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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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? […]
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 […]