Category Archives: Travel

French Canadians Are People Too

I approached Montréal with skepticism; here was a population of Caucasian North Americans who spoke English but preferred French, and what’s more, the Queen of England’s face was all over their money. The very proposition of such a city seemed contradictory, at best, and schizophrenic, at worst. But as soon as the temperate air of a Montréal summer evening hit me, I was in a more open mood for having escaped the New York swelter, at least. It’s a pleasant, clean city, exceedingly moderate in everything I could see, from architecture to debauchery, though of course I only saw downtown. I had a good time, I’d go back and take in some more sights, listen to some more Canadian French, spend some more American dollars. But right now I am exhausted.

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New-monia

There is a mysterious ‘respiratory illness’ wending its way through Southeast Asia. No one is quite yet sure what it is, but there is speculation that this is a new, deadly strain of influenza. It’s touched Hong Kong, China’s Guangdong province, Singapore, and Hanoi — that last city is not only sensitive for me because of my heritage, but also because my girlfriend, currently backpacking through the region, just left that city less than a week ago.

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Posterization

Saigon PostersClark MacLeod: “Saigon Poster Art is a growing collection of pictures of hand painted posters found displayed all over Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” MacLeod has done a good job; it’s a charming little assemblage of street imagery that’s well worth a look.

I remember this kind of advertising/propaganda from my travels in Viet Nam as well as Thailand. It was an uneasy feeling when I came to the realization that the reason these posters were hand-painted and not printed is because human labor is cheaper than technology in that part of the world… and even in attempting to emulate technologies like photography and printing, human labor can produce weirdly beautiful results.

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Go West

I’m off to the Golden State today to visit some family and friends. It’s my first post-September 11th flight, and though the threat of terrorism doesn’t worry me so much, the thought of long and complicated security procedures —lots of ground time—makes me not really anxious to fly at all.

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The Flying Web

MaxMilesI’ve just spent a few hours trying to book a ticket for a trip in March. After entering my travel dates at least two dozen times on various travel sites, I can say that the American Airlines site is the probable best of a pretty sorry lot — anyway, that’s where I ended up spending my money.

Microsoft’s Expedia isn’t bad when taken strictly for its design and usability, but better fares can be found if you hunt directly on each airline’s own site, which kind of obviates its whole existence. The one bright spot I came across, MaxMiles.com, won’t help you book a flight, but it will allow you to manage all of your frequent flyer accounts from a single place — which is a delight to anyone who travels as much as I do.

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On the Lam, So to Speak

A friend of mine observed that I seem to be constantly shifting my belongings from one remote locale to another, constantly boarding airplanes and making detours and side trips, lamenting the places where I am and quickly evacuating places I profess to be residing in permanently. She asked, “;Are you running from something?”

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And Away I Go

I’ve fallen down on the job of posting to my blog lately because I’m exhausted. This week will be the third week in a row of travel for me. First, I went to Saigon for the lunar new year. Just this Sunday, I came back to Singapore from a weekend in Bangkok, which was hot and full of weirdness in my personal life. And now, on Thursday, I’ll be flying off to Los Angeles, where I’m spending the next four to six months on assignment. It’s a long story, but it looks like the Singapore chapter of my travels is over, at least for now. More on this later.

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