The coverage of everybody’s favorite new Asian baseball team, the Republic of Indonesia, is ramping up. After winning Division 2 of the Asian Cup qualifying round in Bangkok last week RI is looking ahead to July 27-29 when it will face-off against Thailand, the Philippines and host Japan in lovely Narita, with the winner advancing to [...]

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Interesting BBC report on South Korea’s Yangyang International Airport, which is located in Yangyang County in Gangwon Province. Ostensibly the airport is supposed to serve the “major” cities of Sokcho and Gangneung, but, um, no one lives there (relative to other Korean cities), and those who do live there, don’t travel much, so the place [...]

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Seriously folks, what the hell is going on over there? It’s been nearly a decade since I’d been to LAX, but what an utter sh*thole the place has turned into.
For better or for worse, I think living in Korea has made me more conscious of public perceptions and how they might affect the world at [...]

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I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers — The Story of Success, after having it recommended to me by a couple of people. I liked The Tipping Point a great deal, but am finding the main premise of Outliers — the idea that both great skill and random events are what create success [...]

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One of my favorite travel memories was a trip to Vietnam I took with my wife.  We went to the beach one day in a city called Phan Thiet, and for kicks we brought along a baseball and a couple of mitts.  We were tossing the ball around, and after a while a few locals [...]

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S.H.E., Taiwan’s most popular singing group and purveyors of the the world’s most unlistenable music, arrived safely in the Taoyuan airport in Taiwan after being detained for hours in Beijing due to a bomb threat. The plane had already begun its runway approach when it was called back to the terminal for inspection.
The group’s luggage [...]

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ESPN’s Enrique Rojas has an informative report on recent Cuban defectors Yadel Marti and Yasser Gomez. According to Rojas, the two
“left the island and are in an unknown location before attempting to reach the Dominican Republic to seek an MLB career”….Players’ relatives and friends in Cuba confirmed their departure, without disclosing details of the [...]

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I have an article in the December issue of Seoul (pdf version here) a travel and culture magazine published here in Korea and edited by Robert Koehler of Marmot’s Hole fame. The piece was for the Weekend Traveler section and is about the Cheongdo Wine Tunnel, which is basically a wine cellar built into an abandoned [...]

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Had the pleasure of attending the Guang Hai Cup (or “CARE” cup) in Taitung over the past weekend. It featured eight of Taiwan’s major high school programs, teams of primarily aboriginal kids from the East coast of Taiwan. Eastern Taiwan is a terrestrial paradise, a far departure from the smog, noise, pollution, [...]

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In Nigeria
Among the programmes slated for early next year is meeting with the America Ambassador in Nigeria.
“That will be a good starting point for us because America is the home of baseball and the meeting with the Ambassador will open doors for us to reach other America companies in Nigeria”, explains Jani Mohammed who is [...]

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Currently sitting in Newark airport during a 6 hour delay awaiting return to Taiwan from the Perfect Game USA tournament in Jupiter, Florida, a 5-day overwhelming extravaganza featuring top high school prospects from the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Strictly for the hard core, the tournament featured games from 8:00 AM until 10:30 PM on [...]

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I guess I should include some disclosure here. I grew up in California, but I have two uncles that have lived in Las Vegas most of my life. So as a kid I went to Vegas often. Not to the point of where it was a second home — I doubt anyone can truly [...]

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Over the weekend I wrote a  piece  for the  travel and culture magazine  Seoul about Busan.  One of the things I wanted to include was an Anchang Village, a fairly remote place in the mountains. If you’ve ever been to Busan you know it’s something like a city dropped into a mountain range by the [...]

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Strike up the band. Construction of Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel has resumed.  
Famine? What famine? Who needs a famine when you’ve got the world’s greatest architect building the world’s greatest hotel that will surely contain the world’s greatest buffet.
Table for 2 million kind sir!
From Marmot’s Hole:
According to Yonhap News, multiple sources have confirmed that construction work [...]

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Excuse me while I completely rip into someone who’s likely going through a tough time, but I’m guessing any native English-speaker living abroad or doing international business travelling, that  has had to rely on the shoddy, elitist,  CNN International for any semblance of TV news in English —  is familiar with this smarmy twerp:

I’ve disliked [...]

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I recently came across Nine Bo Jacksons, a good fantasy baseball site with one of the better names I’ve ever come across.
Apparently he’s just finishing up school, and won’t begin a teaching job until the fall. As he puts it, “What would any normal person do if they had 2 and a half months off [...]

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You are lounging in a warm plunge pool in the garden of a private villa while listening to “The Goldberg Variations.” Your robe and slippers are on the floor where you dropped them, right near the giant, pillow-mounded platform bed. You are thinking about having a brie omelet for breakfast, then a spa foot massage [...]

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People are under the impression that it’s impossible to go to North Korea, but even for Americans, there are ways. The New York Times has a small travel piece that includes the details on going.
The tricky part is the price.

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