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El Salvador: My Trip Write Up and Tips
Travel to El Salvador: It’s a place where grimy surfers voluntarily disappear barefoot on black sand beaches for cheap. It’s the type of place that’s getting harder and harder to find. You can order spicy chicken or fish under a thatched roof beach shack. The cook might chase your yard-bird or a fisherman might wrestle in pacific treasures into the boat that morning. It’s bubbling turquoise foam at your feet while the black sand sticks to you like Oreo cookie crumbs. If palm trees, quiet colorful towns, and ungodly amounts of papusas sound enticing, then El Salvador is for you. Mind Open to the New This is an up and…
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Taipei, Taiwan
The place where I almost lost my love for seafood? Taiwan. Also the place where I had some of the most awesome street food ever? Also Taiwan. Surprised to see real curved swords reverently wielded around by old men for daily exercise in the form of martial arts? Yep, you guessed the place. Taiwan. Taipei to be exact. What my experience in the world had taught me, after a lifetime of examining “Made in” manufacturing tags, my best guess as to what Taiwan might look like would be a conglomerate of dirty manufacturing warehouses. After all, everything is Made in Taiwan (okay that’s a hyperbole). There may have been a…
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Somaliland
I’d gone into Somaliland with an open heart and an open mind. I’d read so much good news online from the tight knit community of international country collectors. Somaliland wasn’t Somalia; it was supposed to be safe, interesting, and welcoming. Before entering Somaliland, at the gate in Djibouti, I hadn’t covered in my hijab. All of the ladies who had seen my hair now starred a hole through me as I stepped into their country. They were smiling. They were beautiful and mysterious and traveled in women-only-groups. I, on the other hand, even though I was covered, wasn’t mysterious at all. They knew exactly what I looked like without my…
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Singapore, Bewildered: Where Ancient Tradition Meets the Modern Cutting Edge
^ This is what I thought I’d see in Singapore. I was expecting to be immediately dumbfounded by modern technologies from the cutting edge of development. What I wasn’t expecting to see was how this place, Singapore, was rooted in ancient tradition. A walk through Singapore is an assault on the senses. The hawker stands and plazas are exotic. The climate? Scorching tropical. The food? Pretty bowls of spicy, sultry goodness, flavors you didn’t even know existed. The high rises? Full of flats with tenants that are [from what I imagine due to their rent value] untouchably, stupid rich . . . like walking their orangutans from the window of…
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NOT IRAQ, KURDISTAN (PART 2): The Peshmerga, Yazidis, Saddam’s Palace Ruins, and the City in the Sky
If you haven’t read Part 1 of this story, I would suggest starting there. Disclaimer: this story isn’t full of the cute narrative misadventures that I typically do. But nevertheless I was sure that there was a story here, somewhere buried beneath the facts, a considerably more important one. Some names have been altered to protect the identity of sources. “ کاروان.” reads as an insider guide who introduced me to his homeland. Peshmerga soldiers furrowed their brows in skepticism when we presented them with our passports. “Tourists? . . . In Kurdistan?” They seemed surprised but waved us through each checkpoint. This particular checkpoint sat at a Peshmerga training…
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Penang: A Food Paradise, Malaysia
The Journey My hips twisted to balance as I focused on keeping my feet planted, surfing with the movement of the train on the tracks. I was too intrigued to sit during the ride from Kuala Lumpur to Penang. I tried not to fumble my camera lenses as I switched them then held my camera up. I felt the tea harvesters pull me in. I gave myself over to the train, letting it have it’s way with me as I fought to stay upright. Giving myself over to the journey felt symbolic. Two Asian water buffalo wallowed in a hole. They chewed as they watched the train hurtle by. The…
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Guatemala, Land of the Trees
As we rode into Guatemala on CA13 we were stuck behind a bicycle race. The slow pace forced us to carefully soak in all that the countryside had to offer: a van went by with a loudspeaker announcing available medicine for sale out of the back of it. Senoras nursed on the front porches of their ranches. \Stallions nipped each other in the scorching sun. Vaqueros sat in their large white cowboy hats. Everyone stopped to cheer for the bikes coming through but life lingered at a slow pace. Really we had luckily stumbled into finding the charming town of El Remate. Resident families…
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14 Photos of Montenegro That Will Make You Want to Visit
A week before my Balkan road trip I sat in a meeting. I didn’t know the man sitting across from me. I didn’t know his name or his official job title, but I knew he outranked me because of the way he carried himself. We scoffed at the latest news about Trump shoving the prime minister of Montenegro back in May. We conducted our meeting business via phone with an associate in London. Instead of telling the associate goodbye, someone at the table nonchalantly said, “Be safe” and the phone clicked. We all looked around. “Be safe?” “Yeah, you know, because she’s abroad”. Then the conversation came full circle. “She’s in London!…
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Friends to Cuba- Actually, Friends to Cubans
If loving Cuba is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. What I especially loved about it were it’s normal, everyday, working class people and the families of the slums. I visited Cuba legally, and hesitated to publish what I learned because of the icy relations of the past that have yet again been drug up to the mat. But I’m publishing in the name of art, in the name of truth, in the name of education, free speech, and almost everything I believe in: loving others despite their ethnicity, nationality, race, political stance, or religion. The second story balcony of a colonial casa with iron railings and white…
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Scratching the Surface in Oaxaca City
In our modern urban lives we search for the latest cuisine hot-spots across American & European cities. On Friday nights we settle in to the hippest cantinas for tapas and music. It’s exhausting to keep up with the latest trends as the new continuously turns over. What happens when trendy is incredibly Old- World, relatively unknown, & authentic? Most travelers search for an unspoiled culture. Oaxaca City isn’t a place that tries to be trendy . . . it just is. The sun beats down on the farming fields surrounding Oaxaca City. A cool breeze floats through the cobblestone streets down from the Sierra Madre. The city seems to exhibit perfect placement; it’s no wonder…
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An Ostrich’s Quest for Culture
You can come out now. That’s my message to this little ostrich (however not so little she may be!). Why the crazy ostrich? Well, I hate to break it to you but– you see– we/us/you and I . . . I think we have a natural predisposition to be like ostriches. However fierce and and fearsome we may look, sometimes we perfer to hide in the sand. The sand represents all things comfortable, all things easy, all things comfort zone. This uncanny thought occured to me whilst listening to a familiar Coldplay song. About once a month I get on a Coldplay kick. “How long am I gonna stand, with…
