My Children Are Going To Rule

Color, Life Philosophy, Photography, travel
  1. When I was little, and I had to divide something with my sister, our mom would tell one of us to split up whatever we were sharing; the other would get to choose which half they wanted.  The point was to teach us to be fair, and not to take advantage of the other party.  If the cutter cheated by making one part bigger, and the chooser picked that bigger half, it was the cutter’s own fault for not making the pieces even.  Basic life lesson, right?
  2. The Harvard Negotiation Project has a famous situation involving an orange.  Two teams have to negotiate over an orange; whichever team fulfils its objectives, as dictated by the instructor, wins (and both teams can win).  However, one team is told that they need the whole pulp of the orange in order to make juice; the other is told that they need the entire rind of the orange to get the zest for a cake.  When the teams go into the negotiation, though, they start out thinking that they need to get the whole orange because they don’t know what the other team wants, and they don’t know that each team can get 100% of their individual goals by working together.  The point of the exercise: it pays to know what the other side is going after, since you might get more of your goal by being uneven in some areas.
  3. If I ever have kids, and I have to teach them “one cuts, the other chooses,” I am going to teach them that they have to think about the other party and what he/she might want out of the situation.  In some instances, maybe they have to divide an orange evenly…which is fine, I guess.  But in others, maybe one kid gets the delicious, smooth icing and the other gets the dense, rich chocolate brownie; one gets the apple filling, the other gets the sugar-flecked crust; one gets the golden fried fish, the other gets the twice-cooked chips.  Call it “Cut/Choose 2.0”.  That’s the kind of life skill that rules the kindergarten playground.
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Children dividing something up on a tributary of the Tonlé Sap, Cambodia.

And death

Color, Edinburgh, Life Philosophy, travel

I was running on a trail this morning and came across this:

A moss-covered brick, with flowers and a small football boot, and a plastic memorial plaque.

It seemed an odd way to remember a son – why on the side of a trail?  Why a concrete brick?  What outpouring of pain could have prompted this tribute?  Perhaps this part of the park was where the son had died, or was somehow special to him.

And then I thought: a concrete brick isn’t that different than any other memorial.  Earlier on my run I’d passed this churchyard:

Who was I to determine what constitutes an acceptable memorial?  What kind of gravestone is appropriate?  What kind of worship?  And then I thought: worship.  That’s exactly what this is.  What are Gods but idealized visions of our ancestors?  This poor mother’s brick, and the porcelain bootie, and the flowers, are all symbols, just as the gravestones are symbols, of affection and love.  And that reminded me of India, and the roadside shrines that, while different in appearance, were not all that different in intent:

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And so for the rest of my run I thought about loss, and love, and how similar we all really are in our sacrifice.

July, July

black and white, Color, Edinburgh, Life Philosophy, Month Summary, Photography, Portrait, Scotland, travel

The Books of July:

  • Home Game.  I love Michael Lewis’ books, and this one was cheap on Kindle.  It is a bunch of essays he wrote on fatherhood – and man, it sounds terrible.  I read it just before Alice’s brothers visited with their wives and small children, and in looking at the children, and then the parents, it was…terrifying.  First, these little creatures just dominate everything in your life, and are helpless, and cry at 5 a.m. and force you to just deal with them.  Then, intelligent, intellectual adults suddenly find it perfectly acceptable to make gibberish noises to communicate with small animals who don’t really understand what you’re saying anyway, and to be happy about it?  Back to the book: it’s hilarious.  
  • The Road.  Continuing the fatherhood theme.  The copy I have challenges people to put it down, and that was about what I experienced; I think it took me under 24 hours to get through.  A masterpiece, although I’m not sure I could read another of his books anytime soon.  
  • Sex At Dawn.  This was recommended by my friend Sunny, who is one of the smartest, wisest people I’ve ever met.  I made it through solely based on his glowing recommendation.  I thought it was absolutely horrible.  Summary: people like sex, and other than the fact that it is so common in human society, we don’t have any evidence that monogamy is natural.  There, I saved you seven hours.  
  • Total Recall.  I spent the majority of my reading time this month on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, which was surprisingly engaging, well-written, and occasionally honest.  It was fascinating to hear about his business ventures, his career, and the directions he has taken through life, but based on the omissions – a few of which, like the child he fathered with his housekeeper, he has to end up admitting later in the book, a few chapters after he promises California’s voters that he isn’t a philandering pig – one has to face the fact that autobiographies are inherently fictitious, because we only hear what the writer wants us to hear, and we all have very selective memories, and attribute things like success not to luck or chance but to our own skills, abilities, and virtues.  I enjoyed it, but it was a good reminder that everybody lies.  Including superheroes.  
  • The Hard Thing about Hard Things.  Another book someone recommended highly; I’d been looking forward to reading it.  It doesn’t apply to me much just yet, but it was good to read it and think about what I may end up needing to deal with in the future, if I’m lucky skillful, able, and virtuous.  

