IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMON SENSE, and any money at all, Cambodia is a remarkably easy country to travel through. This is not because the roads are smooth (they’re not) or the touts polite (they’re obnoxious). It is, as it often is, the people who are making our lives easier, albeit for a price, further albeit for a small one. Horror stories upheld by statistics … Continue reading Cambodians Make Travel So Easy it’s Creepy
I AM NOT SPECIFICALLY a food blogger, but Robyn Eckhardt is. A friend I trust in all matters of Asian cuisine—we’ll call him Eldma—pointed me in the direction of Ms. Eckhardt’s blog, Eating Asia, which she has been running with her photographer-husband for enough years to make any journo jealous. They’re quite good at what they do, and so when V and I decided to … Continue reading Photo Food Essay: Robyn’s George Town
FROM BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN TO KUCHING, crossing all of Sarawak and most of Brunei, was more an experiment in bus patience than intense jungle adventure. V and I are not wild rainforest trekkers (can I use “jungle” and “rainforest” interchangeably like that?), though we did venture out into the bush once in Miri, which was itself an unforgettable story I’m still trying to write in … Continue reading Stories Left Behind in Borneo
TRAVELLING MALAYSIA is travelling to eat. Doesn’t matter if you’re into greasy Chinese, buttery Indian, carby Western or spicy indigenous stuff, one of the reasons to visit Malaysia is the beautiful flavourfulness of it all. George Town, Penang— which will perhaps always rank highly in my Top Cities Of The World list—was my first and best introduction to the country’s many dishes (it’s worth giving a shout-out to the … Continue reading The Food of Kuching, Malaysia
“I KNOW, I TALK,” our boat driver tells us as we step aboard. “I don’t know, I don’t talk.” What he means, I think, is that he’ll tell us what he knows, but he doesn’t know everything. He knows, for instance, that his name is Lokman, that he is 46-years-old, that he became a boat driver at age 18 because he hated school, that he … Continue reading Folks on the Water
THERE ARE LITTLE THINGS that slip between cracks when trying to keep up a blog. V and I have met a lot of genuine people, some for even just a few moments, who made an impression on us but whose stories got left behind after we moved on; they felt too short to justify full-length blog posts, or we were rushed and simply forgot. I’ve … Continue reading Stories Left Behind in Indonesia
I DO NOT REGRET spending a total of $50 (40 for the ticket, 10 for the taxi) on the Borobudur Sunrise package, even though it’s almost twice the regular cost of admission, and here’s why: It’s literally unrepeatable. The much-vaunted experience is monopolized by the Manohara research group, which I know very little about but understand to be a team of people who exclusively study … Continue reading Borobudur at Dawn
THE REALIZATION THAT YOU WILL spend the next six hours (maybe seven? It’s not really clear) on a bus that certainly, at one point, has transported convicts to death row, and is indeed still probably haunted by their ghost terrors, is a sort of badge of honour in the travel world, something to offer a quick anecdote around the hostel dining table. “Oh yeah?” pipes … Continue reading The Bus Across Java That Tortured Us Mentally, Physically and Somehow Culturally
YOU NEVER REALLY KNOW what you’re going to need for four months of nomadicness. I still don’t. But I found it helpful, when prepping for this trip, to search for what others brought, so I figured I’d add to the continent of information out there and toss up my own belongings. Three quick-dry t-shirts One button-down collar shirt One underarmour shirt One half-t-shirt, half-long-sleeve roll-up … Continue reading What I’m Packing For Four Months of Travel
YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL where you are in Jeju from where the mountain is. And you always know where it is, and you always know which mountain. Though Korea’s largest island is home to many peaks, only one might be called “the” mountain — Hallasan, the tallest in South Korea. It is the centerpiece of Jeju Island, visible from almost anywhere, looming in the distance, … Continue reading Postcard From Jeju Island, Korea
A Long Way Back 