Learning Geography from Songs

Do you remember this catchy number? It was one of my favourites back in school in the early 70s. Turn up the volume on your computer and swing along ....





The song "Is this the Way to Amarillo?" was a big hit for Tony Christie and Peter Kay in 1971. It was originally written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, if I'm not mistaken. Well, you must have heard it umpteen times ....but do you know where in the world is Amarillo? Well, it's a city in Texas, USA. Here's a picture of the city ...

Who says this blog is not educational. LOL.

We also learnt about many other interesting places in the world from songs we grew up with. Some of these places are modern ones, others are historical ...  I'm talking about songs like "Back in the USSR" (Beatles), "By the Rivers of Babylon" (Boney M), "Streets of London" (Ralph McTell) and "London Calling" (The Clash), "Mexican Girl" (Smokie), "New York, New York" (Sinatra & Minelli), "Scarborough Fair" (Simon & Garfunkel), "Waterloo" (Abba) and so on ...  Even Elvis Presley in his heyday had "You Can't Say No in Acapulco".

Let me leave you with another video clip of a more mature Tony Christie with his hit number ... enjoy.

Anybody remember Bombo and Tooktoo?

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This posting is a bit random, but it has been bugging me for a while so let me just ask you guys. I admit this requires you to stretch your memory way, way back to the years of your early Primary school. In fact my own memory is kind of vague on the details. It relates to one of the very first Geography books we were asked to read either in Primary 1 or Primary 2 at St Joseph's in the years between 1965-69.

What I do remember was that one chapter introduced us to an African boy named BOMBO, and told us about how he lived in his village near the Congo in the African continent. This has shades of "Roots", but of course it was years before Alex Haley wrote his bestseller which later became a popular TV series. Heck, this was way before TV came to Sarawak.

I believe the second chapter told us about TOOKTOO, an Eskimo boy who lived in Baffin Island. I remember there were some black and white pictures of igloos and seals.

Further into the book were tales of life in the Andes mountains. I don't remember the character, but I know he was an Indian lad who lived in the mountains. That was also when I first came across the animal known as a llama.

I've obviously been Googling for this information, but have so far not come up with anything relevant, though I'm still trying ...

Let me pause here, and see if what I've shared so far rings any bells with any of you ... In fact if any of you are still in possession of the book, I'd love to see a photo of it. By now, it might have some antique value.


ADDED LATER

Someone pointed me to this photo on the Internet. This apparently is the book in question ...