Adventurers Club Honolulu : Adventurers' Club May

(click to enlarge calendar)
NOTE: The program of June 18th is changed to “The Scariest Place in the World: Travels in North Korea and the Demilitarized Zone” by Jeffrey Tripp, Ph.D. - see below
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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Adventurers:

The challenge of finding satisfactory venues continues. Although open for lunch, Treetops is not yet hosting dinner meetings. Pagoda has closed its restaurant for dinner but will open for banquets so we will be meeting there and Waialae in the next quarter. Lowell has some interesting talks lined up.

In May we travel to Burma with Keith Loring, news correspondent in Southeast Asia for thirty years.

In June we learn of the Ancient Sites of Southeast Asia and their Conservation with Dr. William Chapman. I’ve heard Bill speak and can guarantee that this will be an exceptional evening. In March he gave this talk at the Explorers’ Club in NYC.

In July we hike 100 miles through two of Africa’s great game parks with Dr. John B. Hall and three other members of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club.

In August I present a combination of a series of adventures in the wilderness areas of Hawaii. This is a repeat of a program I gave at the Christmas meeting about fifteen years ago.

Enclosed with this newsletter is a survey and an addressed return envelope. Please complete and return as an aid to the board as it works to guide the club in the future.

Thanks Bob Liljestrand, President

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THIS PROGRAM WAS REPLACE BY ONE BY BOB LILJESTRAND

MAY 21, 2015 Tyranny and Insurgency in Post-War Burma
By Guest Keith Lorenz
Burma has known no peace since the surrender of the Japanese armed forces in 1945. As a news correspondent in Southeast Asia for thirty years, Keith Lorenz has maintained a special focus on Burma even though that country was essentially forgotten during the long American intervention in the region. His first visit to Rangoon was in 1962 - one month before General Ne Win, the president, blew up the university student center- and the country slid into a backwater in which it remained until a few years ago. From the 1960's to the 1990's Mr. Lorenz made numerous trips into the insurgent held areas beyond the Thai border. He will show color images of the armed resistance camps of the Karen and Mon National Liberation Armies, including refugees and village life in these insecure liberated areas, and will provide an overview of Burma in colonial times, in- dependence, and prospects for the future. In addition to reporting on Southeast Asia for NBC News, Mutual Broadcasting, VOA, the London Daily Telegraph, San Francisco Chronicle and, after the Vietnam war, for UN Radio and the New York Journal of Commerce. Mr. Lo- renz initiated the Salween Liaison Office in 1984 which, as a small NGO, aims to provide humanitarian relief and polit- ical awareness of the plight of the ethnic minorities in Burma. He has resided primarily in Honolulu since first coming here on a journalism fellowship at the East West Center. Mr. Lorenz wrote the text for a coffee table-sized art book, published in 2013, featuring forty years work, mainly in Asia, by a National Geographic photographer. It may be glimpsed by going to: www.chesleyphotovoyage.com
Cocktails	6:00 pm	Pagoda Hotel—1525 Rycroft Street The parking lot for the Pagoda is on Rycroft Street. Park on the upper or lower level and use the parking machine to pay $1 per hour. Additional parking is in the ROSS building across the street, also $1 per hour.
Reservations	Contact	Judy Simon at jsimon@hawaii.rr.com or 373-2359 (email preferred) by Tuesday, May 19 *Late cancellations and no shows will be billed.*

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New Program:

JUNE 18, 2015—
"The Scariest Place in the World:
Travels in North Korea and the Demilitarized Zone"

by Jeffrey Tripp, Ph.D.

