Tag: travel

Dear Fellow Travellers and Expats: You are NOT More Special or Better or Smarter Than Your Average Bear
July 15, 2015

Dear Fellow Travellers and Expats: You are NOT More Special or Better or Smarter Than Your Average Bear

  I’ll admit that I’ve been up since 4am almost every morning this week, woken by a wide-eyed toddler towering over me in the early morning half light, adamantly making the ASL sign for water, food, ball, whatever in my face, and am coping with …

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Welcome to Sapa: Notes From the Hub of the Curiously Dystopian Hill Tribe Folk Villages
April 28, 2015

Welcome to Sapa: Notes From the Hub of the Curiously Dystopian Hill Tribe Folk Villages

  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, …

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Time Travelling Postcards: Cairo, in the Mad Summer of 2006
March 18, 2015

Time Travelling Postcards: Cairo, in the Mad Summer of 2006

  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 …

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Time Travelling Postcards: Anatolian Road Trip, 2003
March 12, 2015

Time Travelling Postcards: Anatolian Road Trip, 2003

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 …

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Time Travelling Postcards From: Christmas in New York, 2002
March 6, 2015

Time Travelling Postcards From: Christmas in New York, 2002

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 …

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Do Shared Memories Still Exist if One Party is Trying Really Hard to Forget?: Notes on Losing 5 Years of Travel
January 24, 2015

Do Shared Memories Still Exist if One Party is Trying Really Hard to Forget?: Notes on Losing 5 Years of Travel

    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 …

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On Existential Migration, Home, Leaving, and Scaring Yourself Silly
December 6, 2013

On Existential Migration, Home, Leaving, and Scaring Yourself Silly

One day, not so long ago, when we were still in the exhausting throes of impenetrable visa applications and living out of two battered China Post boxes, partly in my parents’ basement and partly in the little house in the big woods where I grew …

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Big Dumplings in Little China
October 20, 2013

Big Dumplings in Little China

It’s hard to write about your homeland.   I’ve spent decades honing my skills at describing places from the perspective of an outsider looking in. It helps to not fully understand what’s going on, or if I actually do know what’s going on, to be …

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Seriously, I Have No Idea What I’m Doing: Notes on Being Knocked Up Whilst in Transit
September 17, 2013

Seriously, I Have No Idea What I’m Doing: Notes on Being Knocked Up Whilst in Transit

  Back when we first found out I was pregnant, about a million years ago in Shanghai, we thought it utterly rational to carry on with our plan to pack up and leave our jobs, our flat, and China, embarking on a road trip down …

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A Totally Impractical Guide to an Out of Body Weekend in Jǐnán
March 27, 2013

A Totally Impractical Guide to an Out of Body Weekend in Jǐnán

  After a few months’ hiatus from my ongoing whirlwind Tour de Chine (the Academic Route), I’m back on the road, hopping trains like a nerdy hobo and wearing butt-shaped grooves into creaky university chairs all over this fine nation. This past weekend, I went …

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Radio Silence: How to Write Publicly When All of Your Journeys are Private
March 9, 2013

Radio Silence: How to Write Publicly When All of Your Journeys are Private

I’m a surprisingly private person. I’ve only started realizing that recently. This may come as news to you, given that I’m blurting this out in a decidedly public medium and have blurted out all sorts of revealing bits and pieces about myself over the past …

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Notes on Getting the Hell Out of Dodge: Oh, Hey, Bali! Nice to See You Again!
January 27, 2013

Notes on Getting the Hell Out of Dodge: Oh, Hey, Bali! Nice to See You Again!

On the morning we left Shanghai for Bali, I was sitting on my bed sometime around 8am, huddled under a few layers of duvets, toes numb, feeling  quite out of sorts. I was barely recovered from a four day tummy bug in which I failed …

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