Flickr Favorites: Kalandrakas

These pictures of floating markets come from Kalandrakas' Amazing Thailand set on Flickr.

Flickr Favorites: Shapeshift

These photographs of Hanoi come from Shapeshift's Vietnam set on Flickr.

From other Travel Blogs...

First off, congratulations go out to Our Man in Granada for winning the Budget Travel Online writing contest. His article on Vietnam is a great read, and his win is well deserved. Congratulations, Steve!

Jas from Through the Lens did a post for Brave New Traveler this week, sharing 6 Quick Tips for Shooting Better Action Photos.

At Around the World in 80 Days, Mark writes an interesting post about biking through Normandy and Brittany.

There were some posts about Cambodia, with The Lost Girls reporting on their visit to Phnom Penh and the Guardian Unlimited also writing an article about traveling to Cambodia.

The Guardian Unlimited also has an interesting article about Romania, Lost in Transylvania.

For even more articles, check out the section marked From Other Blogs in my sidebar.

Thank you to luciano 46 at Flickr who is sharing this photograph under a creative commons license. I chose his picture of Quebec City because that is my next travel destination.

For more travel articles, check out the section marked From other Blogs in my sidebar.

Our Man in Granada

Photo by ourmanwhere on flickr

I've been reading a lot the past two days. Through a comment left on in my All Stars, I found a blog that I haven't seen before, and it is really good. It's actually two blogs, both written by Steve, also known as "Ourman"

The first is Our Man in Hanoi, about his experience as a VSO volunteer with KOTO in Hanoi, Vietnam. KOTO is a restaurant and vocational training program for street and disadvantaged youth. Several of his posts also describe traveling in Vietnam. The archives go back to July 2004, and I started reading them at the beginning.

If you skip the archives, you will miss posts like this and this. I've read several posts on other blogs with tips for backpackers in Southeast Asia, so I thought this post about backpackers was interesting.

Luckily, I found out about his second blog, Our Man in Granada, as he arrived in Nicaragua, so there were only a few archived posts to read. In Granada, Steve is volunteering for Building New Hope at Café Chavalos. I can't wait to hear all about it.

Brave New Traveler posts on Cambodia

I'm leaving the fun topic of Ireland to write about another blog that I follow. Ian at Brave New Traveler has a new post about Cambodia on his site. The story and video really affected me, almost making me feel a little sick. It's similar to the way I imagine I would feel if I actually visited the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the Nazi concentration camps in Europe.

Ian's story ends on a note of hope, though, as he writes about an English painter who helps Cambodian children paint and then sell their artwork. I like when Ian adds, "And that is the only reason I can step to the edge of a mass grave and still believe in humanity."

Thank you, Ian, for a great story.