Ruins of a French Colonial Ghost Town

The luxury French resort of a different variety … Photo source: Flick User An Agent Like a giant tombstone at the top of a hill prevailing over the dense tropical Cambodian jungle, here lies the remains of French colonial history. Yet another testimony to Europe’s once sinister use of imperialist power, Bokor Hill Station…

Blogging on a Chalkboard in Africa

This is Alfred J. Sirleaf, the founder and sole editor of a ‘blackboard newspaper’ in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city. Everyday, Alfred updates his newspaper, The Daily Talk (I can’t even paste a link), neatly writing the latest headlines using sticks of chalk in his “newsroom”, a small wooden shack attached to the back of his…

Meet North Korea’s American Film Star

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il was a known film enthusiast, or what we might call a ‘movie-buff’. He especially loved the kind of movies that portrayed America as the evil imperialist devil– but there weren’t too many of those floating around Hollywood. So to take matters into his own hands, Kim poured a whole load…

If Superheroes had been there…

What if we did have superheros? What if they had been there to help us (or turn on us) when the world most needed superheroes to stamp out the villains of the real world? What may have been just a fleeting thought for us has become an artistic fantasy for Indonesian illustrator Agan Harahap. Merging…

Here’s What Japanese Art Looked Like in the Aftermath of the Atomic Bombs

The cultural shift between pre and post-WWII world Japan was complicated and often divisive, but if you were photographer Eikoh Hosoe, that tension became fuel for creative expression that turned into a surrealist dreamworld – or nightmare, depending on who you asked. The Japanese artist’s works mirrored the state of a shell-shocked country in the…

Get Schooled by the World’s First Sexology Institute of 1920s Berlin

They called him “the Einstein of Sex”. The German doctor who went (quite literally) where no other had gone before in his research, founding the massive Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Sexology, just before the Nazis eclipsed bohemian Berlin and its costumed, sexually liberated splendour. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld (see the dude with the glasses…

A Secret World Hidden Beneath the Vineyards of Champagne

The Champagne region of France is one of its most famous; home to such grand wine houses, as Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, Krug, Pommery and Ruinart, as well as dozens of smaller vineyards that make the sparkling wine known the world over. But underneath the lush, rolling landscape lies a secret world : miles of complex tunnels,…

The Town that Hemingway Watched Die

In the most arid part of Aragon, a northeast state of Spain, a ghost town with an unusual history waits to be explored. In a country full of vibrant traditions and an active monarchy, a small ruined city may seem unworthy of a place on the itinerary, but Belchite’s history is more than meets the…

The Haunting Ruins of Mostar: Before & After

Mostar is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s most beautiful and enchanting small cities. Centered around the Neretva River, the old Ottoman frontier town is filled with narrow, winding alleys known as Kujundžiluk, or gold alleys, home to trinket sellers, covered market stalls, and cobbled streets leading to the most iconic bridge in the Balkans, the…

The Vault

Inside a Secret World War II Officers’ Club

In downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland, there is an old warehouse overlooking the harbour, that looks as anonymous as all the other brick buildings surrounding it. At least until you look at the roof… For protruding out of the flat roof, is what appears to be a rather unusual looking aerial. It is thicker than you…

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