And that brings me to an even fifty books read this year.  I’m still trying to focus on quality, and utility; I don’t think I’ll hit 100 for the year, but I’m comfortable as long as I get quality thoughts into my brain.

Again, Alice’s brothers and their families visited this month.  It was amazing to realize that we’ve moved from a one-bedroom place barely big enough for the two of us to a four-bed place that can comfortably house eight people and two dogs (and maybe even more, if we got the sofa bed out).  It was also a good test of our hosting; August is going to pick up, what with the festival.

Then Carl and Gene visited.  They were recording in Abbey Road Studios again, and came up before heading back to America.  On their last night in town, we climbed Calton Hill and met a family from Illinois, visiting for a day.  They were talking about where they’d been and what they’d seen, and we traded some stories.  I’m always a bit hesitant to engage other Americans, for some reason – it’s as if I can feel special so long as I’m here, surrounded by Scots, but when I hear an American accent, or see a logo of a real American university (as opposed to the fake ones that pop up in European fashion shops), that illusion of specialness, of uniqueness, is shattered, and so my mouth clamps shut and I scurry away.  Sometimes, if people seem to be lost, I’ll reach out – actually, that happens almost daily – but much of the time I find myself trying to avoid fraternising with my compatriots and sticking to the people of this adopted land.

The Illinois family was a bit of a middle ground.  Gene thought the daughter was cute, so Carl talked to the father and I tried to talk to the mother.  They were normal Americans – careers in business development for an insurance company, and a housewife, two children, a suburb of Chicago, community events, annual vacations.  When they asked us what we did, I felt just like Jake Barnes when he and Bill were on the train in The Sun Also Rises, talking to the family who was visiting France, the two parents and a little boy who loved swimming.  I don’t have a life they could really identify with.  It was a bit embarrassing to say I lived around the corner with my English wife; I wanted to come up with a story that felt less indulgent, like I was a race car driver on a European tour, or an American Football quarterback on an off-season trip to my homeland, or a lawyer from Cleveland just taking a week to see Scotland.  But I was half a flask of Lagavulin in, and I could only come up with the truth.

On the last Friday of the month, Alice surprised me by bringing me to see Sir Ranulph Fiennes speak at Usher Hall. I’d never heard of him before, but he’s apparently a bit of a legend here in Britain – known, at least in this country, as the greatest living explorer. He spoke for almost two hours on his adventures on seven continents and two poles; it was incredible to see him, see his fingers that he cut off himself because of frostbite, and hear his stories.

He had an incredible wit, as well, although it was marred at times by a sharp, blatant bigotry against…well, virtually everyone that wasn’t white, male and English. He’s a big UKIP supporter and Brexit fan, so perhaps that shouldn’t have been a surprise, but his jokes at the expense of others – particularly the Norwegians, the French, and women – cast an uncomfortable pall over the evening for much of the audience. It was a shame, really, as so much of his talk was otherwise fascinating, engaging, and inspiring.

