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• Goodbye, New Zealand; Hello again, world.

  April 24, 2008 in New Zealand, Vietnam

  Good blogging intentions are the first things to go when you’ve got 4500 kilometers of New Zealand to drive with hundreds of hostels and dozens of towns and cities to visit and write about. The …

• Melbourne

  March 6, 2008 in Uncategorized

  From KL back to Singapore, then off to Melbourne. One of the crappier airport experiences I’ve had was at the Tiger Airways “terminal” in Melbourne. Tiger Airways, in case you aren’t aware, is a Singapore-based budget airline that covers much of Australia and various points in SE Asia. “Budget” is the operative word here. Everything feels small and cramped, the stewardess outfits are cheap-looking, and if you were choking on a peanut they wouldn’t give you a drop of water unless you paid for it first. But that won’t happen, because they don’t give you peanuts either. The Melbourne airport was recently voted one of the world’s top five airports, but the Tiger terminal is not in the Melbourne Airport. It’s in the middle of a parking lot or something, several minutes away from the airport, and is literally composed of unpainted concrete cinder blocks and cyclone fencing. It’s exactly what I imagine the place where the planes land in Guantanamo Bay to look like. Melbourne was my first taste of the western world in over a year and it was a bit overwhelming initially. I suddenly had a reference point for how long I’ve been away. Posters for bands and movies I haven’t heard of, bookstores with unfamiliar new releases, the way people looked, the clothes they wore. Something about it made me miss everyone and everything so much more acutely. And at the same time, I had the pointed realization that I don’t feel the same way about the world anymore, that I don’t belong to the world in quite the same way anymore.

• KL

  March 6, 2008 in Malaysia

  From Singapore, I took a quick side trip to Kuala Lumpur, where I wandered for a day and a half with no map and no real intention, just hopping on and off the subway/elevated train …

• Singapore Vice

  March 6, 2008 in Singapore

  No place is ever the way you think it’s going to be. (This was especially true for me of Vietnam, where the connotative power of that word to the American mind, Vietnam, was immediately and …

• On airports

  February 25, 2008 in Uncategorized

  Despite the lines and checkpoints and shoe removals and food-court atmosphere of many a terminal, I still find the airport a place that alters my sense of reality. I am suddenly thinking about fate …