• Laos – Pakse Market, Temple

    28Jan
    Categories: Photos Comments: 4


    Meat for sale


    Peppers


    Eggs

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  • Laos – Pakse

    27Jan
    Categories: Photos Comments: 0


    Yawning in the cold, pale Laos morning after an all-night bus ride.


    Cold morning


    Cold sunrise

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  • Laos – Vientiene

    27Jan
    Categories: Uncategorized Comments: 0

    It would probably be pertinent to note that this trip was mere days after I had gotten my first DSLR and the quality of the pictures are reflected in that fact.


    Playing in the streets


    Little tot riding along


    A sundae

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  • Golden Rule in the Hutchinson News

    17Jan
    Categories: Christianity, Work Comments: 2

    Kathy Hanks of the Hutchinson News has a great story that was above the fold on the front page of the Faith section about Golden Rule Travel:

    Gift from above

    Family-run agency that flies missionaries, others to exotic sites has local office.
    By Kathy Hanks – The Hutchinson News – khanks@hutchnews.com

    PLEASANTVIEW – When a church group from Michigan needs a flight for an annual mission trip to South Africa, they call a Reno County business for assistance. The same goes for individuals, non-government agencies and humanitarian groups across the United States. While it might easily go unnoticed to motorists zooming along U.S. 50 just outside South Hutchinson, Golden Rule Travel has become well-known to those needing to get to that not-so-easy-to-reach location – say, for instance, Conakry, Guinea, by way of Cameroon. The Christian-based, family-operated travel business began as a hobby around Marvin Mast’s kitchen table in Virginia, back in 1985. Today, it has burgeoned into four offices and 22 employees. Two of those offices are in Kansas.

    Read the rest…

    A quote from the article that I enjoyed was, “Office employees at Pleasantview almost all are related in some way, including two of the Masts’ globe-trotting children, Hans and Benji.” :-D

    One clarification about commissions/fees. First, the article called the 5-7% that dad used to get when he first started a “fee” instead of a “commission”. Commission was taken out of the fare price and paid by the airline, while fees are added on top of the airline fare. Second, the article didn’t mention (and we didn’t think to mention it) that since then, most airlines have cut the commission to 0% and we subsist almost entirely on adding fees on top of the fares we get–whether they’re published fares or wholesale fares. Any confusion arises from our inadequate explanations in the interviews rather than it being Kathy’s fault.

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  • US Airways flight crashes into Hudson

    15Jan
    Categories: news Comments: 3


    Minutes ago a US Airways flight crashed into the Hudson River off of Manhattan. Survivors were seen standing on the wings.

    CBS managed to get it colossally and obviously wrong by calling the plane an Airbus 380. US Air doesn’t have any A380s, it’s waaay too small to be an A380, and it only had 60 passengers on board. Someone at CBS is a little clueless.

    Update: A co-worker looked up the status of the flight and it’s shown as “Status Exception”. Indeed!

    Update #2: It appears that a flock of geese flew in front of the plane and a goose entered each jet engine causing them to burst into flames. Fortunately all humans have been rescued and two charbroiled geese are the only reported casualties.

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  • Life of a Travel Agent

    13Jan
    Categories: Asides, Humor, Work Comments: 1

    If you are ever tempted to think that we travel agents at Golden Rule don’t earn the $20 ticketing fee we charge per ticket, think again. Try learning to do this: rm*ms c *vn skylink *bf 286.00 *tx 100.70 *tf 386.70 *cm6 *ttintl

    Or even better, this: DL X/ATL DL GUA143.00TXMSOS3 DL X/ATL DL PHL143.00TXMSOS3 NUC286.00END XT USD 16.10US USD 5.00XA USD 7.00XY 7.50AY USD 30.00XC USD 13.50XF PHL4.50ATL 4.50ATL4.50

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  • Laos – Trip from Chiang Mai to Vientiene

    11Jan
    Categories: Photos Comments: 0

    I’m finally going to post some Laos pictures from over a year ago. About time, eh?


    Bowing down to a monk, asking for a blessing


    Bike vendor


    Long bus layover after an overnight bus ride = tired and sleepy

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  • Israel, Palestine

    03Jan
    Categories: Personal, Political Comments: 1

    I was reading the U.K. Daily Mail and recognized the following pictures. When I lived in Israel, I would take the bus through this checkpoint every couple of days:
    Kalandia checkpointKalandia checkpoint

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