Word: days
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...best at the start of the day. Wake with the first rooster crow and head out for a morning walk. The fog rises, the dew burns off and the water buffalo are saddled up for work in the paddy fields. Stop off at the bakery on Don Det's northern tip, run by an Australian pastry chef, for a simple breakfast of cinnamon rolls or focaccia bread (and don't forget, at some point during your stay, to try the best pumpkin burger on an island full of imitators). You could then cross the bridge over to Don Khon...
...those visiting Kuala Lumpur or Singapore, Malacca's location - two hours by coach from the Malaysian capital, or 3 1/2 hours across the border from the Lion City - make it a no-brainer overnight excursion (or a long day trip, if you've got the stamina). The charming town is brimming with edifices that nod to a complicated colonial history on the Malacca Strait, while the narrow streets and traditional homes offer a peek into the culture of the Peranakans, or Malay Chinese, who lived there in great numbers. Here are three (of many) must-dos. See websites like melaka.net...
...doesn't scare me. I even find it passionate." Besson says it's important for an increasingly diverse France to define its essential unifying values and reclaim a national pride and patriotism that the National Front co-opted long ago for its own xenophobic purposes. (See pictures of Bastille Day celebrations...
...Besson's supporters say the goal, however, is not to single out immigrants and minorities, but rather to safeguard the unique aspects of the French identity that they perceive as being threatened by foreign influences. "Globalization erases a little more of every nation's characteristics every day," says Frédéric Lefebvre, spokesman for Sarkozy's ruling Union for a Popular Majority Party. Given such cultural erosion, Lefebvre called for a defense of our "cultural model and la Douce France" - an allusion to crooner Charles Trenet's famous 1943 song rhapsodizing about the villages, people and traditions...
...Trenet's song was meant to be an inspiration to his countrymen to withstand the brutal Nazi occupation of France. Some of Besson's critics say the national-identity debate, meanwhile, is rooted in modern-day xenophobia, not nostalgia. Perhaps a solution might be to inspire patriotism by asking French people to warble Trenet's ditty regularly rather than dutifully drone "La Marseillaise" once a year...