Features

by Marlene Candell, Berkeley, CA

As the 2006 Christmas season, with its attendant festivities and responsibilities, was moving ahead at a scary pace, my husband, Cass, received an unexpected phone call and invitation. Would he and I like to accompany our friends Claudia and Jerry Johnson on a trip to South America? They had just been invited to enjoy some of the January summer near the beach house of a Chilean friend of ours who had been a foreign exchange student with them over 30 years before.

This was a wonderful opportunity to escape winter, mild as it is in our San...

by Susan Lowe, Covington, WA

“You’re stopping over in Hong Kong again?”

My husband and I must have heard this question a dozen times in the weeks leading up to the trip I had planned for us in January ’08. One well-meaning friend even asked, “What is there to do in Hong Kong besides shop?”

I had been in Hong Kong twice in the previous 12 months as stopovers on other Asian trips, but on this trip I would be heading for all the fascinating and inexpensive shopping available at the night bazaars in Bangkok and other Thailand destinations and I wanted to keep as many of...

by Judy Licata and Marvin Herman, Delavan, WI

Following the first half of our 29-day “Journey of a Lifetime” with China Focus Travel (Aug.’08, pg. 38), it was time for our third internal flight; this one would take us to Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest of Xi’an.

After the 4-hour flight, we arrived in Lhasa, where we stayed at the 4-star Thang Ka Hotel. On the way to the hotel, we passed the Potala Palace, the traditional winter residence of the Dalai Lama, now in exile in India.

Touring Lhasa

I slept until after 8 a.m., waking with a hard...