The tables sometimes were only a foot off the floor, and a woven mat of bamboo was where you sat. Sometimes there were no tables, just cloth. There was one meal that was on the roof of an unfinished 4 story building, where the rebar was sprouting out of the blocks threatening to impale unwary […]
We drove to the top of a dusty ridge, golden and red from oxidized mineral deposits in the ground, crumbling walls of sand and stone that looked like cheap stale cake, and in the walls of the cliffs you could see bones. Here, there are no roads, no parking lots, just suggested routes in the […]
Some of the sand piles reached upwards of 300 metres high. They say the name of this desert means “you can get in, but you can’t get out,” like some Central Asian Hotel California. The Taklamakan, the world’s second largest shifting sands desert, the backdoor of the Tibetan plateau. Just north of the desert is […]
We whirled by and I almost missed him. I had seen him two weeks earlier in some other valley on some other stretch of road, just barely on the pavement. The drive from Paro to Thimpu used to take 2.5 hours. It was down a valley to a confluence and then up the other waterway, […]
Welcome back to WPIG the pig, a voice of reason in the world of travel. This episode: a conversation between two trip planners on a mutual love for Asia. This is a ramble and a dive into travel memories and mental landscapes, and if you have ever wanted to meander the streets of Hanoi or […]
An early embedded memory for me is the black and white haze of the 1934 film Babes in Toyland. It aired often during the holidays on various channels. Not that there were many channels. In those days, in our house, we had 3, and that weird UHF channel thing that had the clicks and lots […]
Kathmandu! Say it out loud. Feel it roll and fall out of one’s mouth like a pebble down some glacial river. The sounds of named things in Nepal; Dwarika’s, Phaplu, Lo Manthang. I can’t stop saying these words, whispering them to myself in a jet lagged state, over and over like a madman tourist. I […]
In a few very bumpy turns in the road up from Pokhara, languages and religions shift, landscapes morph, weather patterns evolve, and then you are in a wee corner of the geopolitical map of Nepal called Mustang, but you have entered a larger cultural region that stretches across Tibet and Xinjiang all the way to […]
We had finished dinner and the rain was setting in when I decided to put on my biking kit and head up the mountain pass. The valley I was in, the Phobjikha Valley, at 10,000 feet, is a sanctuary for the Black neck crane, a medium-sized crane in Asia that breeds on the Tibetan Plateau […]
The Pearl River Delta, in the early 2000’s, was a place of heavy industry, pollution, run off, waste and ruin. It was rubble and rebar. Home to factories like Yue Yuen (a company that produces the majority of the shoes for Nike, Crocs, Adidas, Reebok, Asics, New Balance, Puma, Timberland and Rockport) and Samsung, the […]
This week, Cambodia, the land of funk, rhythm, blues, and rock. That’s right, this slice of southeast Asia is steeped in the cult of rock and let me tell you there are some gems to look out for. Anthony Weersing and Tyler Dillon have put their collective minds together to bring you an hour of […]
As a kid growing up in the South, you hear a lot about the Civil War. I was told stories of Generals, of Robert E Lee, a well rehearsed account of what happened, from one particular point of view, the white south. I was seldom taught the history outside of this perspective, it was either […]
The drive from the new Chengis Khann International Airport to city center in Ulaanbaatar is 55 km. Initial planning for the airport was done in 2006 with a US$385 million 40-year loan agreement signed between the Government of Mongolia and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. It was built and opened on the 4th of […]
This week, a conversation with Joe Perez, Trufflepig’s new Operations Manager. Previous to the travel business, Joe worked on a number of ships with the Merchant Marines. He describes a different pace of life in international waters: days are counted differently, maps become faulty and you quickly realize there is a difference between Magnetic North […]
There was a time period at the end of the 70’s, when rock and roll belched up 15 minute ballads sticky with hairspray, and the efficiency of a 2-4 beat and counterculture got lost in the woods and egos of stadium shows. We ended up with “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”. Fortunately punk rock and […]
Drop it like it’s hot, peoples – pick up them vibes, grab a wishbone, call a friend and celebrate thanks. We figured we could all use the funk to soak up some of that gravy. Here are 45 minutes of funk, rock, soul, jazz, all loosely based on the theme of that holiday we all […]