Common Sense and Whiskey

How Do Somali Pirates Spend All That Money?

On the pirate stock exchange. More on Somalia: A trip there, and advice on whether to go. (Answer: Don't.)

Friday Photo Quiz #50

The wooden bridge in this picture, first built in the 14th century, is the main landmark in a lovely lakeside city of about 60,000.

Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Wildebeest Migration Maps

Looking for the best way to track the annual Masaai Mara wildebeest migration in real time? Sure you were.

Try this site. Maps, charts, nice graphics. We'll put it in the "Travel Tools" sidebar.

Photo from EarthPhotos.com.

And... They're Off. Eventually.

We're heading to Namibia in a month. Let's hope we get off to a smoother start than last time. Here's what happened then:

If you fly from Johannesburg to Windhoek, you mostly fly over Botswana. After an hour the clouds stop in a line and below it’s scrub and salt pans, no roads. Before noon you find yourself under a blazing sun, 45 kilometers east of town at Windhoek Hosea Kutako International Airport.

No difference between this patch of scrub and any other between here and Windhoek. Except maybe this particular bit of land used to belong to somebody important’s brother-in-law.

We had a voucher for our rental car that read, “Thrifty Car Rental, Windhoek airport” across the top, but walk past the Avis and Hertz and Imperial counters in the arrivals lobby and hmmm, no Thrifty.

Once we worked out that in fact Thrifty only had a city office and we found the man they’d sent to haul us in, and once we waited just that one quick additional hour for another flight carrying another client – once we made it to the Thrifty Car Rental office in Klein Windhoek, they were happy to ask for another hundred NAD (Namibian dollars) for the transfer back to the airport when we dropped the car off, it being so far and all.

We declined to pay extra for that.

When we finally left Windhoek, at the first police checkpoint on the Rehoboth road  south of town, we had the chance to perspire for the better part of an hour with a stout, entirely agreeable police woman at a shed by the road. There was no registration on our windscreen, you see, a fact noted by the astute policeman at the roadblock (but news to us) and so we’d have to go back to the car rental office.

Ah... You're a Working Camel? You May Pass.

From the Toronto Star:

ALICE SPRINGS–Australian authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down after they overran a small Outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

From the Guardian:

The animals have caused chaos in the Northern Territory town of Docker River, smashing water tanks, destroying fences and approaching houses. State officials have described the siege as a "critical situation" and warned that the town did not "have the luxury of time", after the camels blocked the town's airstrip – preventing medical evacuations – and began to contaminate the water supply.

Camels were introduced to Australia to help tame the outback. Until the rail track was laid to Alice Springs in 1929,

"camels brought everything. pianos, motors, furniture and supplies. The arrival of these beasts of burden ws a time of high excitement. Mail, newspapers and long-awaited clothes and cosmetics orders also came this way."

*****

Take a look at this modern day cattle pen at the Undoolya Farm outside Alice Springs:

There's a water hole inside the pen to help round up the cattle. Note the metal bar at the top of the entrance to the pen, on the left. It's to keep out the taller camels.

Working camels on the other hand, like those at top, who take tourists on sunset rides along Cable Beach in Broome, are well cared for.

See 400 photos from all over Australia, including the working camels of Cable Beach, in the Australia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Afghanistan in Pictures

Apropos to the President's recommitment to his "good war" last night, don't miss this tremendous photojournalism from photographer David Guttenfelder in the Denver Post.

Fifty Photos #40

Dervishes in performance in central Turkey.

Find over 300 more photos from around Turkey in the Turkey Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Get top-notch professional 8x12 Glossy & Matte prints of this and any of these Top Fifty Prints for just $11.50, 16x24 Glossy, Matte & Lustre for $35.00 at EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Sports: It's Not All About Golf Clubs, Cadillac SUVs and Swedish Wives.

1. Egyptians hold three of the top-four spots on the men’s professional squash circuit.

2. Armenian chess players "are treated like rock stars."

3. And add yachting to hiking on your list of things not to do near Iran.

He's Not Dead Again

Kim lives.

Friday Photo Quiz #49

A sweltering, bustling capital city of some 12 million people and the iconic river that's the center of life there. This country is the only one in its region never to have been colonized.

Can you name the river? The city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Nambia

Once we stood in a receiving line to shake hands with Marti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and Nobel laureate, who was in town to speak at Atlanta’s Piedmont Driving Club. In his introduction, a forgotten member of Atlanta’s high society cited, among Ahtisaari’s achievements, brokering a deal which led to the independence of “Nambia.”

We smiled, winced and understood a couple of things: That the presenter’s lack of knowledge reflected the provincialism of our town, and that Namibia isn’t very well-known, either.

We’ve since visited Namibia, which is beautiful, and are scheduled to return in just six weeks time. As we’re booked into a couple of days stay at Walvis Bay to start the New Year, Namibia is on our radar, and this story in the New York Times caught my eye. It’s no surprise, more sad than scandalous, and just a reflection of the world as it is today.

The article details  allegations of preferential treatment for the children of politicians, and other misdeeds, including that “a state-controlled Chinese contractor … facilitated a $55.3 million deal to sell the Namibian government security scanners with millions of dollars in kickbacks.” Until last year, Hu Haifeng, the son of President Hu Jintao, ran the company.

