Vietnam is a quite long but mostly very narrow country located in the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. A former colony of France, the country suffered a a war from the 1950s/1960s until 1975, which killed millions of people, also many in the neighbouring countries. (For some reasons, many Americans think the U.S. “won” the [...]

First I have to mention that I recently got Bryanna Clark Grogan’s World Vegan Feast. What a lovely cookbook! I’ll probably use it to make something for Vegventures. I still don’t understand why she put yeast in a “Finnish” pancake as no Finn ever does that, but I’ll forgive her. She’s a great cookbook author [...]

Korea is located in the Korean peninsula in East Asia, near Japan. The area has a rich culture and history dating back thousands of years. Traditionally Confucianism was the main religion and taekwondo the most popular sport. After the second world war the country was divided into two politically and socially very different states, South [...]

Sri Lanka is a small country off the coast of India, formerly known as Ceylon. It has a rich culture and history and there are archeological findings dating back 100,000 years or even further. It has been a very important port and in the past it has been occupied by the Netherlands, Portugal and Great [...]

An Uyghur dish sounds very interesting, doesn’t it? Even better if you know who they are. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group of Turkic people living in Eastern and Central Asia, mostly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, but also in other parts of China and several other nearby countries. Their total number [...]

Hong Kong is a “special administrative region” of China, together with Macau. This tiny state boasts seven million people, so it’s not surprising it is known for its skyscrapers. Because of the dense population more than 90 % of people travel by public transport, more than in anywhere else in the world. The name Hong [...]

Burma is a large but nowadays also very isolated country in the Southwest Asia and controversy starts already in its name. In the 1989 coup its official name was changed to Myanmar, a name used in some Western media, but people feel that using this name supports the military junta. Also, the name has been [...]

Oh boy. Life has been busy. Interesting but busy. My first novel will be out soon, so a lot of work with proofs, promotion, etc. And I signed a contract for a food-related book (partially also a vegan cookbook!) which will be out next year. Quite excited about both! Unfortunately for most of you, they [...]

The Maldives is a strictly Islamic island nation consisting of 26 atolls located in the Indian Ocean near India and Sri Lanka. It is the smallest Asian country both by population (about 400,000) and by land area and the lowest country on the planet. Sadly, the latter also means it is very vulnerable to some [...]

Uzbekistan is a former Soviet state, now an independent Turkic state, a double-landlocked country (only surrounded by other landlocked countries) and the most populous country (over 27 million people) in Central Asia. The climate has significant temperature variation with summers being as warm as 40C (104F) and winters as cool as -23C (-9F). Numbers aside, [...]