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In a matter of days, I will move out of my south Thailand apartment , pack up all my belongings (which I hope to fit into two check-in bags), and -- after seven years of traveling and living on or near this grand continent -- leave Asia. I'll share details of my new travels in...
Earlier this month, while traveling through France, I managed to get myself arrested at a casino in Normandy. This is certainly not the best way to begin a day-trip to the French coast, but -- as I'd told my travel-writing students the previous week -- it is a good way to begin a travel story....
Jen Leo recently sent me this picture of a sold-out shelf of Vagabonding books among the "Staff Picks" at Powell's Books in Portland. It's nice to know that -- half a year since I rolled through Portland on my book tour -- the book is still doing well there!
The suggested "Summer Reading List" is a longtime institution in the book sections of major North American newspapers -- and this summer I'm pleased to see that Vagabonding has landed on a travel reading list in Toronto's Globe and Mail . The roundup , which was assembled by Laszlo Buhasz and Alison Gzowski, includes classic...
The Italian translation of Vagabonding appears to doing very well in the six weeks since it was released. On the strength of the earlier La Repubblica review , as well as enthusiastic new reviews in Turismo , Donna Moderna , and La Stampa , Vagabonding appeared at #17 on the Arianna nonfiction bestseller list ,...
There is a certain irony in maintaining a travel weblog: to regularly update it means, well, that you aren't really traveling very far from your computer. A look at my last three months of vagablogging entries would imply that this has recently been the case for me. Indeed, here in Ranong, my main task has...
Following on to my surprised announcement on Monday that Vagabonding had been translated into Italian, here's an English version of the review from La Repubblica . My thanks to Valentina Piffer for her translation help! -------------------------- What is freedom? Learning the art of long-term world travel A practical and philosophical guide on how to change...
Monsoon season in southern Thailand can be a strange time of year. The heavy rains can last all day, and sometimes the clouds gather so thick that high noon feels like late evening. In the process, weird things happen inside my apartment, like the swarming colony of red ants that took refuge in my bed...
Yesterday evening, I learned -- with no small sense of astonishment -- that La Repubblica , the largest national paper in Italy, had featured a glowing review of Vagabonding in its Sunday culture section. The astonishing thing is not just that this is the Italian equivalent of a warm thumbs-up from the New York Times...
Just over a month ago, there was a miracle on Koh Yao Noi, an island one hour east of Phuket in Thailand's Phang-Nga Bay. As the story goes, a blind man from the mainland visited Koh Yao Noi, bathed in a freshwater spring on one of the tidal flats and suddenly found his vision restored....
Deep in the pages of Vagabonding , you'll discover that I advise readers to avoid fast food and packaged meals on the road. "Brave the open-air food markets," I implore, "and be healthier for the experience!" This is solid road advice (and the word for "market" is good to memorize in any local language), but...
The walls are a bit thin at my residential hotel here in south Thailand, so I can generally hear what's going on in room 311 next door -- whether I want to or not. Usually it's just some couple having an argument, or an HBO Asia movie blaring too loud -- but last night someone...
The monsoon rains seem to have started here in Ranong (which is a rainiest province in Thailand as it is), and this is changing the way I live. The leather belt in my closet has started growing mold. So do the dishes, if I don't wash them for a couple days. Noon can feel like...
This July I'll be teaching the travel-writing portion of the intensive creative writing program at the Paris American Academy . The course lasts the entire month of July, and also includes classes in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and creative nonfiction. All classes are conducted in English. Tuition includes "survival French" courses and weekend excursions to other...
This morning, I went on my obligatory monthly visa run to Kawthaung, the small Burmese border town that lies about 20 minutes by boat from my temporary home in Ranong, Thailand. Ranong is where I come to hole up and get my writing done, so I always welcome this visa run, which takes me across...
It has been a very odd and eventful past three weeks, taking me from Wichita to Memphis to Los Angeles to Taipei to Bangkok to Tokyo to Sendai, then back to Tokyo and Bangkok and on to Ranong -- and the whole time I've been trapped in an orbit of TV dispatches coming out of...
Just a heads-up for those of you surfing in this week. After two months of touring the United States to promote my book, I am currently back in Asia -- Japan, at the moment. In due course I
My story about the Moken sea gypsies of southern Myanmar, which originally appeared in Conde Nast Traveler last summer (under the title "The Last Archipelago"), reappears for the Asian market this month in Destinasian magazine. Renamed " The Moken Way ", the article is the cover story for Destinasian 's February/March issue. The story includes...
The American Booksellers Association has released its Book Sense Bestseller List for the month of January, and it looks like Vagabonding has cracked the Travel Writing Top 25, with a debut at #15. A lot of perennial travel favorites, such as Jon Krakauer's 1997 Into Thin Air and Peter Mayle's 1990 A Year in Provence...
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