The next day, we flew to Bristol, then drove deep into Somerset. We passed through farmland, and visited an incredible cider farm, and had tea and chocolate cake and played with pottery and felt.  Fiennes’ talk, and his chauvinism, were still on my mind as we flew, and then we broke through the clouds towards the airport.  As much as I thought that his bigotry was unnecessary, I thought: wow, his pride in country is absolutely justified. This is really a beautiful, extraordinary island; loving it could be no vice.

And while it seems to be struggling a bit with the modern world, like many countries, I suspect that it is actually doing better than most, because it has such a deep connection to its own history.  At one point, we were looking over the fields below the Mendip hills, and I thought: five hundred years ago, and even a hundred years ago, the highlight of the year would have been the annual trip across the valley to a market town, to sell produce and cattle and horses, to drink potent foreign brews, and to flirt with people you’d never seen before and perhaps find a match, for the night or for life.  And the local power brokers, with direction from the King or Queen, would have had the burden of deciding lives: judgment of crimes, divvying up proceeds from sales, collecting taxes, allocating land.  And even if telephone wires are strung across the fields, and we’re on the verge of getting driverless cars to zip us around, the landscape here is still ordered by those ancient traditions; land is still bordered by walls and shrubs older than any generation alive today, cows still bred from elderly lines, and trees that were planted as windbreaks for hovels now protect newly built mansions of Londoners who only come down for the weekend to enjoy the country life.

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The absolute highlight of the trip was visiting a cider farm. There were two barrels of sweet cider and two barrels of dry; the sweet barrels tasted different from each other.  When we asked the owner, Roger Wilkins, he said that they didn’t use any artificial yeast – they just let the cider ferment with the yeast on the skins, so no two barrels would ever be the same.  It was extraordinary to think that cider had been made in this way for a thousand years, and we were participating in that tradition.

We ended up spending the last day in Wells.  It was stunning, but I couldn’t wait to get back to Edinburgh.  We have been here a year this month.  Last year, were were fresh off of our six-month tour around the world.  I was just starting CodeClan, learning Ruby.  We were renting a tiny flat and didn’t know anyone in the city; we were trying to learn the geography, trying to get used to cooking in our new place, waiting for a shipment of our basic living necessities to arrive by Seven Seas.  I didn’t even know where North was, or how to buy a train ticket, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing with my life.

I’m still not sure, really.  But a year on, we have so much to be grateful for.

The Oppression of Other Lands

Color, Life Philosophy, Photography, travel
A picture of a Soviet soldier in the sky above Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Wall, Berlin.

“Like anyone else, I have no death wish and I have no intention of letting them kill me. I can’t mention most of the countermeasures I take, but I will mention one: this book. If I’m killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know. So if you sympathize with this search for justice, or with Sergei’s tragic fate, please share this story with as many people as you can. That simple act will keep the spirit of Sergei Magnitsky alive and go further than any army of bodyguards in keeping me safe.” (from “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice” by Bill Browder)

I recently finished Red Notice – an excellent story, well told, which I thought was going to be about economic battles between Russia and the West.  It covered those topics, but then it took a tragic and historically relevant turn with the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian attorney whose name was put on a law sanctioning Russian officials for torturing and killing him, or at least being complicit in his terrible treatment.

During the first six months of last year, when we were traveling around Southeast Asia, at some point I realized that every country we were going to had a repressive, if not totalitarian government, or – in the case of Fiji – was expected by locals to experience a military coup in the near future.  The fear of community espionage was alive in Vietnam; Cambodia’s opposition and media were being hounded by government thugs; the government was simply not discussed in Laos; Thailand seemed socially free, but was still politically oppressed; religion is a minefield in Indonesia and Malaysia; and Singapore’s repression is famous.

It wasn’t difficult to censor myself in order to stay out of trouble.  It merely meant following a few simple conversational rules: don’t criticize the government; complement everyone on how beautiful their country is or, if you can’t, at least praise the food, or the temples, or the friendliness of the people.  If you heard someone else complaining about something, distance yourself.  I didn’t want to end up in a foreign jail, trying to contact the American Consulate.

