The spectacle takes place in the fall at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang.  I attended in 2010 and 2012.  It has to be seen to be believed.  You’re looking at 10,000 dancers, acrobats and performers on the stadium floor.  The background screen of a rising sun and Korean letters is a “card stunt,” 30,000 students holding colored cards composing it.

The number “65” is for the 65^th anniversary of the surrender of Imperial Japan in World War II (August 15, 1945 – I took this photo in 2010), their Liberation Day (our V-J Day).  The snowy mountain depicted below the 65 is Mount Paekdu, where all North Koreans are taught their country’s founder Kim Il-sung defeated the Japanese and won the war (he was actually at a Soviet army camp near Khabarovsk, Siberia at the time).  They are never taught a word about the events a few days prior to their Liberation Day, nor to whom the Japanese surrendered.  Hands down, NorkLand is the world’s most bizarre country. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #88 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

A cliff-top fishing village on the Italian Riviera?  Nope, Azenhas (ah-zhane-yas) do Mar – Watermills of the Sea – is on the Portuguese Riviera.  This is a magic place of fairy tale castles, thousand year-old fortresses, luxury boutique hotels, fabulous food, great wine, gorgeous beaches, and postcard-perfect scenery everywhere.

The Portuguese people are among the kindest in Europe, while Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world.  Of all the planet’s First World countries, it’s hard to find one more calm and serene than here.

If you’d like a personal experience of the best of Portugal, Wheeler Expeditions can arrange it for you.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #87 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is one of the magical places we experience on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions.  An independent kingdom for 650 years in the remote Mustang region of Nepal, it is one of the last places of traditional Tibetan culture on earth, unchanged for centuries.  There are sky-caves here – apartment complexes carved out of vertical cliffs 2,000 years ago – Drok-pa nomads in the high pastures, spectacular sacred ceremonies, all in a mysteriously beautiful setting where the Himalayas meet the Tibetan Plateau.  We’ll be here again next April. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #86 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.

American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons.  They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4^th century AD.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The ramshackle Club Obama is a shed on stilts above a garbage dump of a beach in Conakry, the capital of the West African country of Guinea.  It doesn’t get much business anymore because Obama is no longer popular here.  Guineans thought he would flood them with US taxpayer dollars but he didn’t.  “Obama did nothing for us,” they’ll tell you.

The sad truth is that Guineans have done nothing for themselves.  Independence from France came in 1958, and the place has been run by one party dictatorships, military juntas, and ridiculously corrupt leaders ever since.  It’s the size of Oregon, with 12 million people who have a per capita GDP of $800 a year.  Yet is has up to half the world’s reserves of bauxite (source of aluminum) and is #3 in world production, has diamonds, gold, and many other resources  – which all goes into the bottomless pockets of whoever the ruling elite are at the moment.

It’s the tragedy of so much of Africa writ large.  In 1974, after Cassius Clay had his “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire with George Foreman, he was asked by a reporter upon his return to America, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?”  With wit and wisdom he replied, “Thank God my Granddaddy got on that boat!”  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #84 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

What many consider the world’s most beautiful mosque is in Persia’s most captivating city, Shiraz.  Over four millennia older than Islam, over two millennia older than Persia, Shiraz was "Shirrazish," a city of ancient Elam at the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago.  Even then, Shiraz was famous for wine.  A thousand years ago, it was considered the best in the world.  Marco Polo praised it. No more.  Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were over 300 Persian wineries. Now there are none.

Shiraz is still a city of gardens and flowers.  At the garden tomb of Persia’s most revered poet Hafez (1315-1390), young couples gather for discrete romance as they have for centuries.  The beauty of Nasr ol-Molk – with the sun shining through its stained glass windows covering the floor carpets in color, and the interior a dazzling display of pink tile ornamentation – can be overwhelming.  The same for the friendliness of the people – always welcoming with a smile for you.

Especially if you are American.  All the people we met love America and despise their rulers.  The Land of Persia is still here in today’s Iran, and someday it will be free, America’s ally again.  The wine will flow here once more.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #83 photo ©Jack Wheeler)