Month: January 2005

Korean DMZ Photos

Pictures from the Korean DMZ (DeMilitiarized Zone)
December 24 2002

Invasion Tunnel #3
Photographs are of course banned in the tunnel, but I snuck some picture with the camera sticking just out of my pocket. Out of all of them this is the only one that wasn’t a blurry mess, and it’s really just a wonderful picture – easily the best picture from that trip and also easily one of the best I’ve ever taken.

Invasion Tunnel Tram
Outside North Korean Invasion Tunnel #3. This tram descends for several 10s of meters on a very deep slope through the shaft excavated by the South Koreans until it meets the tunnel proper.

Reunification Memorial
The two halves of the globe of course represent North and South Korea- divided but natural parts of a single unit. This memorial is placed just outside of the entrance to the invasion tunnel, as if to say ‘We know you were just lonely, we don’t hold it against you. Sneaking in through the broken window is no good, but if you just ring the front doorbell like a normal person you can come home.”

Hong Kong Food

Snake Soup

After SARS came out a year ago newspapers worldwide were filled with stories about the eating habits of Southern China, particularly in Guangdong province (Canton), which is the area that Hong Kong was part of before it was split off into a British colony, and still has many cultural links to. I read a lot of stories about horrific semi-underground markets where one can purchase for consumption a whole range of animals from the most mundane such as chickens or pigs to exotic and often highly endangered animals, possibly stopping just short of the very well protected pandas. Well, with the relatively tight customs controls between the Hong Kong Semi Autonomous Region and the mainland no markets like that could possibly exist. While eating a large variety of animals has been part of Cantonese culture for a long time, in Hong Kong their options are very restricted and this snake soup is one of the few mildly outlandish things readily avaliable.
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