In retrospect, I’m a bit ashamed for following those rules, because by not voicing opposition, I was just reinforcing the public acceptance of brutal repression.  Without speaking up for concepts like the rule of law, one person one vote, and civil decency, wasn’t I implicitly supporting their opposite?  And by being a foreigner who seemed to love how things were going in foreign countries, wasn’t I, in effect, saying that the West supported, or at least didn’t oppose, these oppressive governments?

And upon returning to the United States, then the U.K., it was as if suddenly the air cleared.  When I thought about it afterward, the west is extremely rare, in history and in the world today, in terms of its openness to free speech, even if that is under attack by Western leaders.

So Browder’s book, describing the terrors of Russia today, and the criminal actions of its leaders, is extremely brave; it also made me remember how much I have to be thankful for, and how important it is for us to fight for civil and human rights.  And it seems that now, in America, the threat is partially from outside, but also internal.

2017 brought with it a lot of changes.  Many older people I know say it was one of the worst years in their memory, mostly due to Trump.  I don’t know about that; it was just new and different, and we’ll see where we end up.  I kind of feel like perhaps it’s like the economy: in the markets, if it’s a down year, that means that there were both a lot of buying opportunities and a lot of opportunities to start businesses.  Perhaps, politically, it’s the same; perhaps 2018 will see the reinvigoration of democratic forces, of free speech, of sanity and law and order.  Perhaps the people who stood up this year and said “We’ve had it” will be the political leaders of tomorrow; perhaps this is the beginning of a crucible that will forge a tougher generation, one that will meet the challenges of the future with strength and resolve.  Perhaps this will be the birth of new ideals, and vision, and light, and truth.

I hope so.  Because the alternative – of political repression, and universal self-censorship in order to avoid trouble – is a world I’ve been in, and not a place I want to live.

On love, and life, and Fiji

Color, Life Philosophy, Photography, travel
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The Intercontinental Hotel Beach, Fiji

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”  G. K. Chesterton

And this photo.  Out of all of the places that we visited in our six-month trip around the world, Fiji is at the top of my list – and I absolutely didn’t expect that.  It was dangerous; everyone, from cab drivers to hotel workers to other travelers, told us to never go outside after dark without a guide; muggings are apparently common in Suva, the capital.  It wasn’t always the most pleasant place; Levuka, perhaps my favorite place in the country, was tiny, had no beach, and was often overwhelmed by the smell of fish being processed in a giant factory next to the town; our hotel, the largest and possibly nicest in the area, had no hot water and an old, sprung mattress.  And our time at the Intercontinental Hotel, on the west side of the island, was lovely but frustrating – we were surrounded by Australians and isolated from locals, and while we had a nice beach, we could have been anywhere in the world; it was completely devoid of any local flavor.

Yet despite that, I want to go back, and it was only on reading this quote that I thought perhaps I understood why.  In every country we visited the first five months, we had more unknown lands to explore, more time to spend traveling, more things to learn and research and do, but in Fiji, the last new country we visited, we were at the end of our trip.  It was the last place where we needed to learn new words to communicate, the last place where we had to negotiate a new currency and exchange rate, the last place where we had to learn a new map and facts about culture and history and think about our place in the world.  Fiji was when I had to face the fact that you can’t keep traveling forever; at some point you have to settle down somewhere, set up a non-itinerant life, collect a few more things besides a backpack and a few scraps of clothing and a passport.  So maybe that’s why I loved it: because I knew it had to be lost.

On Tuesday, we celebrated a year in Edinburgh.  I scrolled through the photos on my phone to see what I’ve taken pictures of so far here, and then kept going back in history and found this one – taken on the last night of our trip, right before we caught a cab to the airport to fly to America, then London, then pack up for life in Scotland, just over a year ago now.  Then I scrolled back through my more recent photos and realized: just because that short trip was done doesn’t mean the adventure is over; it keeps going, all the way to the end, and it’s up to me to make sure I remember that every day there’s the chance to see a sunrise, and a sunset, and fill all my waking hours with growing, researching, doing, communicating, negotiating, meeting new and wonderful people, laughing, loving, and learning about culture, history, and my place in this crazy world we live in.

