Last updated Nov 27, 2018 | First published on Mar 7, 2017 | Vagabonding Begins
It’s the little things. In this instance, the little things that crawl on you. It was the presence of a small ant harmless picking its way through my leg hair that lifted a solid, good-to-know fact out of the haze in my brain: I am back in Bangkok. Sure, ants do...
Last updated Nov 7, 2018 | First published on Mar 9, 2015 | Vagabonding Begins
Back in Bangkok Bangkok felt strangely familiar. The shadow of a lover I once knew, maybe from a dream, long ago. The groove was there, but climbing into it was going to take time. Unfortunately, I never got a proper chance. Something more than bamboo splinters from...
Last updated Nov 16, 2018 | First published on Apr 28, 2012 | Vagabonding Begins
I could smell Bangkok as soon as they opened the cabin doors. The delicious humidity crept into the plane like a phantom mist, as did the smell of exhaust and open sewage. The heat was shocking — May is the hottest month of the year in Thailand. I unconsciously...
Last updated Nov 14, 2018 | First published on Apr 25, 2012 | Vagabonding Begins
Vagabonding legend Amanda Formoso gave me a good quote from Celine: “Your degree of fatigue gives you a pretty good idea whether you’ve reached your destination.” If that’s true, then apparently I have already arrived. I’m writing this...
Last updated Nov 7, 2018 | First published on Jul 2, 2011 | Vagabonding Begins
It occurred to me that I have racked up over 100K miles in the air flying to and from Asia over the last five years. This last experience certainly has to be one of the most maddening; I think a little part of my cerebral cortex wilted away on this flight. Somehow...
Last updated Nov 15, 2018 | First published on Jun 18, 2010 | Vagabonding Begins
After a sleepless night in the international terminal of LAX, security queues that literally stretched out the doors and down the airport sidewalk, and a delayed flight causing me to run aboard my departing flight in Hawaii, my only request from the universe was to...