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Rio de Emocion

Kotora's adventures into academics and climbing the social and professional ladder

  1. Drunk reviewing a kebab. cool story brah

    Who expects a kebab to taste differently from the last one? I do. Every time I walk into a kebab place, I expect it to taste better than the last one I had. Or even worse, as long as it's a different experience. When does that ever happen? They're all the smurfing same, more or less. Maybe the meat is a bit less greasy sometimes. Maybe the veggies are a bit fresher.

    It's my friend's birthday. Most of the people left before midnight. I decided to stick around because she's a friend ...
  2. ToraTravels: no bangin' in Bangkok (january 2014)

    Bangkok is similar to many Chinese cities. It’s a massive sprawl of ugly apartment buildings and expressways casting the streets in their shadows. It’s still dark at 5 am in the morning after I leave the diesel train and hop into a tuk-tuk, a motorcycle with a ittle carriage welded to the back, for a fast ride towards Khao San Road, the one of the most disgusting places in the world. By the time I get there the sun is illuminating the street and the few old white dudes with their arm around a hooker ...

    Updated 07-08-2014 at 11:37 AM by kotora

    Categories
    Final Fantasy , Personal Life , News & Politics , Miscellaneous
  3. ToraTravels: A-party-heid in Israel

    My last night in Tel Aviv happened to be on Israel’s Independence day, which is on a different date every year. From what I knew before about Goa parties, LSD and MDMA, the Israelis love to party and the night of Independence Day confirmed this idea. Tel Aviv was going crazy. Similar to Memorial Days and Victory Days in Europe, the previous day is one of mourning en remembrance of the dead, and in the morning they sound the air alarms in commemoration. The next day is one of celebration. From what ...

    Updated 05-20-2014 at 09:57 PM by kotora

    Categories
    Personal Life , News & Politics , Miscellaneous
  4. ToraTravels: Shenanigans in Sarajevo with wild dogs, nice food and a lack of purpose

    After a visit to Prague and Milan, I find myself in the formerly war-torn Yugoslavia, hoping to find human drama and a good round of fresh ideas. What I found instead were dogs, Turkish food, American tourists and cheap cappuccinos. Going with a more structured format this time!

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    Bling bling

    Bosnia:
    Bosnia was part of the Turkish (Ottoman) empire for hundreds of years, lying on the frontier lands of Christian Europe. ...

    Updated 05-01-2014 at 11:38 PM by kotora

    Categories
    Personal Life , News & Politics , Miscellaneous
  5. ToraTravels: 7 Days in Tibet

    After a drunk New Year's Eve in Guiyang, which ended in a fellow Eoffer's bed, my next stop is Chongqing, yet another megacity you've never heard of. I've been told that the girls are hot.

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    What I found instead was another smoggy, grey industrial mass with Chinese people scurrying around with huge bags on their backs. The city was built on a very hilly landscape and roads are sparse, which means the workers have to go up and down ...
  6. trout just got real.

    It’s been an intense week. A hundred people got killed here at the Independence Square in Kiev, I found myself under sniper fire and got my journalism career kickstarted.



    PHOTOS: http://www.vice.com/nl/read/euromaidan-staat-in-de-fik
    http://www.demotix.com/news/3974240/...police-retreat
    http://www.demotix.com/news/3991334/...rol-parliament

    As some ...
  7. Riots look like video games

    The whole central square of Kyiv, Ukraine has been turned into a city of tents. Fires are burning in barrels to keep the people warm, as it's -20C during the day. Food is being handed out by volunteers. Politicians hold speeches on the stage. A big screen is covering the side of a building, providing video of the screen to everyone in the crowd. Having just flown in from Bangkok, I try to find a place to sit down and figure out what exactly is going on.

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    Updated 02-01-2014 at 01:14 AM by kotora

    Categories
    Video Games , Personal Life , News & Politics , Internet , Miscellaneous
  8. ToraTravels: Shanghai, baby

    It takes about two to three days of being on the road to develop the nice hobo smell I mentioned earlier. That’s three days of walking around and sweating with a full backpack in the same clothes. Did I mention it's over 30 degrees? Whereas I don’t really care what I look or smell like in most Chinese places, I have to admit to feeling like a no-good bum upon arrival in Shanghai, after five days of traveling around from one hopeless place to another.

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  9. ToraTravels: Beijing - Shanghai. A Dirty Floor is Also a Bed

    Shanghai is the first civilized city I've seen in this country, and probably the only one. If 'civilization' means eating brand-name crap at overpriced stores in the company of twenty-three million people in the largest city in the world.

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    Shanghai baby!

    It took me a while to get there. First stop from Beijing was mount Wutai. My train departs on the night of october 1st, the founding day of the People's Republic and a national holiday. ...
  10. Chickens in bags, group drinking and no chocolate anywhere in sight

    From the first moment I set foot in the capital of this glorious People's Republic, one thought dominated my mindscape: Beijing is a giant Chinese restaurant. The most prevailing smell after smelling exhaust fumes waste is most likely to be soy sauce.

    Three weeks in China now, I've been spending most of my time in a town a hundred kilometers further to the north. About 350,000 live here, which is about one residential block in BJ.

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