One may ask what we do here at the Suan Mohhk Buddhist meditation retreat - how we fill our days. They keep us pretty busy, as this schedule will testify: 04:00 Rise
At the beginning, keeping silent for ten days seemed like a daunting task. But after five days I am finding it easy and peaceful, even preferable. It is refreshing to be in a group of 140 people and y
Every morning at 4 a.m. a bell rings, calling us away from our dreams. Night still lingers, the moon still shines, and it will be another three hours before the sun's rays arrive. I watch t
The journey of self-discovery is a hard one. By the end of our retreat at Suan Mohhk, our 140-member group had dwindled down to a mere 100. Forty people couldn't handle something - the silence, the so
We ate just twice daily at Suan Mohhk - a bland breakfast of rice soup at 8:00 AM and coconut curry with brown rice for lunch at 12:30 PM. But that left 19.5 hours between meals with nothing more than
We made it! After ten days of silence, deep reflection, early mornings and being separated from each other, the retreat was over. Who ever knew meditation could be so hard? As we stood outs
We weighed our two options carefully: either an overnight train followed by 24 hours of travel on some of the worst roads in the world, or a quick 75-minute hop on a regional airline. We chose the eas
The images made my eyes physically hurt. Tim and I toured the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The 3-story buildings, surrounded by thick walls and barbed wire, were once a children's school.
Our guesthouse is in the middle of Phnom Penh, yet it sits on a dirt road so rutted and rocky that motorcycles can only weave past us at a slow crawl. And even at their slow pace, they churn up red du
The little boy in me laughed in giddy anticipation as we arrived to the shooting range. I'd heard it was actually possible there to shoot a rocket-propelled grenade and I obviously couldn't let such
It is easy to see why the movie Tomb Raider was filmed in the Angkor Wat area. The concentration of so many excellent ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples is staggering and, despite the thousands of tou
Our flight from Bangkok to Mumbai in many ways is like any other flight - dry air that makes my hair limp, safety instructions I hope I never have to use, and smelly bathrooms. In my seat, somewhere h
India is not a place that travelers talk about with ambivalence - it is either loved or hated with equal passion. We have spoken to many people this year who have traveled extensively in this country
India is far too vast and varied a country to "do" in a month or two. It offers landscapes ranging from the Himalaya mountain range to the western Thar desert, plus the central plateau, plains, foothi
I find the women of India beautiful. They all have long, black flowing hair and wear bright colorful saris. The fabrics shimmer while their arms, covered in bangle bracelets, sparkle. Even the women I