Those six months of travel are over, and I loved them, but the adventure is still going strong.

Why you should start all long trips in Hanoi, and bring almost nothing, and other long-term travel tips 

Color, Life Philosophy, Photography, travel


(I’m not an Amazon Affiliate, so none of these links make me any money.  They’re just to illustrate what I have.  Apologies if they pop up in the .uk site and not your local Amazon shop.)

My wonderful friend Mike is going to travel around the world starting in February 2018, and he asked for some suggestions.  I gave him two:

  1. Bring almost nothing but the clothes on your back, necessary toiletries and medications, and the necessary gadgets (unlocked phone, camera, iPod, Kindle, USB cables, etc.).
  2. START IN HANOI.  

I estimate that, if we’d taken these two steps at the start of our trip, we would have saved $500.  We would have gotten off the plane, grabbed the bus into town, checked into a hotel, and started shopping on the streets.  I would have gotten a new North Face 110 liter rucksack with detachable backpack for about $35, and a 10 liter waterproof sack for $5 (useful for waterfall trips, kayaking, etc.).  I would have picked up a pair of shorts and a few fast-dry shirts, and some canvas loafers for about $20 total, and some thin cotton boxers for $2.  A bag of detergent and a universal sink plug (maybe $3 total) would have completed the shopping.  Then, I would have started sightseeing, picking up what I found I needed along the way, a la Tim Ferriss or the Minimalists.  That way, my bag would have had plenty of space for souvenirs, and I wouldn’t have felt guilty tossing things, because right now, I have an entire compartment in my bag filled with everything I DON’T use: cotton t-shirts (SE Asia is absurdly hot, and these soak through quickly with sweat, so I haven’t worn a cotton t-shirt in three months); two pairs of “emergency” boxers (my Ex Officio boxers dry overnight); a down vest (purchased in Hanoi; SE Asia is SO HOT) and a Patagonia shell (used twice); gym socks (again, almost never used, as one pair is enough); a rain jacket (it turns out water dries out of fast-dry clothes pretty quickly); a Zippo; and a few other odds and ends that I just don’t have the heart to give up on just yet.

What do I absolutely recommend taking on a six month (or longer, or shorter) trip?  

A travel washboard.  A few days ago, two women in a restaurant were talking about how much laundry they ended up doing on the road.  Alice said, “I don’t know what they’re talking about – I just give all my laundry to my husband.”  It’s true – doing laundry has been one of the surprising joys of travel.  It turns out washing clothes in the sink, once a day, with local hand-wash detergent,  is cheap, easy, and FUN.  It also helps keep weight down in your pack.  Without a doubt, this is the top thing I think people should pack.

Binder clips.  The black butterfly kind you hold papers together with. They also keep bags of coffee or granola closed, keep clothes on a clothesline in a strong wind, and for the small ones, they can be used to pop the SIM card slot out of an iPhone (only some of them, though; others are too big).

Vietnamese coffee filter.  I originally brought an Aeropress and a Gorilla travel grinder on the trip, because one of my favorite people in the world, John Johnson, made me love really great coffee.  I anticipated getting fresh-roasted beans everywhere and making cups of coffee.  Then I remembered that:

  1. One of my favorite things is getting coffee made for me while traveling.  I never order coffee when I’m at home, so it feels like a true luxury to have someone do it for me.
  2. SE Asia produces a HUGE amount of exceptionally good coffee.  (John said that Burma is the next Panama, and while I don’t understand what that means, he said it like it’s a good thing.)

Then, in Vietnam, I met a lovely man named Duc, who gave me a small Long Cam LC1 filter and a bag of Trung Nguyen Sang Tao 1 coffee.  I haven’t picked up my Aeropress since, except to pack it deeper into my bag.  Most hotels have electric kettles and mugs, so this is the perfect way to make incredible coffee wherever you are.  (I also brought a Riess 1/2 liter enamelware  mug, which is now only useful for protecting the LC1 during travel).

