Buses held together with duct tape, given as goodwill gestures by more prosperous countries like Korea and Japan when they were deemed embarrassingly old and dirty, yet functional enough for their poorer neighbors to the south. Swirling fans above my head momentarily brush away the flies flitting through the cabin. Continue reading
Travel
A Walk in Vientiane, Laos
A wet pug dog, temple of red and gold. Bob Marley in my headphones. Busy street, balconies, streetlights, alleys, old unbalanced doors, sidewalk jammed with trash flowers, SUV’s on the curb, mini-mart, same peaceful breeze as last night. Special, bow tied and helpless baskets full of jellies or Nescafé. Finally the fruits. Mangoes, grapes, apples, starfruit, grapefruit, dragon fruit. The old, interchangeable ladies selling those cherries and avocados. Continue reading
Two Weeks in Cambodia
Written Pictures on a Bus:
Dusty Cambodia. No hills. Cows same color as the ground. Trees incapable of providing shade. Angkor Beer posters flapping in the dull, stale air. Country life. Mostly shirtless. Houses on stilts as if they were clambering up on shaky wooden legs to escape the baking earth. Thirsty looking palm trees drooping under the powerful sun. Tiny muddy reservoirs. Naked kids the color of creamed coffee bathing at a hand pump. Strange Khmer writing replacing the accent laden Roman script of Vietnam. Hammocks aplenty. Continue reading
One Month in Vietnam
Vietnam makes you walk along its spine as you move through the country. You can go up or down. I went down. Continue reading
Russian Men at the Beach
Vladimir Putin is infamous for his former KGB affiliations, media suppression, gay rights antagonism, pontification against American foreign interventions, but perhaps most notably for his penchant of going shirtless in numerous photo opportunities. His body can best be described as a fleshy barrel, a thick, hairless keg of supposed masculinity. I’d always assumed he was proud of his body and the presumed power than comes from confidence in one’s shape. Continue reading
Worship and Devotion
It’s only been about two weeks in Vietnam and already I’m feeling overwhelmed by temples, pagodas, shrines, tombs and memorials. They are beautiful, awe-inspiring testaments to creativity and construction. But, what strikes me as odd is the reason for these wonderful monuments. They are to praise kings usually, or sometimes gods. I am no fan of gods, organized religion nor monarchy. As an quasi-anti-theist American, I have no reverence for gods nor kings. Continue reading
Supertramping: Alone or Together
I’ve always remembered the last words of the young, naïve and idealistically elite explorer “Alexander Supertramp” from the movie Into The Wild, when he says, only days before dying alone, starving in the Alaskan bush: “happiness is only real if it’s shared.” Continue reading
NYC Pizza Tour–2012
Bread has been cooked in many ways, in many places and with many flavors. Pizza is essentially bread with toppings. As with most food, Americans received pizza from immigrants, Italian immigrants specifically. However, Italians owe their modern pizza to the New World. Tomatoes were shipped home with (the aptly named) Francisco Pizarro, that famous conquistador of the Incan Empire. Continue reading
A Return Home to Return Home
Living in a foreign country can have many feelings. There can be, in any conceivable array, a multitudinous collision of emotions: boredom, freedom, homesickness, love, lust, excitement, desire, longing, scorn, derision, insight, resonance, horror, humor, confusion, or wonder. Some days, anywhere or for anyone, are better than others. Some days are really transcendent. Continue reading
Hiking Seoraksan (with a nightlight)
A crowd of friendly white people gathering outside the 8th exit of Seoul’s largest bus station waiting for a bus to drive us to Korea’s most popular hiking mountain, discussing small talk trying not to dive right into the triumvirate of expat questions. 1) Where are you from? 2) How long have you been here? 3) Where and what age do you teach? It’s not that these are bad questions; they are great questions and give a good bit of information about the person. But as go the inevitable, information gathering questions of global backpacking, these questions, if you are around the person long enough, may be answered through normal conversation or gleaned through accents and story settings. Continue reading
William Sabia 