Panama City, Panama Travelers, perhaps even these photographed in Panama on Christmas Day 2008, can sometimes be found pondering the meaning of “home”. They may do so in a hostel lobby in Paris, from a park bench in Cartagena, on a rumbling train in Siberia, or atop a seawall in Panama City. Whatever the location,...

Ko Chang, Thailand One morning on Ko Chang, Thailand, while sitting by the sea and preparing to breakfast on a pineapple pancake and a pineapple shake, I read a puzzling line in Simon Winchester’s book Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 186 3 . Winchester pointed out that the 1969 film Krakatoa: East...

Anata, West Bank In my book 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia , I offer several non-standard reasons for hitting the road. Here is the most counterintuitive of the bunch: “Hating”. In a perfect world, of course, there would be no need to hate, because we would all treat one another...

Malacca, Malaysia Early in 1988, a newlywed couple from the States was traveling in Malaysia. While in the ethnically diverse, historical treasure-trove of a town called Malacca (Melaka), they hired the services of a 60-year-old rickshaw driver named Peter Ong. Thanks to a simple act of thoughtfulness on their part, Peter remembers them still today....

Uvita, Costa Rica At the beginning of his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Mark Twain lays out the hope that nobody will find a moral in the story. That, of course, is about as likely as nobody finding beards in Afghanistan. The Costa Rican boy in this photograph was on a Pacific beach,...

Koh Kong, Cambodia One of my favorite travel books is Tiziano Terzani’s A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East . In one section he writes, “Memory can be a wonderful refuge, and if I ever live to be old, as the fortune-tellers predict, I shall enjoy rummaging around in it as in...

Khao San Road (Bangkok, Thailand) There are many places in the world where I’d happily sit, at two o’clock in the morning, on a dirty curb, watching urban nightlife take its course. One such place is Thailand’s Khao San Road. Khao San (sometimes spelled Khao Sarn) is a 500-meter stretch of asphalt tucked away in...

Bac Ha, Vietnam Having an unfamiliar barber have a go at one’s hair can be a tremendous exercise in trust, particularly on the road. The challenge may come on account of the barber being untested in the style we seek. Or, it may come in the form of a mangy dog on the floor, used...

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Often when thinking about this thing called “travel”, we imagine the look of the land, the taste of the food, and/or the culture of those who call a place home. And this is all good. But what may sometimes be missed is the extent to which, through travel, we also venture into...

Hoi An, Vietnam Travel is open to many definitions, and here is one: “to move in such a way that your life intersects with other lives and is shaped by the encounter.” For me, a vital component of relationships formed on the road is the goodbye, nicely demonstrated in this photograph from Vietnam. Chau and...

Bangkok, Thailand According to most estimates, the world population is pushing 6.79 billion this week. That's a lot of people. As an American, I call home a country that comprises roughly 4.5% of this total. Or, to put it another way, 21 out of about 22 people on Earth aren't Americans this week. Whatever country...

Bocas del Toro, Panama The official currency of the Central American nation of Panama is the U.S. Dollar. If you buy a house, a book, or a stalk of bananas, you use the dollar. George Washington’s body may have been laid to rest in 1799 in Mount Vernon, but his image lives on in countless...

Hue, Vietnam Robert Frost, in his poem Mending Wall , famously said “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” And indeed there are many walls, past and present, in places like Berlin and Bethlehem, that are difficult to love. But this is not so with bridges. They invite us to venture to the other...