nick’s (n)-line life

Happy Songkran everyone! สวัสดีปีใหม่ Songkran (สง�?รานต์) is the New Year festival celebrated in Thailand & Laos as well as, less ostentatiously, in Burma and Cambodia. In Thailand (and increasingly in Laos) the festival is marked by massive public water fights. Funnily enough, the water fights originally grew from people "sprinkling" water on each [...]

My college were kind enough to award me a travel grant over the summer.Following my return, the College asked me to produce a written report of my summer and I thought I’d post a copy here for general interest: Travel Grant Report (PDF format)
Photos From the Summer

Hong Kong

China

Northern Laos

Luang Prabang

Central Laos

Cambodia, General

Housebuilding Laos

Thailand

[not all [...]

[pre-dated entry]
Kunming is cold. Not cold like England, admittedly but still cold. If England was an ice cube pressed against the back of your neck then Kunming would be a wet flannel to the forehead. Trust me, after the turbo-charged sauna that is Canton province this is cold enough to notice! Enough that I spent [...]

This post has been written in the form of a response to a post which appeared in An American in South East Asia.
I have tried to avoid going over old points, as far as possible, and to make sure that I focus on the criticism of my post rather than going over the substantive issues [...]

“rwillmsen: On Spitting and Staring” (via the Peking Duck) witty and amusing commentary on spitting in the mainland. The article is a very good read (but unlikely to appeal to spitting sympathisers :) )
Once, while with a Chinese friend in Shanghai, I spat out some gum towards a bin and missed (oops!). The friend then [...]

2nd updated: 19 June ‘05, new links added

Image courtesy of the Guardian Unlimited. More images from the BBC

Kindergarten classes from an international school in Cambodia have been taken hostage by armed gangs, the BBC reports
Armed men storm Cambodia school
Gunmen have taken several dozen people hostage at an international school in north-western Cambodia, police say.
Six men [...]

A rather distressing story about the ecological and archaeological damage that is taking place in Burma.

But today some of the world’s leading experts have accused Burma’s military regime of waging “archaeological blitzkrieg” against the legendary Buddhist treasures of Pagan.
“They’re ruining it,” said Richard Engelhardt, regional advisor for the UN’s cultural arm, Unesco.
[...]
I went to survey [...]