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 ArticleA 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 ArticleNotes 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 ArticleHospitality 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 ArticleFinding 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 ArticleNotes 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 ArticlePhoto 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 ArticleNotes 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 ArticlePostcard 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 ArticleMad 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 ArticleTokyo, 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 ArticleNotes 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 ArticleWays 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 ArticlePhoto 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 ArticleShit 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 ArticlePhoto 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 ArticleEveryone 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 ArticleThe 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 ArticlePostcard 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 ArticleWelcome 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,...
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