I have a confession. I was a complete and utter nerd as a kid, always happiest with a stack of books under my arm. Long before my first airplane ride, I was already traveling the world of my imagination: Exotic British India from The Jungle Book and...
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with fruit. As a Vietnamese kid growing up in the US, dessert more often than not was just the fruit sitting in a bowl that had been staring at me all throughout dinner. My Banana self revolted. Why didn’t my parents...
Burnout is a very real and sometimes inevitable consequence of long-term travel. My Fieldmarshal personality coupled with my job as a travel writer means I’m usually blitzing from one sight to the next, ticking off places on my list of must-sees with military precision. To restore the...
With the finale of Parks and Recreation last week, TV has entered a sad, sad era. It’ll be the first time in nearly 10 years that neither Tina Fey nor Amy Poehler will be on the small screen. In honor of their comedic genius, I’ve decided to...
Vietnam is recovering this week from another Lunar New Year – nine blissful days where the country practically comes to a standstill to ring in the Year of the Goat. The city slowly empties as work-obsessed urbanites head back to their countryside hometowns, shops are shuttered and...
“I used to walk past this restaurant that was just disgusting. They had blackened rice cookers outside and dirty floors. No farang would ever go in there. But a friend took me and it was just fabulous. Everyone was there from the hi-so grandmother (Thai-English for “high society”), to a...
I love meeting artists. I love seeing the world through a different set of eyes. Eyes that see in a palette of colors. The sky isn’t just blue. It’s cerulean. The bark of a tree isn’t brown. It’s burnt sienna with a touch of yellow ochre where the sunlight finds...
I am what is known as a late adopter. (Fine. It’s not strictly one of the technology cycles but much preferable to being called a “laggard“.) I didn’t climb aboard the iPhone bandwagon as much as I was chloroformed-into-a-moving-van onto it by a friend who had an...
In a twisted hobby, I’ve been known to go on job interviews for positions I wasn’t truly interested in. I also like taking tests. One job I went for actually had me do an IQ test as part of the selection process. Best. Interview. Ever. And I...
I’m trying to think of the exact moment I became the beach equivalent of a vapid, disconnected supermodel. Having traveled to some of the world’s best beaches in Zanzibar, Curacao, Hawaii and countless Thai beaches, I can relate to supermodel Linda Evangelista who famously said: “We don’t...