The Travels and Life of Päivi and Santeri Kannisto

Recent lack of freedom in Thailand have been business as usual in Singapore for years. Both countries are dictatorships. [Suomeksi] We visited Singapore for a few days trying to sort out Thailand visa mess. The 30-day permission to stay had to be changed to a visa that could then—possibly—be somehow extended. Not too complicated, fortunately. And the obvious motivation behind this seems to be ripping off tourists.

Before entering Thailand we knew that the King is extremely respected and revered in Thailand. And that it is illegal to insult him or the monarchy in general. This raised some contradictory thoughts in us and sounded quite pre-historic, very far away from the anarchy we support or from the republic states that we were used to. When we entered Thailand there was a film shown on the flight before landing. In the film an older couple was walking around in fancy clothes and distributing presents to peasants. There were also some pictures of the couple when they were younger, and the old man took pictures of the people that worshipped him. Funny thing, we thought and continued sleeping.

Thai Military seized power in Bangkok on Tuesday night, the 19th of September, just a few hours ago. They occupy now every crucial corner in the capital, among others government building and the Prime Minister’s office.

We have no longer storage space limitations. Our books are transferred to this new blog. Some of the books used to be in Google books but we had to remove them because of technical issues. The new high-resolution e-books (PDF) are available at nomad and travel book downloads .

Visiting Antai-ji Zen Monastery in Japan, learning sitting meditation (zazen) and working on the rice fields. Travel story with photos. The temple of the Antai-ji Zen Monastery is called Hondo. The sitting meditation (zazen) is done there as well as the Buddhist rituals such as Monk promotion. In those rituals the main entrance is used, otherwise the side door.

Travelling the trans-siberian railway all the way from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, Russia. And visiting Voguls on the way. We started our Trans-Siberian railway ride from Kuokkaniemi, a small village situated near Sortavala and Finnish border in Karelia. The trip ended in Vladivostok near Japan and Korea totaling well over 10.000 kilometres. It would have been possible to do the trip in about eleven days, but we wanted to stop every once in a while and look around. We bought our tickets one by one, just to the next destination, and got this way a lot of experience of Russian bureaucracy, despotism of the police (militsiya), and the lack of any kind of logic in Russia. We knew right away that our Experiment would at least be challenging. In Santeri’s words: Russia should be avoided at any cost.

Sixteen funny ways to entertain yourself in the Trans-Siberian 2-week train ride through Russia. Start to prepare for the trip well in advance: don’t change your shirt, socks or underpants at least for one week. Eat pea soup before the trip so in the train you will be able to entertain other passengers by farting “International”.

Vegetarians, nudists, herbs-smoking rastas and hippies in the Russian Rainbow gathering in Karelia, Russia in 2006.

Visiting friends and Santeri's old colleagues from SOT Finnish Software Engineering Ltd. in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia.

Photos of visiting family and friends in Europe.