Blog

Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies. That isn’t to say that I ever actually wanted to BE Indiana Jones, having headhunters, witchdoctors and Nazis chasing after me. I most definitely do not like snakes. What I like about watching Raiders is observing people solving puzzles that reveal exotic, hidden spaces. […]

I like street names that tell it to you straight. If you go to “Big Pagoda Avenue,” you expect to see a big pagoda! Or “Roman Amphitheater Way” – if there’s not a Roman amphitheater there, it’s false advertising! Well, no surprise that at the end of Monkey Forest Road in Ubud, Bali, there is, […]

If you asked me to put together a bucket list of must-see travel locations, I probably wouldn’t include Vang Vieng, Laos. Oh, I’d probably mention Wow sights like the Taj Mahal in Agra, the Pyramids in Giza, or Petra in Jordan. But Vang Vieng, that’s a second-tier location, a C or D ticket. And yet. […]

When traveling, we continually find ourselves in the role of “guest.” We stay in Guest Houses, or if we’re lucky, Guest “Suites.” Inherent in this relationship is the expectation that we leave a minimal footprint wherever our path takes us. After all, if you stay in a someone’s house, you don’t take the silverware with […]

“You should go in the water, Dave.” “Nah, putting on a bathing suit is such a pain. I’ll just sit here and take pictures.” “Not a chance buddy. You’re going in!” That’s my friend, Steve, insisting that I get off the sidelines and get on the darn field. Or in this case, insisting that I […]

It’s ~280 miles from Kyoto to Tokyo. On the bullet train, that’ll take you about 2.5 hours. But imagine how many days it would take if you had to walk it? That’s exactly what people had to do in the old days, hundreds of years ago, if they wanted to travel from Kyoto, the imperial […]

I got sick in Jaisalmer, India. It wasn’t my fault. I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant, trying to decide what to order, and these three Canadian nurses suggested, “Order the thali.” Okay fine, I like thalis—Indian combination plates. When my meal arrives, one of the curries is cold. “Hey guys, should I eat this? […]

As a kid, I remember gawking at the slides my grandparents brought back from their trip to Hong Kong and China: glittery images of dragon boats, Chinese junks and golden hotels. I found myself yearning to visit the exotic Orient, to immerse myself in the sheer wonder of it all. The years passed, of course, […]

I’ve always been spooked by pods. It started with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a 1956 sci fi/horror film where aliens abduct people and grow back exact replica replacements – in pods. Then, of course, there are the Alien movies, where not only are people captured and suspended in stringy/gooey pods (for later consumption), but […]

Indiana Jones ruined me. There’s this scene, where Indy is searching through an Arab bazaar, desperate to find his “girlfriend”, Marion, who’s been kidnapped by the bad guys. Certain that she’s been hidden in a woven basket, Indy starts pulling off the lids of every basket he can find, until finally he’s faced by an […]