North Korea is largely portrayed in Western media as the most secretive and inaccessible nation on earth. While it does much to live up to these depictions, the country maintains a small tourism industry, catering primarily to Chinese tourists. During periods of détente, however, Western tourists (including Americans), are permitted to travel to the North. Tour companies based in Beijing with ties to the North’s tourism industry guide Western tourists on highly restrictive trips to areas all over the country. Although limited to a few thousand per year, the tourists provide much needed hard currency for the North’s autocratic regime. As part of the research for his doctoral dissertation on the Korean DMZ, Dr. Tripp made two trips to the North. The first took him on a weeklong tour that included sites in Pyongyang, Kaesong, and Myohyang Mountain. During the first trip he witnessed two of the extraordinary mass gymnastics performances, each featuring over 40,000 performers. On the second trip, Dr. Tripp made a rare crossing of the DMZ from South to North as part of a tour organized for South Korean tourists to visit Kaesong near the end of the “Sunshine Policy” period of détente in 2008. He also made frequent trips to the truce village of Panmunjom located within the DMZ, a place where Cold War tensions have never abated. His talk will reveal the quirky, highly politicized, and sometimes frightening nature of travel to North Korea and along the DMZ. Jeffrey Tripp is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mânoa, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2010. He holds a Master’s Degree in Asian Studies from UHM and graduate certificates in Korean Studies and Historic Preservation. His research, teaching, and writing focuses primarily on US-East Asian relations and America’s political and military world role. He held a fellowship at the Academy for Korean Studies in 2008 and is currently at work on a book manuscript based on his dissertation. He has traveled extensively in the Asian-Pacific region.
Cocktails	6:00 pm	Free parking in club lot: Waialae Country Club, 4997 Kahala Avenue

Program	7:30 pm	(Approximately)
Reservations	Contact	Wendla Liljestrand at wliljestrand@hawaii.rr.com 554-9639 by Thursday, June 11 *Late cancellations and no shows will be billed.*

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JULY 16, 2015—Walking through Tsavo— an account of an 11-day, 100-mile walk through two of Africa’s great game parks PAGODA HOTEL BALLROOM
By Guest Dr. John B. Hall
In June, 2005, four members of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club traveled to Kenya to join a tour conducted by Iain Allen, of the adventure touring company, Tropical Ice. This tour involved a conducted walk from the western boundary of West Tsavo National Park to the eastern boundary of East Tsavo National Park, a distance of about 100 miles, which took 11 days. Iain is the only person who has established a sufficiently good reputation with the manag- ers of these Parks to be trusted to conduct people on foot through the area, something which he had been doing for about 25 years at this time. The walks were done in the mornings, usually on a side of the river away from the jeep roads, and were followed by excellent meals, English tea, and a game drive to view more animals from the Land Rover in the evenings. There were close encounters with hippos, elephants, lions, and wart hogs, as well as seeing many other animals from a greater distance. All in all, an unparalleled adventure! John B. Hall is an emeritus professor of Microbiology at the University of Hawai`i. He earned his PhD in Biochem- istry from Cal Berkeley and taught at UH Mānoa for 30 years, retiring in 1992. His four sabbaticals overseas were spent in Dunedin, New Zealand, Kathmandu, Nepal, Ankara, Turkey, and, after retirement, in Belize City, Belize. The last three of these were on Fulbright grants. Growing up in Denver gave him a love of the mountains and the outdoors, and he has been a member of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club for more than 50 years. Early in his Hawaiian residency he developed an interest in native plants and his book, A Hiker's Guide to Trailside Plants in Hawai`i, is now in its 3rd printing.
Cocktails	6:00 pm	Pagoda Hotel—1525 Rycroft Street

Program	7:30 pm	(Approximately)
Reservations	Contact	Teena Urban at uteena@aol.com or 946-3551 (email preferred) by Tuesday, July 14 *Late* *cancellations* *and* no *shows* *will* be *billed.*

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AUGUST 20, 2015

Adventures at Home in Hawai‘i

By Member Bob Liljestrand

Bob Liljestrand

As our Club president Bob tells it, "In my younger days I got myself involved
in many adventures — some of which were probably foolish. A few examples...
rolled a sixteen foot inflatable off the Kohala Coast of the Big Island and got
stranded there for three or four days, traveled the north coast of Moloka’i by
kayak or small inflatable about twenty-five times, crossed the Moloka’i
channel numerous times by small boat, got kicked off Niihau twice. But
somehow we always survived. I always carried cameras and many years ago
assembled all as if it was one grand adventure which of course it was."
Don’t miss this chance to see and hear about Bob's grand adventures among
our very own islands!

Bob has been a member of the Club for 40 years - since 1975
– and is the current president. He may have inherited his love of adventure
from his father, one of the Club’s charter members. Among Bob’s many other
travel adventures is running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon
-- five times!