The article quotes Xia Lili, First Secretary of the Chinese Embassy in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, with that characteristic light Chinese touch, as contending he had no obligation to respond to queries. “This is over,” he said.

There will ever be scandals, of course, and we'll just be travelers passing through town. So never mind all that. For enjoying the southern hemisphere summer, and a couple of days at the beach, we're looking forward to the first CS&W posts of 2010 coming from Walvis Bay, Namibia. Over the next few weeks as we get closer to travel, we’ll have a story or two from our last trip to Namibia.

Photo of Namibian sand dunes from EarthPhotos.com. See about a hundred more in the Namibia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Sixty Hours of Terror

Really long, but riveting, play-by-play of the events of one year ago today in Mumbai in the Virginia Quarterly Review by freelance journalist Jason Motlagh. It's called Sixty Hours of Terror.

Photo from our one stay in the Taj Mahal hotel Heritage Wing. We stayed in room 436 during a three month round-the-world trip in 1995.

Photo from EarthPhotos.com's India Gallery.

Silly Photo Fun

This is funny.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Uh Oh. Check Those Party Plans.

We used to call it the party boat, and it looks like we weren't alone. The Silja Line is one of two companies (with the Viking Line) that ply the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia between Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Sweden.

It's an agreeable way to travel between the two capitals. You board in the afternoon on either side and arrive at your destination the next morning, and along the way enjoy the lovely archipelago in between.

These are huge cruise liners. The Silja Symphony, for example, holds 2,852 in 995 cabins. And it literally is a party boat, with entertainers in the main atrium, like men on stilts and acrobats (photo).

This time of year companies book their holiday office parties aboard. Trouble is, the Helsingin Sanomat reports that the Silja Europa is out of service until December first, and that

"This will affect the travel plans of thousands of people who have already booked their cruises. This is a busy period with many bookings for Christmas parties”, regretted Vice President Pasi Näkki of Tallink Silja."

All Silja Europa departures are cancelled until 1 December due to a rudder problem.

(See more photos in the Finland Gallery and the Sweden Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Twenty Years Ago, Communist Collapse Continued

As a single event, the initial breach of the Berlin Wall succinctly symbolized the entire tumult of twenty years ago, so on the twentieth anniversary of the event earlier this month everyone reflected on what it meant to them, personally, and what it has meant to the wider world. But the wall's fall was just the beginning of change.

The really great compilation called The Collapse of Communism, as written at the time by the correspondents of the New York Times, captures the sense of wonder with which we all watched the daily events, from Lithuania in the northwest of the increasingly tenuous Soviet empire all the way down to the Caspian Sea, where pogroms against Armenians had already begun in Baku, Ajerbaijan by this time twenty years ago.

Just today twenty years ago, 24 November, 1989, the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leadership resigned and, from a NYT article on 25 November by Steven Greenhouse, some

"350,000 protesters crowded into central Prague in the eighth straight day of huge demonstrations.

"In a striking paradox, the throng was addressed by Alexander Dubcek, whose liberal regime was overthrown by a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968.... It was Mr. Dubcek's first public appearance in Prague since 1968."

Ominously  (since we all watched the brutal Christmas Day demise of the Ceausescus), further to the southeast in Romania, old Nicolae and Elena just didn't get the whole change thing. From Alan Riding, writing in the NYT twenty years ago today:

"In a huge display of government control, tens of thousands of workers were marched to a demonstration here today to celebrate the re-election of President Nicolae Ceausescu as General Secretary of the Communist Party."

Read the entire article, In Rumania, the Old Order Won't Budge.

(Photos: Top, "Red Square" sign from the Russia Gallery, and bottom, the Ceausescus' Palace in Bucharest, Romania, from the Romania Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Men's Beige Trousers just £8... Oh, and um, Plus Sea Mail...

We have it on good authority that these items are for sale:

• Ladies kick flare jeans sizes 10 priced at £15.00 each
• Variety of lipsticks and eye shadow at £1.00 each
• Manicure sets at £2.50 each
• Men’s beige trousers at £8.00 each sizes 30, 32, 34,36
• Men’s sport flex watches at £17.50
• Wii games priced at £20 each
• PS2 memory cards priced at £8each
• Sony Shock controllers priced at £10 Also Used Sony play station 2 consolers complete with power and RCA cables and one Sony Dual shock controller also comes with 2 free games priced at £90.00.

Also used Play Station 2 games ranging from football, adventure, war, racing and sport all priced at £5 each.

Interested persons can call 2976 or visit No 1 Parish Block, Jamestown.

*****

Or, send us a note. If you're keen for a variety of lipsticks and eye shadow for only a pound apiece let us know. We'll be in Jamestown, St. Helena Island, in January and we'll see what we can do.

The ad above is as printed in the weekly St. Helena Independent, current issue. The Independent is posted for free download every Friday.

St. Helena Island is a British Overseas Territory some 1200 miles west of Angola and 1800 miles east of Brazil in the South Atlantic Ocean. It has no airfield, so visits are only by the British Royal Mail Ship the RMS St. Helena.

