nomad4ever

The year is almost over and thanks to your continuous support – it was an exciting and successful year, which saw phenomenal growth for nomad4ever.com.

Checking over at problogger.com, I noticed an interesting list of his best articles in 2007, copyblogger.com has a similar one.

I liked the idea and simply ‘copyblogged’ it, so much about this short introduction and the intention for this article.

Here is the wrap-up of the monthly highlights of Nomad4ever.com in 2007; the posts which attracted the most readers and sparked a lot of comments from you guys:

written by Chris

As the election booths were closed earlier today following the first election after the Coup of the Thai Military – the smoke is slowly starting to clear up. It looks now like the Allies of then deposed former PM Thaksin Shinawatra are headed for a victory.

This would come as a double blow to the Military who executed the ‘bloodless Coup’ accusing Thaksin of Corruption and robbing money from the people. They basically took over the country, when the PM was on a business trip in Europe to meet with other leaders.

Seems that the people have a different opinion:

written by Chris

As mentioned earlier – people around the world love and crave Asian food. I’m not talking about your standard Chinese Restaurant. There is more to experience and taste out there. Let’s start to introduce some of the many delicious dishes you can find around this vast region.

Where to begin?

As I’m currently residing in Bali, Indonesia – naturally I have to start with food from Indonesia. Indonesia has a wide variety of tribes, religions, cultures and cuisines. The most dominant food you can find at almost every corner, street or restaurant is Javanese food – originally from Java – and for good reasons:

written by Chris

Currently the 12th UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, a follow-up meeting of world leaders to decide on a successor agenda for the Kyoto Protocol (which was ratified by 172 countries but expires in 2012), is receiving a lot of media coverage.

Kyoto was the first international treaty to pledge to legally-binding commitments to reduce emissions of 6 categories of greenhouse gases in a 6-year timeframe.

As more and more countries realize that Global Warming is a reality and not something out of a science fiction movie, it’s interesting to examine some current facts and figures:

written by Chris

Our friend Anthony Bourdain is surely a unique character. He is an honest and down-to earth guy – fully respectful of other cultures or traditions – yet he speaks out his mind if something is horrible or brackish.

They don’t call him “Rogue Chef” for nothing.

And he is practically a living Nomad. He enjoys to travel around the world, trying out new foods and shooting a travel show, compared to standing in a kitchen 14 hours a day, 110 degrees, making 300 meals.

Simpatico!

written by Chris

Inspired by an idea of Mon earlier on this post, I searched the net far and wide to find the most common stereotypes about Nationalities.

Generalizations about cultures or nationalities can be a source of pride, anger or simply bad jokes. Some people say that in all stereotype there is some basis in reality, as they don’t develop in vacuum.

To give a more serious definition: “National Stereotype is a system of culture-specific beliefs connected with the nationality of a person. This system includes beliefs concerning those properties of human beings that may vary across nations, such as appearance, language, food, habits, psychological traits, attitudes, values etc.”

written by Chris

As it wasn’t enough that Sumatra was horribly affected by the Tsunami of Christmas 2004 – with more than 150.000 people perished around Aceh alone – things could get bad again.

While the reconstruction of the region from the devastating effects just recently came close to completion, even the separatist rebels in Aceh made their peace with the central government in the aftermath of the Tsunami – culminating with a former rebel becoming the governor of Aceh.

So much about the good news.

What’s about to go wrong this time?

written by Chris

Asia is a melting pot of different cultures, religions and values. Ever since Marco Polo made his way to this part of the world, people had their own ideas, misconceptions or prejudices without even knowing some basic facts first hand.

Some of those prevail even today, especially about mixed relationships.

With this I mean relationships between Asian and Caucasian women or men.

Everyone heard those kind of stories of bald, old, fat foreign men flocking to Asia and soon be seen hand-in-hand with an exotic beauty. Sooner than later they will buy a house and a pickup truck for their ‘new-found family’. A bit later they are back were they were before – just stripped of their money and other belongings. Need an example?

written by Chris