BASED ON A FEW REQUESTS and the desire to spend these next few months quasi-usefully, I’ve decided to write and self-publish a travel book based on this four-month round-the-world trip. It won’t be just these blog posts — they’re frankly too lazy and short independently — but will instead be an expansion and detailed account of what it means to be an aimless twentysomething traveller … Continue reading I’m Writing a Book
I DON’T WANT TO COUNT the number of hours I’ve spent riding trains. More than I care to admit, though enough to brag about distances — 475 kilometers in Vietnam, over 600 in Thailand, not to mention that idiotically naive ride from Halifax to Toronto, nearly 1,000 in a single haul. I’m not sure why travellers love trains. They’re polarizing transport: whereas buses are almost … Continue reading Ways to Pass Time on a Train
THE THEATRE IS A SAUSAGE FEST. Practically nobody’s on a date, which means practically nobody’s a girl, and not a soul looks over 30. V. and I opted to pay a little extra for front-row balcony seats, near five boys in dark clothes devouring beer and chips. We take our seats—surprisingly comfortable—and wait for the show to start. At midnight, the house lights and V. … Continue reading George Town, Malaysia: Notes From a Midnight Movie Screening
IN AUGUST 2007, I rode a bus for 17 hours from Toronto to Chicago to cover the Lollapalooza music festival. I was 18 and had just graduated high school, and that I was able to somehow convince my editor, not to mention my parents, that I was capable of independently making this cross-national trip to cover one of the world’s largest music festivals without a … Continue reading Chicago, IL: Reflections on My First Solo Travel, Wherein I Feign Maturity and Venture to Lollapalooza Alone
THERE ARE TWO directions from South Korea to Canada: a long way back, and a short one. I’m not speaking in metaphors here: one is literally 10,799 kilometres, while the other is closer to 15,444. According to this online distance calculator, when I tried to drag the location marker across to Toronto from Busan over Europe, by around Iceland it simply suggested flying over the North Pole … Continue reading A Long Way Back
A Long Way Back 