500 Amazing Pictures of Southeast Asia

by Willy Volk on

Timen Swijtink recently launched an excellent website called in my All Stars, a site dedicated to exploring “experience traveling.”

During the summer of 2006, Swijtink spent 10 weeks “experience traveling” through Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Over the past 2 months, he’s been sorting through the 6000 photos he took and assembling them into a book. Unfortunately, he only printed 3 copies of the book — one for his mom; one for showing people; and one for posterity. For the rest of us, Swijtink has made his book available for free in PDF format.

Swijtink’s book is an excellent cultural immersion in a part of the world that’s still somewhat mysterious. Filled with his 500 best images of people, sunsets, street vendors, cityscapes, and vistas, the book is an extraordinary look at a part of the world many people have yet to visit. I highly recommend downloading and looking through the book. It’s incredible.

Planning a Trip Using Google Books

by Willy Volk on

Google Book Search has begun to animate the information found in books by organizing the locations mentioned in them on Google Maps. Complemented by snippets of text from the book, Book Search links to the actual pages where the locations are mentioned. For example, in David Foster Wallace’s excellent Girl With Curious Hair you can see that he seems to have fondness for the South and the East coast. Obviously, if you wanted to arrange a road trip to coincide with a favorite book, this would be an excellent way to do it. Travel tip: consider Around the World in 80 Days.

Matthew Gray is a software engineer for Google, and he recently developed a nifty little mash-up, showing the Earth viewed from books, where individual mentions of locations in books combine to yield an interpretation of the globe. The intensity of each pixel is proportional to the number of times the location at a given set of coordinates is mentioned across all the books in Book Search. If you wanted to plan a trip off the beaten path — or, in this case, off the typed word — just check out the map below. The lighter the map, the fewer words have been written about the place.

[Via GoogleMapsMania and The Map Room]

Anne Frank’s Chestnut Tree to be Cut Down

by Neil Woodburn on

“From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. … As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.”

These are the words of Anne Frank whose remarkable diary has been required reading for teenagers worldwide. Today, one can visit the Amsterdam house in which she and her Jewish family hid from the Nazis during World War II. Even more amazing, one can still look out on the same, 150-year-old chestnut tree that so inspired Anne Frank. But not for long. The tree has fallen sick to fungus and the Amsterdam City Council has granted approval for it to be cut down.

This is a very sad, but necessary action. I recall visiting the house myself and being overwhelmed by the history contained within. To be able to look out the window and gaze upon the same chestnut tree truly hammered home the sobering reality of what happened there less than a century ago.

The good news is that a new tree will be planted from a sapling from the original. In the meantime, Anne Frank’s chestnut has about six more weeks before it will be felled–still plenty of time to fly over and check it out yourself.

Testosterone Condensed Into a Book

by Iva Skoch on

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re behind the times on this book as well. It came out in 2003, but just emerged in unabridged form on Audible.com a few months ago. And, yes, it was worth the wait. It’s Laurence Gonzales’ book Deep Survival.

The author–an acrobatic pilot, rock climber, and all-around adventurer (I’m trying to figure out what extreme sport he hasn’t personally done)–set out on a life-long mission to discover what it is that some people have that gets them through life-threatening events. He goes so far as pitching it as “the first scientific investigation of human survival.”

While I’m not sure I’d go that far, I will say that it’s a terrific book, gripping right from the very beginning when he gives you a taste of what got him started on his quest: the story of his father’s survival after being shot down in a plane over Germany during WWII. He comes back to personal themes time and time again, but the book is mainly tales from folks who survived life-and-death struggles, and how they did it. And, I’ve give away the ‘ending’: it’s not super, high-tech gear. It’s determination and heart and being in-the-moment.

100 Places Every Woman Should Go

by Willy Volk on

Hey, ladies, when you finish reading Wanderlust and Lipstick, here’s another title for you: 100 Places Every Woman Should Go. Written by Stephanie Elizondo Griest, the book is meant to serve as both inspiration and guidebook.

Divided into sections (“Places Where Women Made History,” “Places of Indulgence,” “Places of Adventure,” etc.), the book documents places where being a woman is affirmed and confirmed, and where you will be energized and impassioned.

Encouraging women of all ages to break out of their comfort zones and see the world — in a group, with a friend, or solo — 100 Places highlights 100 special destinations and challenging activities: from diving for pearls in Bahrain; to racing a camel across Mongolia; to dancing with voodoo priestesses in Benin; to taking a mud bath in a volcano off the coast of Colombia. I’m not a woman, and I think the list sounds pretty cool. Maybe I should pick up a copy “for my wife.”

If you want to learn more about Stephanie and her book, check out World Hum’s excellent interview with her, or read the Q&A on her website.

[Via Written Road]