The EarthPhotos.com site for photo coverage is ready, bookmark it now.

That'll be us in cabin B36, sailing from the Namibian port of Walvis Bay to St. Helena and calling later at Ascension Island, some 600 miles to the north of St. Helena.

We'll start the new year in Walvis Bay, with a couple of days there before we board the RMS St. Helena. Walvis Bay, Swakopmund to its north and Sandwich Harbour to the south, are touted as prime areas fo bird photography. We'll give it a try.

CS&W Interview: Sean Gallagher on North Korea

Sean Gallagher is unlike most people. He has been to Pyongyang. In September the award-winning, Beijing-based photographer and the Canadian Globe and Mail's Asia correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, entered North Korea as tourists. Gallagher wrote about his experience in an article for The Digital Journalist titled Inside North Korea, and now he talks further about North Korea with Common Sense and Whiskey:

- Sean, thanks very much for answering a few questions about your trip to North Korea. First, you're a British photojournalist working in China, right? Tell us a little about your work.

My work in China over the past 3 years has focused mainly on social and environmental issues although recently I have been focusing more on the environmental side. My biggest project of note so far has been on the issue of desertification in China, for which I have received a number of grants and awards. This is the work people probably now know me most for.

- So, you and a colleague crossed the China/North Korea border into North Korea in a bus with Chinese people, right? Since you're not Chinese, did you attract extra attention from the border guards?

Well, we stood out like sore thumbs to be honest. Our entry into North Korea was all a bit ‘cloak and dagger’, so we were getting handed from one person to the next, just doing what we were told. When we got told to get on a bus full of Chinese tourists, we did it. The border guards saw us but we think they obviously knew we were coming, so they didn’t do anything.

- Sounds like you were maybe bringing in a camera that was a little more than a point-and-shoot? How did you manage that?

I broke my camera up into as many parts as possible, to make it look less suspicious. When they went though my bags they found my relatively large 16-35mm Canon L lens and took a good minute looking it over. I was a little nervous at this point as it would have been pretty tricky taking pictures without it. Eventually, they put it back into my back and waved me past.

- We read of visitors to the DPRK never being outside of the gaze of their minders. Was that the case for you? Did you ever try to slip away for a walk? Did you and your minders speak English? Mandarin?

We were constantly shadowed by our minders. We had two. One who was our translator and guide, the other just hung in the shadows and followed us around, always within earshot. To my knowledge, both of our minders spoke English and Mandarin.

- We always imagine vast, Communist block style buildings with no heat and dim lights, but it looks from your photos like there are some tolerably nice hotels in Pyongyang. True?

The only hotels you see in my images are either the one that we stayed in in Pyongyang, which houses all foreign guests, or ones which house foreign guests at various tourists sights across the country. They weren’t for the average North Korean citizen. Our hotels were opulent, however the reality for most North Koreans is completely different. Regular power cuts, even in the capital, occur. I noticed however, they always leave the electricity running for the lights which light up various portraits of the leaders about town.

- Outside North Korea, it's safe to say we have an overall impression of paranoia and fear there. Would you say that's accurate? And if they'd have you, would you visit again?

I can’t really speculate on what the average North Korean thinks because we were given no chance at all to speak to the average person. Sometimes we got close and I was able to grab some images but we were quickly whisked away by our minders before we could interact any further. I know for sure though, that I felt a high level of paranoia and fear there but that was because I felt we were under constant suspicion. Even between groups of other foreign visitors (who we were kept separate from) there was a level of distrust, born from where we were.

Would I like to go back? Sure. It’s a photographer’s paradise really. I’m not sure they’ll have me back anytime soon though.

- One more thing - since you've returned from North Korea, have you learned when the Tower Bridge was built?

Ha. I must admit, I went on the internet to check that when I got back. I wasn’t that far off. They were a bit tough on me!

*****

See Sean's photography at his web site Gallagher-photo.com, keep up with Sean at his blog, and if you're in Beijing, check out his workshops for amateur photographers.

(Top photo: Sean Gallagher. The others, of North Korea, are from Sean Gallagher's web site.)

Friday Photo Quiz #48

Like in last week's photo quiz, this place is its country's capital and seat of government, but unlike last week, it's not the country's biggest city. It's home to about a million and a half people. This city and Krakow, Poland were the first Cultural Heritage Sites declared by UNESCO in 1978.

The volcano in the photo stands at 5,897 meters, or 19,347 feet and is still active, having erupted more than 50 times  since 1738.

Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Interview Tomorrow: Photographer Sean Gallagher on North Korea

We write about tourism to North Korea whenever we run across the rare story about it (here, here, here and here, among a few others). Here's an article written by Sean Gallagher, a photographer based in Beijing, about his visit to Pyongyang earlier this fall.

Join us here tomorrow when CS&W talks with Sean about his trip.

Fifty Photos #39

The shipyard at Freemantle, Australia.

Find 400 more photos from around Australia in the Australia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Get top-notch professional 8x12 Glossy & Matte prints of this and any of these Top Fifty Prints for just $11.50, 16x24 Glossy, Matte & Lustre for $35.00 at EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)