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Dispatches

Going Home Again: 96 Hours in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (Day 1)

I left the hustle of sunny, downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida almost two decades – a full twenty years – ago. It’s where I spent most of my formative years. It’s my second home of sorts. But I was just a boy then and that feels like a lifetime ago. So much time has passed and [...]

Never Look the Monkeys in the Eye (and Other Essential Tips from Kyoto’s Mount Arashiyama)

All around us, the forest breathed. Raindrops plonked against leaves. Neon-green moss coated the stones below my feet. For the first time in five days of Kyoto sightseeing, my two friends and I were alone: Just us, the trees, the mountain… and the monkeys. Maybe we should have noticed the lack of other visitors at [...]

Survivalist Housecats, Benadryl, and Political Turmoil: Riding Rails and Couches on a Circumnavigatory Amtrak Jaunt, Part 6

Western Endings About 100 miles into Montana I began to miss Julia’s charms: her strange questionings, even stranger opinions, her constant commentary during the two Paul Newman movies we watched, and her farewell meal of Hamburger Helper with rum and Cokes. It was a dial-toned Midwestern traveler, a kind of nemesis of people like Julia, [...]

Survivalist Housecats, Benadryl, and Political Turmoil: Riding Rails and Couches on a Circumnavigatory Amtrak Jaunt, Part 5

The Midwest “You’re going to like this place,” Dr. A said. “I think you could call it a down-home breakfast?” “Could I? I’m not sure what that means.” “It’s pretty much a restaurant in a house.” The entire family at this Indianan breakfast establishment was at work. Daughter serving, mom cooking, and I imagine grandpa [...]

Survivalist Housecats, Benadryl, and Political Turmoil: Riding Rails and Couches on a Circumnavigatory Amtrak Jaunt, Part 4

The Northeast Highway drivers are envious of rail. They’re like prisoners on litter duty watching a freedom parade of drunken, naked people go by. One hundred feet away from us, the highway cars are traveling in the same direction and at the same speed as this train. We’re neck and neck, but we maintain the [...]

The Peace of Negele Borena, Ethiopia

Yesterday morning I had three breakfasts. One, a cup of sweet, spiced tea at a restaurant with interwoven branches for a ceiling, colored umbrellas mounted on the walls, and birds chirping overhead. Two, more tea and spicy scrambled eggs, served under the faded awnings of a once-luxurious hotel.

Survivalist Housecats, Benadryl, and Political Turmoil: Riding Rails and Couches on a Circumnavigatory Amtrak Jaunt, Part 3

The South I arrived in Austin feeling like an angry bear with a NyQuil hangover and a 20-pound Cheeto on his back. The air was all wrong, too thick; this I knew even as an outsider. It was Hurricane Ike, stomping toward Houston, pushing gulf air west to Austin. And Hurricane Ike, though it faded [...]

Survivalist Housecats, Benadryl, and Political Turmoil: Riding Rails and Couches on a Circumnavigatory Amtrak Jaunt, Part 2

The Southwest We disembarked Amtrak shortly after midnight into the still-smoldering Tucson air, tired, misanthropic, and in my case, many whiskeys deep. I phoned our host, Becky, to let her know we’d arrived, though she was already in the station. Playing the is that you, the one on the phone game, we located each other. [...]

Survivalist Housecats, Benadryl, and Political Turmoil: Riding Rails and Couches on a Circumnavigatory Amtrak Jaunt, Part 1

Matt B. Simon explores the Western United States by rail in part one of a six-part miniseries on traveling the U.S. via Amtrak.

Redefining Kenya

A small boy outfitted in an oversized, threadbare t-shirt grabbed my sleeve. “Nipe, Mama,” he begged. Give me. Street orphans abound in Kenya. They crowd nearly every corner and vacant space in Kenya’s largest cities. Nobody knows for sure how many homeless kids roam the country, but estimates range from 20,000 to 60,000 street children [...]

Lunar Glamour: Celebrating the Chinese New Year in Shanghai

Provocative, lavish, bawdy, and elegant, Shanghai is the stuff of legends. It has a reputation that lures travelers of every ilk, that whispers diverse, contradictory promises of the treasures concealed in its secret alleys: the richest, most delicate Dongpo rou of your life; one last opium sanctum languishing in the shadows; a Confucian temple dwarfed [...]

Postcards from Rome: Rome’s Eighth Hill

Michelangelo designed the dome and the Lantern for St. Peter’s – at the time the tallest dome ever built over the largest church ever built. Tickets for the Lantern are 6 € each, and an elevator takes you to the drum – the first layer where the dome rises out of the basilica. There you [...]

Postcards from Rome: There Are TWO Kinds of Pizza

Pizza-cut-with-scissors and “real” pizza. Pizza-cut-with-scissors – and yes, they do cut it with scissors – is the fast food pizza in Italy. It is pre-made. You tell the guy at the counter how much you want, and it is sold by weight. Once they have cut the right size piece for you, they throw it [...]

