Earlier this week, I found out that this particular blog of mine had somehow made it onto the improbably mammoth and random Top 2300 Travel Blogs list, clocking in at number 18 on the Teaching English Abroad category. Aside from calling it by the wrong …
Aside from being commissioned to write ridiculously detailed 20,000 word guides for relocating to Chinese cities I’ve never even visited much less lived in (I’ve written ten of these in the past year, which must qualify for a work of relentless, massive fiction on par …
Last week, we took an overnight train to Sapa, the hill tribe tourist hub in the northern reaches of Vietnam. It’s way up there near China, so far up that it’s shrouded in mist and fog, with palpably moist cloud tendrils snaking down steep, …
In the summer of 2006, I decided to take the train from Istanbul to Damascus, leaving from Haydarpasa station on the Asian side of the city and ending up in Aleppo some days later. I was totally going to do it. All my friends …
I didn’t always live in Shanghai. Or Hanoi. Although this blog places my online identity firmly in heart of east Asia, I have actually spent more time living in Turkey, both in European Istanbul and Asian Anatolia- 6 years in total. Sometimes even I forget …
It’s damp season here in Hanoi. The moldy months are in full swing and I’m feeling super protective of my electronics and my reams of ephemeral life data. Hanoi, like Shanghai before it, kills electronics. I’m quietly doing multiple back ups, fully aware of the …
I’m surprisingly comfortable with having no clue what’s going on around me. I’ve spent most of my adult life in countries where I’m not only far from fluent in the language but am also illiterate and still learning the cultural ropes. Vietnam- and specifically here …
The French had a word for those long grim grey drizzly damp Hanoi winters. Le crachin, they called it, which also applied to similarly grim, grey, drizzly damp French places like Bretagne. They probably attached a grumbled maudit to it, shrugged their shoulders, lit up …
Have you seen this baby? A year ago today, he made a mad dash for the outside world, narrowly averting a first appearance in the hospital elevator, born in a hastily cleared labour room to the sounds of John Coltrane on the iPhone. Everything went so …
This one has been worming its way through my head for about a week or two now. It’s a tricky one, one I can’t quite articulate without giving too much away. I write publicly, but I have boundaries. I need to tread carefully …
Last week, I adamantly insisted that Vietnam- or, more specifically, Hanoi- was the place to be if you have a small urchin to care for. Because reasons. Lots of very good reasons. However, I was totally lying. Kind of. In a hyperbolic, contrarian fashion, I …
I’m going to preface this by noting and underlining the fact that I am an unreliable narrator. I’m also a barefaced liar (intermittently) who is concurrently preparing a post arguing the exact opposite thesis. Frankly, I’m not even sure which one I believe the most. …
