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We sailed up the river just as the sun dropped over the horizon. Our destination? A secluded stretch of water. Our goal? To fish with Cormorants. A Cormorant is a duck-like bird that excels at finding and catching fish. The fisherman ties a rope around their neck so they can’t swallow the fish though. It […]

Eating in China has been one of our best culinary adventures yet.  This caught me by surprise because I didn’t think I really liked Chinese food.  With the exception of dim sum in Chinatown, most of what I had sampled at home came slathered in a goopy brown sauce laden with soggy vegetables and tiny […]

“Hold your arms out in a big ball.  Feel that you are holding the heavens and the universe.  Now, breath in as you raise your arms and the universe expands. “ We listened carefully to the Tai Chi master.  The family was secluded deep within the gardens of the Emperor’s Heavenly Palace, standing in a […]

We stepped in to a long glass and metal building, built around one of China’s treasures. Before us lay deep trenches running in a vertical direction. Inside these trenches there were hundreds of soldiers. These soldiers stared straight ahead, not giving us a second glance. There had clearly been some sort of attack, as smashed […]

Did you know Chinese opera singers paint their faces so they look like characters?  They learn to paint theri face by practicing on paper masks. We took a class with an opera master from the Beijing Opera to learn about this and then he taught us to sing a bit of Chinese Opera.  Here are […]

The Great Wall loomed large in my pantheon of must-see destinations.  More than 2,000 years old, it is the single biggest man-made structure on the planet.  Someone once told me you could even see it from the moon.  While I believe that this assertion has been scientifically dispelled, having now visited, it remains larger than […]

Piggy had a long trek today!  Where was she? Extra bonus:  what do the Chinese letters on the hill mean? Send your guess to me by email!  katherine@365saturdays.org

We started China in the capital city of Beijing, and started Beijing in its iconic heart – Tiananmen Square.  This is famous in the West as the place where Chinses students protested for democracy in 1989, and we have read in the Western press that there are some still seeking change in China inspired by the […]

I have read that some parents will go to great lengths to remain connected to their children once their precious babies reach those dreaded teenage years, but I never really imagined myself as one of those sorts. That is, until I found myself knee-deep in primordial crocodile-infested swamp mud. Carter could not stop grinning; he […]

 The car pulls to a stop. A tree with branches stretching almost straight out above us provides shade. Seed pods, rotten fruit and leaves are sprinkled over the dirt. There awaits a man; skin of coffee, curly hair down to the upper back, and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Sunglasses hide his eyes. Holding […]

Hello folks! It’s reporter K again! I’m here to tell you about my travels in Australia. Actually my colleagues will be covering most of the sites so I only have one to write about: The Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef in the world. It is 1250 miles long and […]

Penguins come in a surprising range of sizes, but the very cutest is without a doubt the tiny Fairy Penguin. These little guys are the smallest of the bunch, standing only one foot tall and weighing in at just three pounds. The Fairy Penguin, or “Little Blue,” is native to the coastlines of Australia and […]

     YEAH, C’MOOON DEMONS! WOOOOOOO! It was The Melbourne Demons versus the Sydney Swans! We were barracking (as the Aussies say) the DEMONS!!!! The Demons are a scrappy team, their fans are generalized as the “shout-out-mistakes-and-comments-while-glugging-beer-and-gobbling-chips” kind of people. But that’s just a few of them. Actually, pretty much everyone was shouting comments, myself included, […]

     From Sydney we headed down to Melbourne – Australia’s “other” big city located at the very southern tip of the landmass.  It sits at the same latitude as Capetown or Buenos Aires and looks south toward the Tasmanian island and Antarctica.  Sydney has a population of 4.5 million and Melbourne is just behind at […]

Sydney was all about catching our breath after the craziness in Japan.  We checked into the Shangri-La hotel, where we had the good fortune to be greeted by customer manager extraordinaire Sabina.  She heard the story and promptly upgraded us into their Governor’s Suite. This is the size of our Paris apartment, raised to the 34th floor […]

On the behind the scenes tour we get to touch, hold, and feed the animals, and animals in Australia are especially strange. That is because Australia is very hot so the creatures have to adapt themselves in order to survive. We met our guide Paul at ten and said hello to the three other people. […]

     THE LESSON We met our friends the Walters: Darin and Alison, and their kids: Oscar (12), Maya (10), and Hugo (5). Today, I was learning how to surf. Darin gave me a lesson on the beach. We used his surfboard on the sand instead of trying in the water. Darin told me several rules: […]

     Where is Piggy touring today? Send your answey to me at katherine@365saturdays.org. Last week’s answer: Piggy was in the Haneda Airport after the 9.0 Sendai Earthquake

  Before the earthquake of March 11th, we had 72 hours to savor Tokyo.  During that time, we spent an afternoon learning classic Japanese home cooking with the kind and talented team of Chef Takamitsu Aihara.  Chef Aihara has received a Michelin star for his beautiful cuisine and we were slightly star-struck to be in […]

     As you know, Piggy was in a big earthquake and has been watching the news carefully to see what has been happening ever since.  Exactly how big was it and where was the epicenter of the quake that made Piggy leave Japan? Send your guess to katherine@365saturdays.org by email

