nomad4ever

Today is the 5th anniversary of the Bali Bombing in 2002, where 202 people got killed. It was a sneaky attack, with a suicide bomber storming into the Paddy’s Club in Kuta, setting off his TNT-filled vest, devastating the Club. The survivors who made it to the outside weren’t better off:

Outside was a parked Van, filled with TNT and other explosives (fertilizer), which detonated just a short time after the first bomb. 164 foreigners and 38 Indonesians, who were in Paddy’s Club, the opposite Sari Club, or were simply walking along the road – were either killed instantly or died from injuries, received during those deadly blasts, still days and weeks later.

written by Chris

nomad4ever.com reached the 100.000 Visitors mark today! I want to thank all my Readers for their Interest, Comments and Support over the last 11 months! You fantastic people bring this Place alive!

I’m very happy that so many people are interested in this small Niche of Travel & Lifestyle and hope you guys continue to come back, comment heavily, sending me e-mails, criticism and suggestions.

Okay, it’s about time to look back how it all started and to evaluate some Statistics, Demographics, Developments and other Data:

written by Chris

I usually don’t use Money Changers at all. Other than the ones at Singapore’s Changi Airport or big, official Banks with receipts and all I just don’t trust them. It’s what you read and hear, that most of the time people get cheated or aren’t paid the agreed rates or simply have less money at the end, then what they bargained for. The next episode only confirmed those worries:

Over the last 3 weeks we had some visitors from Germany and Singapore. Driving around the Island it became almost inevitable that someone had to change their cash EURO oder Singapore Dollar into the local currency Rupiah.

written by Chris

When Adolf Hitler chose the Swastika Symbol for his National Socialist German Workers Party, better known as NSDAP or the Nazi party, he was actually already a failed Politician. He was involved in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch (Coup) of 1923, but got arrested 3 days later and had to spend 8 months in jail.

There he came up with his ‘infamous’ book “Mein Kampf”, in which he laid out his racist agenda, to eradicate most if not all of the Jews, other ‘Races’, like the Sinti and Roma ‘Gypsies’ and other inconvenient people. He formulated his plans to conquer most parts of Europe to get more ‘living space’ or ‘Lebensraum’ for the German Volk.

written by Chris

Wanted to share with you quickly some interesting reads I found recently on the web:

The Case For De-Cluttering Your Life Right Now

Over at Brave New Traveler, which always has great, original and inspiring write-ups about travel in the 21st century, Jenn DiPiazza wrote a great article about the ‘hoarding and gatherers instinct’, which is still somehow in most of us. The thing is that we collect more and more ‘stuff’ during our life, which makes us more ‘im-mobile’ and fixed to a certain location. You amass a lot of useless things, waste plenty of money and end up needing more and more space for it.

written by Chris

On the Philippine Island of Bohol, just South of Cebu in the Central Visayas, there is a ‘Magical Place on Earth’. An Area of low, conical and dome-shaped hills, known as the Chocolate Hills. They are an unusual geological formation which is composed of almost 1.300 perfectly cone-shaped hills of various sizes (30-120 meters high), spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometers.

These Hills are covered with a carpet of rough grasses that are green when it rains but turn brown during the dry season, between February and May – hence, the name. They look so perfectly shaped that one can easily get the idea, that they are man-made.

written by Chris

When I was going to Singapore for my bi-annual Visa Run last week, I brought my Laptop with me, because it showed occasionally some flickery display. Sometimes white colours would turn into green light shining through the LCD, pretty strange behavior. Looked like a cable inside the thing was loose or not properly installed. No problem, I thought – still warranty. Down at the Asus Service Center in ‘The Adelphi’, right next to Funan IT Mall, I unsuccessfully tried to to reproduce the Error for the Service Staff to see – when disaster stroke.

written by Chris

Asian women inspired the fantasies of men around the world for ages. In recent times you can see more and more Asian actresses like Lucy Liu, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh on the big screen as well; as Hollywood got aware of their obvious features and attraction to the male population of this planet.

That wasn’t always the case in the western hemisphere.

Let’s go R&R!

Before the American GI’s ‘erected’ their first R&R (Rest & Relaxation) camps in Philippines during and after WWII or in Thailand during the Vietnam war, this part of the world sparsely saw more than a few naughty Europeans or Americans. Reports during the old Colonial Times rarely mention this topic at all. This of course all changed back then and more.

written by Chris