Results tagged “Asia” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Only a few days remain in National Geographic Magazine's International Photo Contest. Here's a standout from this week's batch of entries, taken by Nancy Dinh.

This photo reflects the communal sense of Vietnamese culture, where mother, father, and child sleep together on a mattress close to the ground, enveloped in a single large mosquito net in a room dedicated to nocturnal sleep and daytime playing. During the daytime, the child is gatekeeper.

For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine's site. The International Photo Contest ends October 31st, so submit your favorite images in the People, Places, and Nature categories now.

When I was three years old, I made my first trip to the Philippines where my family is from and still resides today. The geometrically stunning rice terraces and lakeside volcanoes paint a landscape bound to awe anyone who's lucky enough to get a glimpse of it. But for me it's always been the sea, that great expanse of water and marine life surrounding the islands, which even twenty years after my first visit, still bears a spellbinding magnificence unmatched by anything else I've encountered in my travels. So when Philippine President Gloria Arroyo visited National Geographic headquarters last week to discuss the Coral Triangle Initiative, it alarmed me to think that this natural beauty could ever be in jeopardy.

The 2.3 million square miles of the Coral Triangle, which includes the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, is home to more than 75% of the world's known species of coral, 3,000 species of fish, six of the world's seven species of sea turtle, as well as whales, dolphins and coelacanths, a fish believed to predate dinosaurs. But the vanishing reefs could face peril if we fail to sustain them. 

Kathmandu, Nepal -- Tala Katner awes me. Her blog about watching Hindu death rites with burning corpses and floating the ashes down the Bagmati River made me glad I dodged the experience that day. We were both in the area at the same time, but had very different experiences, which helps explain why Kathmandu continues to be a mythic destination for anybody who visits.
 
First, we did a fly-by of Everest. Then we explored two of the seven UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley: 14th-century Bhaktapur, a car-free, Hindu temple town where people still live traditionally, and the 15th-century Buddhist stupa at Bodhnath, a center of Tibetan life here. Finally, we kicked back with live jazz at the Cafe New Orleans in Patan. (Which, by the way, is a few blocks from a third UNESCO site.)
 
This was a meandering day, not a dash, and three of the most extraordinary sights in the world were affordable. Here's how:

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

There's a reason Thailand has been near the top of the list of favorite places to visit by travelers worldwide over the last few decades. Not only is the scenery some of the most striking on Earth - the culture, history, food, and friendly people all combine to offer a diversity of unique and enriching experiences. Like most of Southeast Asia, Thailand's affordability seems to set it apart from other exotic destinations. The key to revealing its splendor, however, required some preparation, or in our case, a good sense of improvisation once you get there. Most importantly, it required setting priorities.  

Unless you have more than a couple of weeks to explore the country, which most Americans don't seem to have, you shouldn't expect to see all that Thailand has to offer. Since we had sixteen days, we thought we could take in a little bit of everything. As we headed for the airport on our final day after touring Bangkok's Grand Palace and Wat Pho (easily one of the highlights of our trip and a "must see" for anyone visiting the country), we seemed to have visited everywhere we possibly could, but at a price: we were exhausted!

The islands to the south, as I reported in my last blog post, can either be a party paradise or rejuvenating retreat - normally not a lot of chance for error there as long as you don't mix up the two. From Bangkok up north, however, the options become more numerous, and the distances between them far greater. At a friend's recommendation, we hired a driver to take us from Bangkok up to Chiang Mai and beyond - into the mountainous northern region of the country where they offer elephant treks, an ideal adventure for the boys. We figured this was a good idea because it 1) kept us off of another plane; 2) was less expensive; 3) allowed us to see more of the country; and 4) gave us access to a set of wheels. There were also hill tribes to visit, including those with women wearing long metal coils around their necks. There were temples to see, history to absorb, restaurants to sample and shopping to be done. Did I mention relaxing or home schooling?