During our first year in Kazakhstan, Russell and I had a visit from that intrepid traveler, my Dad, Leonard C. Swing. We not only toured Almaty, its nearby mountains and steppes, we also journeyed to Tashkent, Samarkand and Bokhara on the Silk Road. In those days, modern tourist facilities in Central Asia had not really …
By the time October rolled around, we were pretty much settled in our renovated “dacha” in Almaty. We’d survived a couple health challenges, got work projects off the ground and started having some fun, including a visit from my 85 year-old Dad, touring the wonders of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bokhara. These adventures filled the second …
As summer turned to fall, friends began asking for an update on how we were doing in Central Asia. Here’s the good news and the bad news, edited from the first section of my response. [Click on photos to enlarge.] THE SUNSHINE-SWING CHRONICLESor How to Live in Central Asia and Learn to Love It …
Moving is said to be one of the most stressful experiences in life — second only to losing a spouse. People who work in international development may move every two years, across great distances, to wildly different climates. Edited from letters to the family, here’s our story of moving from Honolulu, Hawaii to Almaty, Kazakhstan. …
All our lives, we’ve preferred to journey on our own, organizing travel and accommodations, making it up when things go wrong. Getting there is as much a part of the trip as the ultimate destination. We thrive on the challenge and the adventure. Here are some more trips we wrote home about while living in …
Living in Laos made it easy to get to other countries in the region. Often I would tag along, at our expense, on study tours that Russell was leading for his Lao Investment team, or we would go early for a few days’ vacation before they arrived. This travel allowed me to make observations and …
Living and working overseas is very different from being there as a tourist. However, living and working overseas means you also get to be a tourist. Traveling to Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Saigon, Singapore or other destinations from Vientiane usually involved short flying times. Here, as described in letters home, are some of the places …
Time to share some more stories from others who’ve lived and worked abroad. The peripatetic life means you get to meet a lot of special folks. Here are a few, each one a jewel in my memory. [You can click on the map below in order to enlarge it for a clearer view of where …
As we neared the end of our stay in Vientiane, we had no inkling of where we’d be going next. This circumstance is fairly common for self-employed professionals in international development. You may just go home for a while and hope for short-term assignments, or you may be moving on to the next long-term one. …
As we did everywhere, we shared our lives with other creatures in a garden that someone else had already started. Laos was a little different in that some of the creatures were not your basic pets, and the garden was already overflowing with abundance. 1991 March 16 Our family has been expanded by one. Exactly …