Our Vietnamese motorbike drivers pulled to the side of the road alongside a group of young men beating the long grass and scooping bucketfuls of filthy water from a gully. “They looking for rats so they can eat them,” said Toan, one of the drivers we’d hired for a day trip throughout the Ninh Binh region. The next moment, two […]
» Read moreThe heat smacked us in the face and pressed heavily on our backs as we labored over uneven sidewalks and dodged motorbikes, seeking a shortcut around traffic-jammed intersections. Horns honked everywhere around us, and we cowered from the manic traffic flow. The sun beat down relentlessly as we struggled along in search of an air-conditioned coffee shop, which, despite detailed […]
» Read moreI walked home this afternoon from Lycofra, our neighbourhood Khmer hair salon where I get my usual $2.50 shampoo that includes a heavenly 45-minute head, neck, hand and arm massage. I strolled along the broken sidewalk past Taqueria Corona, our favourite Mexican restaurant, where chickens pecked in the dirt and moto drivers buzzed along on the wrong side of the […]
» Read moreThe night is eerily quiet in Phnom Penh, the incessant traffic on Norodom Boulevard but a trickle and the low-level rumble of the city stilled by the hangover of a hotly contested election. We strain for sounds of discord – ambulances, shouting, racing engines, gun shots – but hear nothing. I flash back to a night in 2011 when a […]
» Read moreSpicy Thai seafood soup: 100 Baht. Shrimp bombs with spicy sauce: 50 Baht. Ice cold soda water 15 Baht. Total dinner bill for one: $5.30. Welcome to Soi 38, a wonderful and weird gathering place featuring open seating, mismatched food stalls and food vendors that fire up their push carts every evening near Bangkok’s Thong Lo BTS station. Soi is […]
» Read moreA middle-aged American, struggling for months with the text of a book he’s trying to write about his conversion from the life of a western businessman to a resident of one of Southeast Asia’s most undeveloped countries, decides to head to a coastal Thai beach town for some peace and quiet and to write. Salt, sand, wind and ocean air […]
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