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Snapshot
We hired a tuk-tuk to take us to our downtown guesthouse. Our driver stowed the luggage under our feet, and motioned for us to hold onto it. I figured we were in for a bumpy ride, but as we turned onto the main road, he gestured at us to watch out for scooters. He mimed a scooter driver reaching into the open cab of the tuk-tuk to grab a bag that wasn’t held down. During the drive, he kept glancing back at us, making sure we were holding onto our bags. He grew agitated when I forgot myself and took out my phone to take a picture. More suspicion, a first confirmation of what Nak had been talking about.
Italy · EuropeMarch 2020
We are under (self) quarantine now. If you are not yet, you will be soon. In some places it is still voluntary. In other places, it is compelled with force. Today, India declared a nationwide public curfew on 1.3 billion people. This was preceded two months ago by the unprecedented lockdown on 60 million people…
Cambodia · AsiaMarch 2019
The Lonely Planet entry on the Cambodian seaside town of Kep was short, promising an unusual combination of crab and a post-apocalyptic vibe.
Cambodia · AsiaJanuary 2019
Cambodia was the only place I'd ever been where the locals told me to watch my back.
Vietnam · AsiaFebruary 2018
Last Christmas, I traveled to the tiny island of Con Dao off Vietnam's southern coast, where I somehow managed to unwittingly fly straight into a typhoon. After the…
Vietnam · AsiaJanuary 2018
A typhoon usually doesn't just sneak up on you. But that's exactly what happened to me last Christmas Eve, when my husband and I unwittingly traveled to the…
January 2018
2017 was probably my most intense year of travel ever: it started in Laos and Cambodia, and was followed by visits to Detroit and Texas, Portugal, Romania, Hong…
Portugal · EuropeJuly 2017
During my last trip to Portugal, I stayed at a bona fide palace, complete with flying buttresses, a butler, a maze garden. It was hotter than the dickens,…
Greece · EuropeJuly 2017
After it happened, we had a new point of reference for terrible things. It became our shared refrain: “Well, at least it’s not as bad as getting trapped…
Laos · AsiaJanuary 2017
During the Vietnam War, there was this entire Secret War going on in Laos that I learned about while I visited what is one of the world's most…
Greece · EuropeJanuary 2017
Coming from Detroit, the first major city in the world to go bankrupt, I was interested in how the statistics and stories about the Greek debt crisis matched…
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