictures anyway. Here you go, my five funny travel pictures.
Imagine: you just arrived in Asia for the first time in your life, and you decide to go to Chinatown (of all places) and see what’s there. I don’t think I saw a “normal” food or beverage there! Endless where the stalls selling pig noses, dog tails, and furry fruits. Whole stalls devoted to selling dried squid! Like we’re going to eat that! Yeah, right! Six weeks later I had tried worse things (rice wine where monkey testicles were marinating in, for instance). Click here to keep reading…
Filed under Timen Talks.
It all started with an idea to create a network of quality travel blogs that are independent from third party influences. It was a reaction to the excellent National Geographic Traveler article by Christopher Elliott on whether one can trust travel blogs.
Today I’m officially launching the Trusted Travel Blogs Network. Go check out the website. Download the single page policy PDF. And if you have or know of a travel blog that you would like to see on the network, shoot me a nomination and I’ll forward the first batch to the panel of friendly judges that will take the nomination into consideration.
If you have any questions regarding the network, do contact me and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. You can do this either by getting my email address from the network’s policy PDF, via the contact page, or by leaving a comment on this post.
With a little luck, in the next few months the Trusted Travel Blogs Network will grow into something useful to readers. It’s all up to you as travesphere community members! 
Filed under Trusted Network Updates.
Poland has an extremely interesting history. It’s played roles in many of the major happenings of the last century and before. There are countless places you can visit that educate and mesmerize visitors about this history. History here, history there, history everywhere. Nice, but sometimes it can become too much. That’s why it’s so great that Poland also has something that you can visit that is less history-laden: the Tatras mountain region in the south.
There are two popular ways to visit this amazingly beautiful stretch of mountains. One way is to check-in to one of the various hotels at the foot of the mountains and do day hikes into the mountains. There are many small towns that have many little hostels and more elaborate hotels that cater to various needs and budgets. The second, more adventurous, option is to go backpacking and stay in the mountain hostels along the road.
That’s what I did a two summers ago. It was great. Click here to keep reading…
Filed under Explore, Poland, Europe.
