nomad4ever

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

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

Volcanoes are a fascinating species. They are usually huge and quiet and suddenly can become very grumpy. That’s when they start to spit out smoke and ashes. But when they really are in a bad mood – all hell can break lose.

There were plenty of Volcano warnings recently in Indonesia, with Mount Kelut on Java getting the most media attention. He is in a densely populated area and the latest breakout was only as recent as 1990. Over the years Mount Kelut has claimed more than 15.000 lifes. Just yesterday when the Volcano Alert Status for Mount Kelut was downgraded from ‘breaking out any time’ to ‘breakout likely’; another Volcano spoke out once again with a big roar:

written by Chris

The Jakarta Post published today an article on how Blogs and the Internet can help to promote Bali as a travel destination. It shed some light as well on the positive and negative effects of Online Media as Journalists, Blog Experts and Amateur Bloggers, who happen to live in Bali, were interviewed.

Surprisingly I was asked as well by Prodita Sabarini of The Jakarta Post a few days ago, if she could interview me about my view and experiences on the subject. Of course I felt honored and agreed:

written by Chris

I wanted to take the chance to hand out a bit of link love and introduce the sites of 2 Bloggers in Bali, who I know personally:

Hileud is a young and talented Sundanese woman, who writes in both English and Bahasa Indonesia. She is very good at using WordPress and besides her great content is constantly updating and fine-tuning her site.

Too bad that my Indonesian isn’t that good yet; because there are persistent rumors that plenty of young Indonesian males were falling in love with Hileud just by reading her own poems and thoughts on her site. Isn’t that truly magic?

written by Chris

Some people dream of flying to the Moon. Others dream to retire early. Other humans would give an arm and a leg, if they could fulfill their dream of Swimming with wild Dolphins.

While at least the first dream is quite unlikely, if you are not happen to be Charles Simonyi, or any other Billionaire Employee or Entrepreneur – or live and breathe rocket fuel and work for NASA, ESA or the Russian Space Agency – the other mentioned Dreams are easier to fulfill:

If you happen to be in Indonesia, there are interesting locations to spot Dolphins in their natural habitat or even swim with them in a salt-water pool.

written by Chris