Curiosity, Travel and Change
From Kress... to Urban Outfitters At least three of my friends started researching Blue Ridge retirement real estate after visiting Asheville North Carolina. My son had his bachelor party there. Everyone seemed to fall in love with Asheville. It was high time I figured out what the fuss was about. So, this spring, on a …
I recognized Bun immediately at the Siem Reap Airport—his eyes creased and mouth wide in his perpetual smile, the red Cambodian woven scarf around his neck, his face beaming with energy. at Ta Prohm temple I had seen Bun only on his YouTube videos: Bun handing out food after the monsoon floods, Bun tending to …
Continue reading "A Homestay in Siem Reap and Lessons in Buddhism"
Trying to understand a huge, messy, sprawling city like Bangkok as a tourist is like being the proverbial blind man with the elephant- you might figure out an ear or the trunk, but you’ll never get the whole thing. And a elephant seems an apt metaphor— for elephant imagery is everywhere. This is about one …
Fes is confounding, challenging, fascinating and should be on your next itinerary to Morocco. Fes, at least the Medina (Old City) which is the main attraction, is a place where the balance between modernity and tradition seems to tip heavily toward the past, where the labyrinthine and narrow alleyways disorient the unfamiliar tourist, and the …
The Anti-Atlas mountains stretch across southern Morocco, the last mountain range before the Sahara Desert. It’s a stark landscape of imposing ochre granite mountains scoured by wind and sand, rocky soils scattered with argan trees and terraced slopes that once held fields of barley. It is the land of the Amazigh people, better known to …
In December of 2024, I was in a classroom in Oaxaca de Juarez with eight other immigration advocates from the United States. This was my third visit to Oaxaca, but unlike the prior two. I came as a student of MANOS: Migrantes Apoyados, No Olvidados (Migrants Supported, Not Forgotten), a Oaxacan nonprofit that supports migrants …
On a breezy and sunny afternoon last May, I found myself peering through my telephoto lens at an abandoned Soviet military installation on the other side of the Arpaçay River. The installation was in Armenia, a literal stone’s throw across the river, but as impenetrable from Turkiye as a moon landing. Earlier that day, our …
Hay dos Méxicos; there are two Mexicos, said our driver, Francisco, as we passed through the interminable sprawl of Mexico City on our way to San Miguel de Allende. We were passing through a stretch of sometimes makeshift auto body shops, with hand-lettered signs and beat-up cars, trying to ascertain some of the products being …
Continue reading "Two Mexicos: My Trip to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato"
Seen in the Braga Cathedral Sometimes the trip you plan is not the trip you end up having. Our trip to Portugal was originally going to be five-day layover on the way to a couple weeks of wandering around Morocco. I had been planning the Morocco trip for months and had given the Portugal part …
I don’t usually think “walkable downtown” when contemplating Los Angeles. But recently I explored downtown LA—by foot and by bike—and found the bones of the city that existed before Los Angeles became synonymous with freeways. From my hotel on South Grand Avenue, I walked past gems of the 1920’s and 30’s in neighborhoods bearing names …
Old and On the Way 