Postcards from Rome: Uncorking Rome’s Table Wine

Drink the table wine. It is cheap. It may even be produced by the restaurant itself. Many Roman restaurants are generations-old establishments that have little farms out in the countryside which help to supply the produce for the meals. And of course, they also supply the grapes for the wine and sometimes the olives for [...]

Postcards from Rome: Discovering Rome’s Hidden Gems

Michelangelo’s Sforza Chapel is just one of the hidden gems in Santa Maria Maggiore © Angela Nickerson Simplicity does not exist in Rome. Churches, museums, restaurants – they are layered with the art from generation upon generation. The artists and architects of each era competed to leave their stamp on prominent buildings in the city. [...]

Postcards from Rome: Michelangelo Slept Here. Or Was It Dante?

Michelangelo’s house is gone. The façade of one of the last homes he owned is now preserved as the front of a water storage building on Via Garibaldi. That’s the only existing building that we know he slept in. However, knowledge can be overrated in Rome. Everyone wants to claim that Michelangelo – or Raphael, [...]

The Bamako Boiler to Tambacounda, West Africa

“No, no, no! Train, no good” pleaded Souleymane, my faithful friend of two days, referring to the infamously difficult train from Bamako, Mali to Dakar, Senegal. “You must take bus. Bus good. Clean, Rapide.” I look back on that conversation now, jammed into a place the size of a baby car seat. A metal bar [...]

Rumble in the Jungle: Surviving Macaques and Danish Tourists in Thailand

Phil Goldman barely survives a macaque attack and wily Danish tourists in the jungles of Thailand.

Port of Call: Riga, Latvia

I recognized those haircuts. I’d seen them in 1987. Complete with tapered stonewashed jeans tucked into high-top sneakers, teenagers and young adults filled all decks. This was, I presumed, going to be their booze cruise. The next demographic up were middle-aged men with forlorn looks dragging at cigarettes, followed by families with kids under ten [...]

Home, No Longer: Bittersweet Memories and a Final Departure

Ben Hancock details his one last visit home before crossing the Pacific, and on to a new life in Seoul.

Moto Culture: How to Be an Easy Rider in Southeast Asia

Stepping onto the tarmac after a grueling 24-hour journey from Chicago, my new acquaintance John and I were to meet our colleagues for lunch at one of the numerous open-air cafes on Phnom Penh’s breezy riverside. Barely able to spit out a coherent a sentence, I still felt exhilarated by my first few moments in [...]

Off the Deep End: The First Steps in Leaving Home

Understanding the fears, the anxiety and the excitement of leaving home for a life abroad.

A Late Night Visit to Prague’s Kutna Hora Bone Church

The day had already passed its prime, yet we decided to set out for a destination none of us wanted to miss. Although the dreary cloud cover and apathetic mist that once set the mood for the bleak communist city of Prague was beginning to roll in despite the 1989 revolution, we headed east. There [...]

Following the Wind: Hitchhiking New Zealand’s Wild Northland

Traveling to New Zealand to revel in its wild beauty and farm the land where sheep outnumbered people eight to one.

The Art of Getting Sloshed: The Finer Points of Korea’s Drinking Culture

There is no bar time in Seoul. Evenings tumble forth endlessly in the city while citizens enjoy copious amounts of beer and soju — or, more recently, wine and cocktails. From the late-night alleyway restaurants to the posh clubs of the Apgu district, drunken nights are part of the culture: they seal business deals, solidify [...]

One Hell of a Long Walk: Trekking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Nora Dunn explores the fascinating ins and outs of trekking Europe’s 800km Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

Skydiving Queenstown: An Acrophobic’s Rite of Passage

Nestled against violet mountains on the South Island of New Zealand lies the self-proclaimed “Adventure Capital of the World”: Queenstown. This alpine resort town has it all – a pristine recreational lake, nearby ski slopes and the gateway to some of the most scenic hiking trails on the planet. On almost every street, advertising brochures [...]

A First Timer’s Guide to O’ahu, Hawaii

Christian Vetter indulges childhood fantasies of crashing Hawaii – a fantasy world of pirates, savages, and delicious rabbit soups.

Experiencing Pure Darkness in Stockholm’s Färgfabriken Art Gallery

“Only when standing in a pitch-dark room do you realize that you actually start to see. Even in the perfect darkness, there is always some kind of light.” – John Duncan Darkness – true darkness – isn’t something I expect to see as a city traveler, in gothic cathedrals built to lift worshipers’ eyes to [...]

How I Ambushed Airport Security with a Purple, Plastic Laser Gun

I never thought they’d actually confiscate my gun. I was eight years old. I didn’t even know what confiscate meant. My carry-on backpack held all the trappings of an elementary school boy: Walkman, magic markers, a few Garfield coloring books, and a travel tic-tac-toe game. But the new pride of my toy box was Shockwave: [...]

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