Kindle.  Together, we’ve read 51 books so far on this trip, which would be bulky to carry around.  It’s great to be able to buy a book and have it delivered immediately, or to check one out from the library and have it for three weeks (if you’re a cheapskate like me).

Timbuk2 messenger bag.  I’ve never dealt with monsoons before.  Things get wet, and you don’t want your stuff soaked.  This has been a devicesaver in rainstorms and in the middle of water festivals, where locals throw buckets of water at everyone they see. I got mine brand-new for $2 in a thrift store in Maine.

A Dry Sack.  I have a 10 liter dry sack, the kind made for kayaking.  It has been a devicesaver for sailing, swimming, fishing, kayaking, and the above mentioned New Years celebrations.  A cheap way to protect expensive things.

Speedo Goggles.  You’re going to find yourself on all sorts of beaches and pools, and nobody else will be able to see the teeming underwater life except for you, because almost nobody else will have remembered goggles.

A Safety Razor.  I got a plastic Gillette razor in Hoi An that uses the disposable two-sided blades, one of which will last me a week; replacements are about five cents each no matter where you go.  If you care about the environment, and you want to cut down on your consumption (and disposal) of plastic, pick up a safety razor.  You can get amazing old safety razors on ebay for a few dollars, or you can just wait to arrive and get the ones sold here.

Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Magic Soap, small bottle.  I’ve been using it as shaving soap – about five drops every pass – and the smallest bottle they sell should last me the entire trip.  It’s also useful for toothpaste, and the peppermint one helps relieve bug bites if you don’t have hydrocortisone.  (The other scents of soap don’t have this added benefit.)

An Oree keyboard.  I know – £150 for a wooden keyboard?  But it’s like a Vitamix – I would have never recommended it before I got one, and now I don’t think I could ever go back.  It’s gorgeous, useful, and a true pleasure to use.  The leather case helps protect it from damage when you’re traveling.  Alice got a keyboard herself for the trip, but now she uses mine whenever I’m not using it.

Spare contact lens case.  A couple of days ago, I came back to the room to find that the maid had thrown away my contact lens case.  I asked the management, and it turned out she had thought it was trash.  She had never seen a contact lens case, and didn’t know what they were.  Luckily I had a spare.  Be prepared to deal with different levels of knowledge and culture.

Handkerchiefs.  Before we left, I dyed them blue.  They are better for the environment than paper tissues and they look way cooler.  Very little maintenance.

Baby Wipes.  You’ll need them.

Cutco Shears.  These are the scissors that can cut through a penny; they have been way more useful than my pocket knife.

Walmart 30 SPF Sport Sunscreen.  This was one of the highest rated sunscreens by Consumer Reports; the sunscreens produced here vary in quality, and the ones that are produced in the West tend to be obscenely overpriced.  I wish I’d brought two bottles.

American wall plugs.  That’s the standard over here, along with European ones.  In India, I occasionally found sockets made for UK plugs, but even that was rare.  I have three plugs for charging devices (kindle, iPhone, iPod, etc.).

Gallon-sized Ziploc bags.  Useful for everything from holding laundry to transporting wet soap to waterproofing things when you don’t want to use a dry sack.

Hydrocortisone cream. Every day, we see people walking around with their legs covered in giant red bug bite welts that they have scratched to the point of bleeding. Friends, YOU DO NOT NEED TO SUFFER ANY LONGER! Dr. Bronner’s works sometimes, but a tiny dab of hydrocortisone works much better.

A cotton scarf. You can buy these in any market; I got three Kramas from Cambodia. They’re great for covering your shoulders and neck from the sun, wiping away sweat, carrying children, covering bags, etc.  (Here, people wear scarves and jackets to protect themselves from the sun; when it gets hot, they add clothing.  It has taken a bit of time to come around to their point of view, but now, I kind of get it.)

A 1993 Timex Ironman Triathlon watch.  Clock; chronometer (lap swimming, running); interval timer (room workouts); five alarms (waking up, going to sleep, warning of boarding times, pickup times, appointments, and everything in between).  Water resistant to 100m.