The line at Haneda Airport at 5:15am. Safety first. Although we were having a great time in Japan and managed to get through the earthquake without any injuries, we decided to move the family out of Tokyo today. We just arrived in Seoul where we plan to catch our breath and get some sleep. More […]

By 6am on Saturday, there was limited train service restored and we could come back to Tokyo city via a series of zigzag rides with six different legs (shuttle, 4 trains, taxi).  Somehow we made it back to Akasaka without getting lost. We finally reached our rooms at the Intercontinental around 9am, where we discovered it […]

We had spent the past two hours quivering inside the Guest Relations building. Packed together with 100 other people, tight as sardines in a can. It was a dreary routine. Wait for endless amounts of time inside, then when the tremor alarm goes off, run outside and wait, then come back in when everything is […]

What do you think about in middle of an earthquake? Put yourself in our shoes at Disney, walking under a ten-story tall volcano, when the ground starts to sway. What you would see is Carter and me grinning like idiots – Disney has the most realistic special effects! Then the staff all run to their […]

Okay, before I start this blog I want to get to the point: WE ARE OKAY! “Bye!” Mom and I said. We were going to the mermaid section of Disney Sea Tokyo park, while Carter and Dad waited in line for Journey to the Center of the Earth. “We’ll meet you back here in 90 […]

We stepped off the flight from Vietnam and giggled with excitement:  we were in Tokyo!  We had only flown for four hours but it felt like we had landed in a different world.  Everything was so sleek, high-tech, and almost unnaturally clean.  There is simply no comparison between a public bathroom in Tokyo and anywhere […]

On Friday March 11, our family went to Disney Sea Tokyo. A detailed design for the park was developed by Disney so the company could extend its existing properties with an ocean-themed attraction, but it proved too costly to actually build in Orlando. A group of Japanese businessmen realized it could still succeed if they […]

Our wonderful Japan guide Mimi came over on Wednesday morning and we stepped out into the streets of Tokyo. Brrr. First stop, Ginza for jackets. Then we saw the Imperial Palace and Asukasa with its many tourist stands and great Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine. We were so impressed with Mimi. She was impeccably dressed, […]

One of our touring highlights in Central Vietnam was a day of traditional farming and fishing in Hoi An.  Russ took a vacation from the itinerary and opted to stay home with an economics book (?!) while the kids and I took off on a special eco-tour. We drove to the outskirts of the Farming […]

From Halong Bay we hopped a short flight south to the middle of Vietnam.  Here the village of Hoi An has been preserved and restored using old-style Vietnamese architecture.  We stayed nearby at the exquisite Nam Hai resort that is one of the jewel properties for the year.  A “villa” at the Nam Hai includes […]

Why do so many Hanoi tourists suffer a jarring three hour drive through Vietnam’s endless rice paddies, just to spend an evening on the waters of Halong Bay? We boarded an (extremely well-appointed) old-style wooden junk to find out. The boat set sail at lunch and a few hours later we were gliding past startling rock formations jutting […]

Who doesn’t love a good love story?   Every country seems to have one.  Here in Vietnam, one of the most poignant is widely known but officially unrecognized by the Vietnamese government:  it is the true story of Ho Chi Minh and his Chinese wife and it goes something like this. Ho Chi Minh was born […]

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, a government center that is home to the country’s largest concentration of intellectuals and artists.  Dusty construction confronts us in every direction.  The city population just passed the 9 million mark and the streets are buzzing.  This is the perfect place for cultural adventures.    So much is foreign here […]

Which famous person’s tomb is Piggy visiting today?  Send your guesses to me at katherine@365saturdays.org!

We were speeding down the river towards the floating village.  The wind felt cool on my face but it didn’t smell very good.  The water looked like my mom’s coffee drink she used to get from Starbucks.  I saw lots of people in the river bathing and washing their laundry but I didn’t really think […]

We exit the van and are hit by a wave of aggravating smells and surprisingly dry heat. We smell animal and human sweat, among other indistinguishable odors. We all wrinkle our noses. Then we turn our attention to the people. Women who chew the betel nuts have red teeth, thanks to the red minerals that accumulate […]

Could one tourist site account for nearly 10% of a nation’s economy?  If the nation is Cambodia and the site is the extraordinary Angkor Wat, then by our admittedly rough calculations the answer is yes. Cambodia only has a national GDP of $11 billion, ranking 124th in the world.  Some 2.5 million people per year […]

Can you guess the name of the famous temple that Piggy is visiting today? Send your answer to katherine@365saturdays.org. Answers from February:  In Thailand, Piggy was at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (called Wat Pho) in Bangkok.  In Southeast Asia, Piggy was in Singapore, about to cross the Malaysian border to board the Eastern […]

Hello, this is Reporter K doing an article on Thai cuisine. On my recent trip to Thailand I experienced some wonderful food, wonderful enough to write an article on. The first authentic dish I experienced was yes, at the airport food court. It was a delicious ramen-like soup, with clear broth. There were also various […]

Thailand is not the first nation we’ve visited with a large Buddhist population.  After all, Buddha himself came from India.  However, it is the first place that has felt distinctly Buddhist.  Perhaps it is the 30,000 temples which dot the country, or the bright saffron robes of the monks who are everywhere. Or maybe it […]