A young friend of mine is posting elated pictures from Amsterdam, and two days later, from Dubai. She’s just graduated from Berklee School of Music in Boston, no slouch accomplishment, and she’s treating herself to a couple of weeks of travel. The joy in her journey is palpable in the photos she’s posting. Of course...

Since the glory days of Ernst Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in Paris, there's been a certain glamor about being a writer while living abroad. CNNgo had an article about the expat writer scene in Bangkok . The piece quickly bursts the bubble of starry-eyed dreamers. The writers interviewed were frank about the state of the...

As readers may remember from July, I was a guest of the Tourism Authority of Thailand for their “Thailand Today” Mega Familiarization Trip , celebrating TAT and Thai Airways 50th anniversary. One of over 500 travel industry professionals, we were given the opportunity to experience several activities in and around Bangkok and Chiang Mai ....

For the past three days, I've been in Bangkok as a guest of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, taking part in their 50th anniversary celebrations. The weather has been warm, the food amazing, and the people friendly and welcoming. My introduction to the city has only wet my appetite for exploring more of this beautiful...

Asia is full of dedicated foodies, both locals and expats. Debating dishes between countries and even between cities in the same country qualifies as a national sport. The foodie discussion forum Chowhound.com has a great thread on an impossible question: Best cities in Asia to visit for chowing? Although it's a year-old, replies are still...

New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Asia's metropolises never slow down. A new Web site sets out to cover these hip urban machines: CNNGo . It currently covers six cities: Bangkok, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. CNNGo says they might expand to cover more cities in the future. What's...

This recent New York Times piece highlights old age as a never-ending adventure, but there are far more desperate, fundamental reasons why elderly people are deciding they'd rather be abroad than at home. Here are three less-discussed motivations for senior long-term travel (the first two are illustrated below by Lawrence Osborne 's unflinching Bangkok Days...

It's hard to believe the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand is in its 13th edition; having first graced the shelves of alternative bookstores and organic co-ops in 1982, a full month before the guidebook that started it all, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (or the 'Yellow Bible'), hit the stands. Lonely Planet was a little...

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...

In Tone Deaf in Bangkok , Janet Brown does a remarkable job of capturing daily life in Bangkok and chronicling her transformation from her early days exploring the city as a farang to settling into the rhythms of the city to her eventual journey back to the United States. Nana Chen's photography accompanies Janet Brown's...