Author's blog

Traveling through space is geography.  Traveling through time is history.  I just finished reading the Travels of Marco Polo and Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux simultaneously; okay, actually I was alternating between them.  As fate would have it, they’re traveling…

Any flight that leaves at 1:20 in the morning is already doomed as far as I’m concerned.  It can only go down hill from there, especially when the airplane seat back doesn’t seem to want to recline backward.  But this one’s worse than that.  Not only do I arrive…

After four days in Pohnpei, FSM, some of them with drenching rain, all of them with power blackouts, it’s good to get the hell outta’ Slidell, that is Pohnpei.  I’ll leave half a bear of honey behind, but the flashlight and Virgen de Guadalupe votive candle will go with me, presumably all the way back to LA, since the trip’s almost over.  And certainly the brownies will come along, too.  Micronesians make damn good brownies btw.  So I board the plane—a pound or two heavier—in a downpour and…

Baguio is the only bump in a long ride up the coast from Manila to the far reaches of north Luzon.  I’m sure there’s a route that hugs the coast the entire way, but I wanted to stop at Baguio first, before continuing on to Vigan.  Manila is only 150mi/250km away from Baguio, but after a seven-hour bus ride, seems much farther.  That’s because the going is so…

As the plane is landing at Chinggis Khan International Airport in Ulaan Bator, I look down at the dirt tracks swirling through the pastures surrounding the runway.  They look something like a beginner’s guide to chaos theory, the likely paths and the harder ones, converging and re-converging according to some logic or design.  I figure this must somehow be the map to the…

Puerto Lobos is a study in contrasts.  If (the more developed) Bahia de Kino feels like “land’s end”—per Lonely Planet—then this is off the map, though that is changing with the new highway, as previously mentioned.  My only visit two years ago, the road had just been paved to here—from the north down the coast—shortening the distance from the big city of Caborca…

Puerto Libertad is a notch ahead of Puerto Lobos.  At least it has some hotels, and restaurants, too—even an Oriental one, I hear.  But I know in my heart the trip’s really over, anyway, because once the rhythm’s broken, then you have to skip to the next…

The Maldives are a string of pearls posing as islands floating gracefully over the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, 1192 nuggets—1000 of them unpopulated—not simply strewn higgeldy-piggledy atoll, but arranged in a double helix and organized into garlands and necklaces…

The queue for Safi Air flight #248 from Delhi to Kabul looks like something of a loya jirga…

Baguio’s cool, and I don’t just mean the weather, though that’s significant at this altitude of some 1,400 meters, around 4500 feet.  It’s a nice place also, a true garden city in every sense of the term, complete with “orchidarium,” a term I was heretofore unfamiliar with.  The markets are replete with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beans, and all…

Manila is one of those sprawling mega-cities that somehow defines the modern era, somehow defines Southeast Asia, and somehow defines what it is to be human in an era in which quantity seems to have triumphed over quality.  We just may be victims of our own success—reproductive, that is—as the fruits of our collective loins threaten to overwhelm us.  The Philippines…

After a near panic-attack—or maybe it was claustrophobia, I’m not sure—from being in rooms without windows for six days straight, I get on the bus from Baguio to Sagada resolving to do better.  I even find banana bread.  That’s a good sign.  “You ever have before?” the lady behind the smile asks.  I smile back.  Does a hippie live…

Unbeknownst to most of us Guam has had much of the same history as the Philippines, first coming to the world’s attention during Ferdinand Magellan’s famous booty call to the region in 1521.  I suspect he found more in the Philippines because he died there and Spain didn’t get around to formally colonizing Guam until 1565. That’s the way it stayed…

I'm not a travel hacker, not really. I enjoy the places, not the interfaces. And traveling in coach is just fine with me, thanks. As a matter of fact, I do much of my traveling BY coach—bus, that is. I went all over Mexico and Central America before I ever crossed an ocean thirty-five years ago. And the only time I've ever flown first class was when they bumped me…

No, mercenaries have not overrun the Chinese lines, and there are no soldiers from the Mersey or the Thames or the Thyme.  No bombs have been launched; no shots have been fired.  No casualties have been reported;…

As I prepare for my inevitable Never-Ending Tour and the inescapable expatriation that that will likely involve, I find myself standing at the crossroads (again) and taking inventory of my life and environs—particularly the USA—to see what's left to do here and what's here worth keeping.  And even though I've been to some 150-odd (as…

Everybody knows about ‘dynamic pricing’ by now, that internet-era phenomenon of everybody paying a different price for the same flight.  It’s a whole lot like haggling with a rug merchant in… well, just about anywhere.  Actually it’s mostly about tailoring certain prices to certain markets at certain times based on certain criteria, and as long as you know some basic principles, it can work to either party’s advantage.  It only gets creepy when it seems like the robots at Google know more…

Travel writing not only has the potential to compete with novels on literary merit, but to excel.  After all, it’s potentially got everything: exotic locations, true adventure, multiple story lines, peak emotion, honest reflection, and poetic…

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Have you ever noticed that the best travel writers never really considered themselves as such?  Look at anybody’s list of favorites and you’ll see names like Kerouac, Bowles, Matthiessen, etc. quite often, along with names like Theroux and Iyer, writers who…

(part 2 of 2, for more pictures see here)

First you have to realize that Puerto Lobos is not your typical Mexican coastal beach town, with palapas and cabanas, mar y sol, margaritas, mojitos and chicas in bikinis.  Oh sure,…