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  1. jessi,
    that pimp-ass resort is NICE!
    I was in the Rivera Maya years back,
    in Akumal and it was fantastic.

    cobble
    and Arkady,
    It’s always a great trimp to the Yucatan,
    agree that Playa del Carmen is a lot of fun.
    To do the Whale Shark tour though, I think
    it’s recommended to stay near to Merida and
    take a day trip to Holbox Island where the
    While Sharks gather to get thier party on and
    mate.
    I guess, the last thing they want is some
    human siding up to them when they just want to
    meet some other sharks, but it doesn’t harm them.

  2. “Machu Picchu is a world heritage site and once in a lifetime trek.”

    That’s why I’d like to go. And before I get too old to hike it! But perhaps they have “old lady” tours, my aunt went a couple years ago.

  3. …so it seems about evenly split,
    Machu Picchu is a world heritage site and once in a lifetime trek.
    The whale shark experience is also once in a lifetime and
    it would be awesome to swim next to a 95,000 lb sea creature.

    ha ha CGar,
    I see you were up late too.
    But I can’t believe nobody found that excerpt from
    Gravity’s Rainbow as funny as I did. :o(

  4. MM had the bad cold version- still hacking away downstairs. She did have a lot of fun with the rum cure though, BSM.

    Just wanted to point out what with all the praise of China and Japan, and how they can get so much done so quickly, that China is a communist country.

    Re Japan: (wiki) Japan has a unitary rather than federal system of government, in which local jurisdictions largely depend on national government financially. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (formerly Ministry of Home Affairs), although much less powerful than its prewar counterpart (the Home Ministry), intervenes significantly in local government, as do other ministries. This is done chiefly financially because many local government jobs need funding initiated by national ministries. This is dubbed as “thirty-percent autonomy” (三割自治 san wari jichi?).

    The result of this power is a high level of organizational and policy standardization among the different local jurisdictions allowing them to preserve the uniqueness[citation needed] of their prefecture, city, or town. Some of the more collectivist jurisdictions, such as Tokyo and Kyoto, have experimented with policies in such areas as social welfare that later were adopted by the national government.

    just sayin.

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