The heart of any place is the people who inhabit it.

For years, the Cambodian people where victims of Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign, only later to be subjected to Pol Pot’s brutal genocide while much of the word looked the other way.

Yet today, few places, few people are more welcoming to international travelers. For a lesson in resilience and forgiveness, few places can match Cambodia.  Few places are more rewarding to visit.

South Beach (a.k.a. SoBe) in Miami Beach, Florida, wasn’t always a playground for the rich and famous. One hundred years ago the area’s original developers envisioned a mid-sized ocean front city of modest single family homes.

Today, not so much.

The 1920s real estate bubble attracted millionaires and speculators.  The 1930s brought an architectural Art Deco revolution, a development trend that gives the city it’s character and sense of place today.

But it was TV that really put South Beach on the map: The Jackie Gleason Show in the 1960s, later Crockett and Tubbs solving crimes in Miami Vice.

Today, South Beach is one of the U.S.’s most international destinations:  English is the first language of only 33% of the residents.

In 2009 Natalie O’Neill of the Miami New Times commented: “Until the 1980s, Miami Beach was a peculiar mix of criminals, Cubans, and little old ladies. Then the beautiful people moved in.”

There are more pictures from Miami Beach here.

In January, Dani and I were approached by Bethesda Magazine to share the story of the our family’s trip around the world.  Together, we edited our blog posts into what we hope is a reasonably interesting, readable article.

Thanks to Steve Hull, Lisa Shroder and Maire McArdle at Bethesda Magazine for transforming our pedestrian prose into a really great looking editorial package.  If you live in suburban Maryland, you can pick up a copy at Whole Foods and elsewhere.

If you don’t live in the area and are interested, you can download a PDF copy of the article here.

As usual, California leads the nation.  The good citizens of the Golden State have discovered a nefarious plot by the communist Chinese to infiltrate our schools and brainwash our children.  It works like this.

The Confucius Institute, a non-profit funded by the Chinese government, is supplying a language and culture curriculum for U.S. middle schools. Sure, cash-strapped schools get free lesson plans and materials to help students study Chinese – but what’s the real price?

Fortunately, the ever-alert citizens of Hacienda Heights, California, have recognized this program for what it is: A communist plot to brainwash our children.

Jon Stewart, America’s best journalist, produced this expose explaining it all.

Meanwhile, all Americans are warned to avoid Chinese food, Chinese laundries, and yes, Chinese checkers.  All could lead to communist sympathies.

Remember, the Department of Homeland Security wants you to know the threat level is orange.

Meanwhile, avoid looking at these pictures of those involved in the communist plot:

There are more pictures of Beijing here. (View them at your own risk).

In the year since we returned from our RTW adventure, we purposely stayed close to home. But this past March, as the kids’ spring break approached, we looked for an opportunity to take a vacation as opposed to travel.

Our choice? The polar opposite of a ten-month round the world trip:  A four-day Carnival Cruise.

Part Vegas, part Branson and all Mall of America, Carnival is build around the concept of “The Fun Ships,” relentlessly focused on giving Middle America a taste of the high life.

Carnival packs plenty of “activities” and “shows” in a four-day cruise, but for us, the main event was people watching. There was plenty to observe.

The first night aboard the Carnival Imagination we were escorted to our dining table where we met the families who would be our dinner companions for three nights.  When we were seated, we joined a mother, stepfather and son from Wisconsin enjoying their second cruise.

Soon, a second, more intriguing family was seated:  Four Bulgarian expats now living in Montreal. It was their first cruise.

The father spoke in heavily accented broken English: “I worry… I am too soft on my sons, bringing them on a cruise like this.  They do not know hardship.  When I was their age, the Soviets took me into their Army and I was sent to Chechnya.  I was made to do things they cannot imagine.  But it made me a man.”

I asked if he had visited Bulgaria recently, if it had changed.  He said: “Last year, I saw my father for the first time in 20 years.  I would like to do something like this for him – but how could I? He does not know such things exist.  If he saw all this…”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked away.

“Be sure to order the chocolate melting cake for dessert,” the stepfather from Wisconsin said. “You can order two.”

There are more cruise pictures here.

Not that long ago, on February 27, 2010, a massive earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter Scale rocked the Chilean coast south of Santiago.  Since then, public awareness has shifted to dozens of other problems, other tragedies.

The Chilean government has estimated it may take 3-4 years to completely recover and rebuild. But that doesn’t mean travelers should stay away from Santiago, a stylish gateway to a beautiful country.

You can read about up-to-date travel conditions in Chile on this blog.

With oil bearing down on the remarkable white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle, we hopped a Southwest flight to the newly opened Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in Panama City Beach.

Two and a half hours after we left BWI, we pulled in to Seaside, Florida, a place many recognize as the location where The Truman Show was filmed.  In fact, Seaside is famous for another reason:  It is considered one of the best examples of New Urbanism anywhere in the world.  Time called it “the most astounding design achievement of its era and, one might hope, the most influential.”

An unspeakable tragedy is unfolding in slow-motion along the Gulf Coast, and if black tar washes up on Northwest Florida’s pristine white sand beaches, we will have done damage to a very special place.

There are more pictures of Seaside and Northwest Florida here.

According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules.” The city-state conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC.

After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune.”

The Atlantis of legend is intriguing.  Today’s reality is more pedestrian, if no more fantastical: It’s become a pair of over-the-top resorts, one in the Bahamas, the other in Dubai.

There are more pictures of Atlantis here.

Sensō-ji is an ancient Buddhist temple located in Asakusa, Tokyo. It is the city’s oldest temple, and one of its most significant.

Within the temple itself, and at many places on its approach, there are omikuji stalls. For a suggested donation of 100 yen, visitors may consult the oracle and divine answers to their questions.

Querents shake labelled sticks from enclosed metal containers and read the corresponding answers they retrieve from one of 100 possible drawers.

More stories and pictures from Japan.