Category Archives: Travel

Drifters Wanted – January 2022

January 30, 2024 – 1:25 pm

Last year I was driving down Dekalb Avenue and read an open-call sign for workers. Drifters Wanted. Huh? I blinked and the offer of paradise vanished as reality jarred my eyes back into focus. DRIVERS WANTED. What a difference a single letter, then again I’ve always sought something more than the world has to offer […]

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A Bigger Broom – Tioman Island 1993

January 30, 2024 – 12:59 pm

In 1993 I went to Tioman island in Malaysia. beautiful beach. remote. jungle. A Western woman came into the restaurant crying that a lizard was in her bathroom. I laughed thinking it was a gecko and grabbed a broom. I went to her bungalow and opened the bathroom to discover a giant monitor lizard over […]

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Chinese Iron Rooster BET ON CRAZY

January 10, 2024 – 11:24 am

My teenage nephew stopped by 47th Street yesterday evening. It was closing time for our exchange. Zeb goes to a mid-town high school. Public. His father works over at Rockefeller Center. He does something with TV. “You going home?” Zeb and I lived in Fort Greene. His father worked late. The long-haired student liked my […]

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Singapore To Bangkok By Train

January 10, 2024 – 6:07 am

In 1990 I bought a second-class ticket from Singapore to Bangkok with stops in Penang and Suranthani. The old Pearl of the Orient was too clean for me. The Chinese president had ordered the city-state’s police to fine people for chewing gum or not washing their hands after using the WC. Effacing the walls with […]

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Penang Funicular

January 10, 2024 – 1:45 am

In 1994 I was stranded in Penang, Malaysia. The magazine for which I had been writing a series of stories about SE Asia had folded without buying my return ticket to the States. I had enough money to stay at the Swiss Hotel $3/night, eat at the Chinese and Indian restaurants on Chulia Street, and […]

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