I realize that what I do for a living and my lifestyle is difficult for many people to understand. I don’t quite believe it myself most of the time, and rarely feel like I know what I’m doing so certainly don’t expect other people to get it. But I have noticed that there tends to be two very big […]

After spending the majority of the past four years in Southeast Asia, I sometimes forget what my “normal” habits, beliefs and routines were like before. I’m still madly in love with Thailand and I appreciate every single day that I get to spend in the country – the temples haven’t lost their charm and the […]

Bangkok is a city of extremes. You can see luxury apartments next to metal shacks, 5-star dining establishments across from cheap street food, a constant change between hot humid air and freezing cold AC, decorative Buddhist temples down the street from strip clubs…Bangkok has it all. Because of this, the city is one of the […]

Let me first say that I wear Thai fisherman’s pants on a daily basis. I always have a nice sheen going because I’m always sweating to some degree, I never try and fix my hair because I’m just going to put a helmet over it anyway, my clothes now often have white dog hair clinging […]

The overcast skies and cool mistiness of the mountains were a welcome change from the hellishly hot temperatures – 113 degrees! – of Bagan. After being dropped off near the famous Inle Lake in the Shan Hills of Burma around 3:30 in the morning (we were glad to already have accommodation booked) we didn’t really know […]

In 1999 National League for Democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, called for a tourism boycott in Burma believing that money spent by visitors would be supporting the military regime and show international support for its practices. In November 2010, right before I first moved to Thailand, she called for a lifting of the […]

“…Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon, a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple-spire…The golden dome said, ‘This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land that one knows about’.” – Rudyard Kipling, Letters from the East In […]

In just one week I took about 1,000 photos of Burma. While I finish working on some posts about the country here a few of the thousand that seemed to epitomize what I saw of the “Golden Land”. (You can see even more on my Instagram feed!) As the most important Buddhist site in Burma, […]

I’m always hesitant to write a post about a place I don’t know much about. Travel blogs can be great sources of information, but too often bloggers tend to share information and tips for a place they’ve barely spent time in. Instead of their posts really being about the “Best Places to Eat in…” wherever, […]

One of Thailand’s greatest dichotomies is how centuries-old traditions seem to live alongside high tech trends. Thais are tied to their smartphones, clamor to buy new cars and seem to use an unnecessary amount of plastic bags and bottles. Yet at the same time, a large portion of the goods I buy and use are […]