VIENTIANE, Laos — The picky little guys on my tongue called tastebuds were singing Hallelujah in unison when they first soaked in the weird mixture of sour and spicy that came from a bowl served by a woman I had fondly called Mama Thai. It was the summer of 2004 and I was a college sophomore…
By Yoshke Dimen
A Bangkok Welcome
BANGKOK, Thailand — In utter disbelief, I stared at the receipt while I walked the length of the airport to the train station. I just arrived in Bangkok and the first thing I did after making it through the Immigration was exchange currencies. It was another obvious lesson for me: Convert only a little at…
Macau Cake Walk
MACAU — The only instances where I took any mode of transportation around Macau were the taxi ride from the airport to the Macau hotel and the bus ride from the hotel back to the airport. I simply walked the whole time no matter how far my next destination was. Haha. I just love walking…
From My Handwritten Journal: Not the Coffee Kind of Love
MANILA, Philippines — I have no idea what had gotten into me. Maybe it was the rain or the slow ballads that I had been listening to the whole day. I was feeling a little down again, thinking about my childhood and the idea of talking to a shrink came up again but the idea…
Traveler vs Tourist: Traveling Without Labels
The traveler-vs-tourist debate has been around for ages. To some, a tourist is somebody who is more interested in the destination and not the journey, who usually avails of pre-arranged tours and sticks with the guidebooks, who books accommodations beforehand, and who only admires the place and not make attempts to connect with the locals…
The World According to Google Search Suggestions
“Filipinos are annoying. Malaysians are ugly. Indonesians are lazy. Singaporeans are rude. Americans are dumb.” That’s what Google suggested when I typed the nationality (+ are) into the search box the other night. I was doing an online research about Malaysia for my travel blog when I spotted a search suggestion that I thought was a…
Robert, Robbie, and the Robbery
The rain was just about to pour when a man approached us. It was five past nine o’clock in the evening and my friend Ces and I were walking towards a cake shop along Tomas Morato in Quezon City. “Hello, sir,” said the man. “Can I ask you a small favor?” While he was remarkably…
The Long Weekend
Nine hours until my presentation the next morning when my phone made that awful sound, which at that moment was not very welcome. The clock had just struck midnight and I was still facing a blank PowerPoint slide, trying to find the first word. Still, I picked up the phone. “Hi. Is it a good…