We planned a big exploration day for the grandsons in Chiang Mai with fabulous temple visits followed by an amazing immersion with elephants. AP Good Travel was our guide for this trip and we can’t recommend them highly enough!. We used them previously in 2019. Our first stop…
Chiang Mai was one our our prime furniture/accessory/antique sourcing areas for many years when Marla and I had our business. Only an hour flight north of hyperactive Bangkok, it has an unique old city charm with walls and moats and hundreds of beautiful and often elaborate Buddhist temples…
Our grandsons loved the vibrancy and energy of Bangkok. The city of Bangkok ranks 12th in the world with 11,000,000 population. We explored and shopped at fascinating and trendy shopping centers as well as gigantic weekend markets. The photo above was taken from our hotel room terrace showing…
The nice thing about Bangkok hotels on the Chao Phraya River is that their boats take you places, most importantly, Central Pier (Sathorn), where you can walk to the Saphan Taksin station for the air conditioned BTS Skytrain close by. Our hotel boat was running about every 20 minutes so…
Our first day touring in Bangkok included a canal tour on a long-tail boat. Bangkok is often called the “Venice of the East” because of it’s many klongs, or canals, which crisscross the city. There are about 1680 canals of various sizes in this amazing…
Marla and I took our grandsons Vaughan (18) and Owen (15) to Southeast Asia for a fabulous adventure last July. We took our oldest grandsons on a similar trip in 2019. Thailand was our first destination, an area we new well from both business and personal trips beginning in 1995…
I have loved crystals and mineral specimens since I was a small boy. I still have my first book on rocks from my mother. My mom and grandmother took me to interesting locales in northern California looking for fascinating specimens. Their enthusiasm for the outdoors really helped ignite my interest…
If you love cycling or if you just love looking at the fabulously beautiful French countryside (like my mother used to do), you’ve probably watched the Tour de France. The brand new Netflix documentary, “Tour de France: Unchained”, is a big surprise for me. The 8…
My favorite city is hurting and could use some love and special care. Drugs and the homeless continue to be a gargantuan problem to solve. Many national retailers have departed downtown diminishing some of the vitality. Prices are atrocious for both rentals and for retail. Some of the press ( especially…
A friend of ours who absolutely loves to travel and takes about 6 overseas trips a year recently asked if I wanted to join him on a Butterfield & Robinson cycling tour of Tuscany. I have cycled in Tuscany twice before and remember how difficult the riding was, but also…