Quantcast
Channel: A Long Way Back
Browsing all 70 articles
Browse latest View live

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

My Travel Playlist: Top 10 Songs for Journeys, Ranked in Descending Order of...

FUCK THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS. I have never, and will never, desire a from-California-to-California road trip while flowing my hand in that silly sea-wave gesture out a car window to the tune of “Road...

View Article



Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

A Postgrad’s Travel Tale: The Aimless Twenty-Something Life

IN MAY 2011, I was sitting across from four editors in the startlingly modern private boardroom of the Chronicle Herald newspaper in west end Halifax, Nova Scotia. I’d prepared for this job interview...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Notes From a Singaporean Toilet: The Greatest Airport Bathroom in the World

THE FIRST TIME I SHAT in Singapore’s airport, I was awe-struck. It was clean. It was spacious. It smelled pleasantly floral. The experience was so wholly enrapturing that I literally did not want to...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Hospitality in Savannakhet: The Lovely Ladies of Laos

WE WERE BROKE when we stepped off the bus in Savannakhet. Not broke like we didn’t have cash–we had a few hundred bucks for the coming week of travel, but it was in all the wrong currencies. A few...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Finding the Bang in Bangkok

THE FIRST THING WE SAW WERE DILDOS. Racks of them. Dozens, even. Black and pink, dangerously large, hilariously small, all dangling in streetside tents. One vendor was spoke casually on his cell phone...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Notes from Namhae: Where Cabbies Refuse Our Money Because They’re Too Honest

NAMEHAE IS NOT DIFFICULT TO REACH, but once you’re in, it’s surprisingly difficult to get around. It is the kind of rural island where every day must feel like a weekend, where shop hours are...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo Essay: Two Days in Tokyo

IN WHAT WAS PROBABLY the most expensive weekend of my life, V and I took a trip to Tokyo in March. Good ol’ reliable Air Asia had just opened its Busan – Tokyo route, which meant absurd sales in the...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Notes From a Giant Post Box: Looking For Bingsu; Finding a Monkey in a Diaper

BEFORE I INTRODUCE THE MONKEY LASER CAFE — which is, to clarify, a cafe along a rural patch of Korean coast with a pet monkey and a laser strobe light — it’s important to start with the fact that V and...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Postcard from the Oriental Hotel: George Town, Then & Now

AN ISLAMIC NEIGHBOURHOOD was holding a garage sale in the middle of downtown George Town, Malaysia back in February. V and I spent close to 30 minutes rummaging through the stock, eventually leaving...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Mad Man’s Travel Poem (With Courtesy to Sylvia Plath)

I shut my eyes and pray that Orbitz drops dead; I lift my lids and find that it remains. (I think I made it up inside my head.) Three thousand bucks? No cheaper fare instead? Like arbitrary numbers...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Tokyo, Japan: Impressions in 36 Hours

THERE IS SO MUCH already written about Tokyo, and so much more that needs to be, that my paltry two days (not even!) feel too preposterously short to scribble down anything that could meaningfully add...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Notes From a Mountain: Sleeping Beside the Loudest Snorer in South Korea

THERE’S LITTLE TO BE SAID about hiking in Korea that I haven’t before tried to write about; instead of struggling unprepared with my girlfriend in the bitter midwinter snow, this time we were four...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Ways to Pass Time on a Train

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...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo Essay: Old Korean Men on Bicycles Staring Confusedly at Rock Music

LAST WEEKEND WAS THE Busan International Rock Festival. I checked it out, as did several old Korean men who seemed surprised to have their usual Friday afternoon bike ride interrupted by heavy ska mosh...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Shit Ain’t Right: A Polemic in Defense of Squatty-Potties

IN MY SCHOOL, the nearest boys’ bathroom offers two styles of toilet: one is a Western, “regular” style; the other, squat-style, common in Korea and across Asia. These two roads diverged in a white...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Photo Essay: From Bangkok to Singapore

TO TRAVEL FROM BANGKOK TO SINGAPORE is to experience the development of civilization in slow-motion. You start off in the Wild West of Southeast Asia, where you can purchase a dildo and a person on...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Everyone in Korea Must Visit Ulleung-do (Before it’s Too Late)

THE ANCIENT VOLCANIC SEDIMENT that rises up alongside Jeodeong’s coastal walkway is a reminder of how tiny and insignificant we are on, my God, this island alone, not to mention the world or its...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The Korean DMZ: Look Ma, a North Korean’s Spying Me

IT WOULD BE AN EXAGGERATION to call the DMZ tour a waste of time, but the fact that I knew anything about North Korea beforehand definitely, surprisingly, diminished my enjoyment of the experience. One...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Postcard From Jeju Island, Korea

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...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Welcome to the Bali Show

  “IF YOU WANT TO SEE REAL BALI, Ubud is the right place,” our driver, Lemon, told us en route from the airport. It's not like Kuta in the south, he explained — “That is not my culture,” he said,...

View Article
Browsing all 70 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images