I have been inordinately lucky that people have let me into their hearts and lives wherever I have been. Here are some notes and stories from my travels.
Burmese and other food in Bangkok
Waiting for the Chairman (Singapore)
More banh mi than Vietnam (Singapore)
Nothing else but words
A return to the North (Chiang Mai, Thailand)
I only came to read the book (Singapore)
New year’s ritual in Japan
Finding China in Phnom Penh
The waiting room cat at Choshi (Japan)
The neighbour (Saigon)
The land of million elephants (Lao)
A new hiding place in Vientiane (Lao)
Alley kids in Vientiane
I love Hanoi too, but only in the winters
A week in Mangalore (India)
Remembering the cutest bookseller (Burma)
Imagining people’s lives in little alleys (Saigon)
For a free giraffe (Saigon)
The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel (Singapore)
iPhone photography in my once home (Saigon)
Music from a lost age (Cambodia)
Holland Village (Singapore)
Why I love Saigon
Rice rolls from Hue
Forgetting as a defence mechanism (book)
Travelogues and travels (Vietnam)
Postage stamps (Saigon)
Racism as a predictive model (book)
Singapore’s Korean food area
The bus to Malaysia
A certain city called iPoh (Malaysia)
The little phone (Vietnam)
Favourite bookstores in South East Asia
Searching for Chicken Rice in Hainan
When the world was young (Shanghai, China)
All those wars and revolutions (Hanoi)
Travels with the Korean fish
The precious (Saigon)
Cindy and banh beo (Saigon)
Is there an Ahp inside? (Cambodia)
The kitten that rescued us (Saigon)
Peeping into India
The hiding place in Bangkok
Hello stinky tofu (Taiwan)
Asia Overland, perhaps the best travel guidebook ever
I am a cat and I love your city (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Such a cute (Japan)
Saigon, 1975
The villa at 176 Pasteur (Saigon)
Okroshka in coastal Vietnam
Came for the ghosts, stayed back for the view (Saigon)
A new Korean idol (Saigon)
Always wander into the alley in Saigon
All you have to do is exist (Saigon)
The Turtle lake in Saigon
A face in the crowd (Hanoi)
Man’s greatest enemy
Surviving a shave (Saigon)
Dead drop in Saigon
Takoyaki laments (Saigon)
The cutest bookseller in the world (Burma)
Shocking Pink (Burma)
Down by the Mekong delta (Can Tho, Vietnam)
Exploring ethnic enclaves in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
An odd god (Cambodia)
Home is where I have a library card (Saigon)
A hidden Japanese curry shop in Saigon
The love of free food (Malaysia)
China’s coming war with Asia, I am ready to defect
Sleep (rant)
The raid (Johor, Malaysia)
The lost art of leaving notes (Singapore)
Tyranny of experts (rant)
Inventing the kimchi dosa
Takadanobaba, the Little Burma of Tokyo
Rage
The length (Thailand)
Food is just an excuse
The reader (Saigon)
Thinker, watcher, knitter, spy
The thing that flows in your blood over here (Indonesia)
The caravanserai (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Traveling with an outdated guidebook
An afternoon in Hoi An
Bandrek in Bandung (Indonesia)
The stick men of Chongqing (China)
Summers in Burma
1970s Thai Fashion
Ramayana
What does Bondegi taste like?
88 and 521, bye bye and I love you
A strong miss (China)
Why I love Burma
Naughty stuff in Chengdu
We were playing war games
Ibn Battuta and nostalgia (Singapore)
To make a little girl smile (Thailand)
Sometimes, it is good to tell a lie (China)
Special feelings in Chengdu
The lantern city (China)
Under the deep blue Mongolian sky
Mutton soup in the ancient capital (China)
The dancer (Korea)
Taking the wrong bus (Korea)
For a glimpse of Burma
Chairman Mao was a good boy (Changsha, China)
Close shave in Shanghai
In the heart of darkness (Malaysia)
The island of mystery and magic (The Philippines)
The Áo dài calendar (Hanoi)
Time to go back (Lao)
The Vietnamese dub (Nha Trang, Vietnam)
Silly poems in high Tibet
I want to stay (Burma)
Across the Irrawaddy (Burma)