Archive for June, 2006
Rice Wine in a Can
Found this in KoreaTown in Bangkok
Aung San Suu Kyi’s Birthday
A few years back, I think it was June of 2001, I was in Rangoon with two other friends. Curious about life in Rangoon we were wandering in the streets away from the tourist places. We ended up in a pleasant looking neighbourhood .We were surprised at the number of houses with dish antennas on top (most Burmese then did not have access to cable TV and foreign satellite channels) and we guessed probably those houses belonged to the generals. We encountered a street that looked desolated. Just as we entered in, we heard shouting from the side. There were a couple of soldiers who motioned us to turn back. They never offered any explanation and from their tone it did not look like they would take our questioning them lightly. We turned around. Later I checked with some local friends and the street turned out to be the way leading to Ang San Suu Kyi’s house at University Avenue (where she was then and still is under house arrest). The day did not turn out too bad, the path we took after the soldiers intervention lead us to the tomb of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor of India.
Link to a post at the Global Voices Online site to mark the brave lady’s birthday.
Technorati Tags: myanmar,
South Korean Rock Show in North Korea
This is South Korean rock group Shinhwa. They are very popular in South Korea and also in China and some South East Asian countries.
These screen grabs are from a video of a concert held in North Korea.
I couldn’t believe that North Korea allowed such seemingly western influenced band to play in front of North Koreans. The caption does say that the show was held in Pyongyang.
Occasionally the video zooms into the well dressed and sober audience. The audience reaction is priceless.
The women are all dressed in traditional hanbok and most of the faces look as if they don’t approve of such music.
The woman in the left seems interested while the women on the right is probably glad that she didn’t bring her kids along.
Check out the video at the GW North Korea Blog
Technorati Tags: shinhwa
Vegetable shopping on the Mekong
Down here in Vietnam not far from Cambodian border you can go vegetable shopping on the river.
From far you can see these boats and a pole rising up with vegetables hung on them.
The pole usually displays the vegetables that the seller has in stock.
Some of the vegetable sellers live on the river in their boats.
While we were looking for vegetables, this vegetable seller was more interested in chicken.