An REI Carabiner.  Not one of the cheap ones that you can get at a gas station for $.25; a heavy-duty one that can hold your own weight.  They’re useful for attaching bags, clotheslines, water bottles, towels, dry sacks, all sorts of things, quickly and easily.  We actually ran into two women on the train in India who had never seen them, and had 30-minutes of questions about them, so they’re good conversation starters, too.

A Re-Uz reusable shopping bag.  My cousin owns Re-Uz, and gave me mine for free.  It has proven incredibly useful for trips to the market and trips to the beach, especially in places where plastic bags litter the landscape and you don’t want to contribute further to the problem as a tourist.

Stuff I didn’t need?

A Zippo.  Seriously?  I don’t even smoke!  Why did I bring something that needs to be refilled with a substance that you can’t bring on planes?  Stupid.

A box of postcards.  I figured that I’d get a kick out of writing postcards to people with pictures that were not of the place I’m in, so I brought along a box of postcards of various famous authors, and some vintage linen postcards from Youngstown, Ohio.  It has been fun, but it just takes up space.  If you want a postcard, let me know.

An Aeropress and a travel grinder.  Again, these are just taking up space.  Buy coffee on the road, for $.25, from a mom-and-pop shop, and talk to the people.

Cotton t-shirts.  They are terrible, especially in Southeast Asian heat.  Just get a few sports shirts from Hanoi and wash them in the sink, or get one of the ubiquitous laundry services to do it (usually about $1/kilogram of clothes).

Extra contact lens solution.  I brought three giant Costco bottles, to be used up over six months; it will save me perhaps $8 on this trip, but at the cost of space.  I’m not about to get rid of the remainders, but contact lens solution is available here.

Speaking of.  I don’t like to think of myself as an untraveled bumpkin, but I’ve been constantly surprised both at what is available everywhere in a developing nation (baby wipes, Johnnie Walker, Nivea lotion) and what I don’t need to survive (basically, everything is readily replaceable for very little money).  Everything is made in China nowadays, anyway.

Assorted lessons from the first three months of traveling:
The first thing to buy in any country is a phone and data SIM card for your unlocked phone.  Except in India, where the system takes 24 hours to activate a new line, you will be up and running within minutes.

Things to look for in a hotel room: a big sink, reviews on TripAdvisor.com of comfortable beds, a closet with hangers, a desk area, a pool large enough to swim laps, an electric kettle for tea or coffee. If breakfast is included, see what people say; we’ve found that it’s often better to just find a good breakfast spot rather than pay extra for a hotel breakfast. The only exception to that: Emerald Waters in Hoi An, which had some of the best food we had anywhere.

We started the trip with a rule: stay at least three nights in every hotel.  This gives you enough time to get to know an area, do everything you want to do, and you can hopefully make a friend or two.  Then, in rural Cambodia and Laos, we changed it: if it’s a rural place, two nights is probably plenty, unless there’s something specific you want to do that takes longer.  In some places – Hanoi, Bangkok, Siem Reap – we have stayed a week, and loved it.  But as a general rule, three nights minimum.

Google Maps is incredible.  When you get to an area, search for gyms, public pools, and restaurants.
If you’re going to a city, search “NYTimes.com 36 hours in (city name).”  Many of them are a bit outdated, but they will give you at least a few worthwhile things to do.

If you are renting a scooter or motorcycle, and you stop for gas, it’s worth it to fill it up. Don’t save a few cents because you don’t want to break a large bill.
Forgive stupid tourists. There are a lot of them out there from all countries.


Set trip goals and week goals.  Ask yourself what will make each month, week and day successful, so you know what you’re aiming to do.  Sometimes, it’s to see every Wat in a town; sometimes, it’s to spend 16 hours on a train without throwing yourself out of the window.  When you have a successful day, it’s a good excuse to have a local beer.

I’ll add more as I think of it.  Mike, and anyone else contemplating a long trip, just come out and buy what you need as you need it. You’re welcome, and I look forward to seeing you on the road!  🙂