As you probably can tell by now, I love a good treasure hunt. There’s something about going off in search of rare, hidden, objects or services that always gets my blood rushing. I also love plant-based eating. So why not combine the two passions? That was the thinking that inspires my wife, Donica, and I to book a trip to Portland, Oregon, by all accounts and surveys the #1 Vegan-Friendly city in the United States. Our mission: to hit up as many plant-base eateries as we can in a 2.5-day long weekend, in search of the perfect Portland vegan experience. In most cities around the world, finding ..read more

One of recurring themes of my posts is the tension between authenticity and tourism. As travelers, we’re quite-naturally drawn to the “big-ticket” sights: the Great Wall of China, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Louvre, etc. When you’re in the vicinity of those locations, you pretty much have to visit them. I mean, can you imagine going to Egypt and not seeing the pyramids? Absurd! In my experience, those world-famous sites tend to pan out. They’re renowned for a reason. I had seen pictures of the Taj Mahal my whole life; upon visiting it for the first time, I was prepared to be disappointed. I ..read more

As a traveler, I’m always on the hunt for “authentic” experiences and thankfully, they do still exist out there in the world. It’s one of the reasons I like countries like India so much – the culture is so thick, dense and historic; you just can’t Disney-fy it! And yet, what to make of places like Chinatown in San Francisco, an exotic neighborhood of red lanterns and green-tiled rooves that is almost entirely fake. Oh, there are Chinese people living there – thousands of them – but the decorations are complete artifice. The story goes that Chinatown was already drawing tourist interest before ..read more

When it comes to zoos, my feelings are conflicted. On the one hand, as an animal lover and a vegan, I find it hard to rationalize, snatching creatures out of their natural habitats and putting them in cages for us humans to gawk at. Isn’t that species-ism at its worst? I’m reminded of a scene in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, when the protagonist is taken up by aliens and placed in a kind of human zoo. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be caged and gawked at by creatures with bigger brains than me. (Which, to be fair, is a good many people.) On the other hand, the last time I vis ..read more

If you watch enough Looney Tunes cartoons (as I did as a kid), you’ll eventually see a scene where one of our heroes has been captured by their enemy and placed in a stew pot. The nemesis might be Elmer Fudd. It might be Native Americans. It might be aliens. Our hero might be Bugs Bunny. Or Daffy Duck. Or the two of them together. Inevitably, they’ll treat the stew pot like a bath tub, enjoying a little relaxed bathing time until they realize the vegetables floating in the water are an indication that they’re actually in trouble, and their goose (or rabbit or duck) is about to be cooked. Liter ..read more

On a Japan Travel Facebook group I belong to, someone almost inevitably will post (for advice) the itinerary of an upcoming trip to Tokyo. It tends to look something like this: 6am Tsukiji fish market; 9am Asakusa temple; 11am Harajuki; 12pm Meiji Shrine; 1pm Shibuya crossing; 2pm Akihabara; 3pm Ginza shopping, 4pm cat café, 5pm dinner at Jiro’s sushi restaurant etc. It’s perfectly understandable, of course. Who wouldn’t want to maximize their precious sightseeing time in a foreign city? On the other hand, is that the best way to approach travel (and life) – running from site to site, checking ..read more

There are some places in the world that stand apart from local politics: Bagan in Myanmar (Wow Place #9), the Great Wall of China, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, etc. Whatever you may think of the governments of the host countries, the sights, themselves, remains eternal. Once other such site is the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem. Adjoining the Israel Museum, the “Shrine of the Book” houses one of the most important ancient manuscripts the world has ever seen. Discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves near the Khirbet Qumran on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea, th ..read more

I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon about travel; it’s called, “How will I EVER?” It occurs when you’re still at home, thinking about an upcoming journey. As you’re making your plans, it feels inconceivable that you’ll ever be able to figure things out – especially if you don’t speak the local language. Questions arise like, “How will I ever be able to order food?” “How will I ever figure out how to catch a bus?” “How will I ever reach that interesting temple out in the middle of nowhere?” While sitting at home, foreign travel often feels overwhelming. So overwhelming that you might as well just ..read more

One of the joys of travel is stumbling across unusual juxtapositions. A tiny temple in the middle of a shopping mall. A Mexican restaurant in an obscure Mongolian town. A Starbucks coffee shop in the middle of an Arabian Souk. In such places, you can’t help but wondering, “What is this place doing here? Who built it? And why did someone think this neighborhood needed something like this?!” Not one but two such juxtapositions exist in the Gorai district of northwestern Mumbai, on a place called Dharavi Island. Here you can’t help but gawk at the impressive Global Vipassana Pagoda, a giant, gold ..read more

One of the pleasures of traveling is visiting places where famous people once spent time. For example, if you’re interested in the life of Jesus, you’ll want to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. If you admire Winston Churchill, you’ll want to drop by the Churchill War Rooms in London. If you hold esteem for Nelson Mandela, you’ll want to pay a visit to Robben Island Prison in Cape Town. And if you’re a fan of Gandhi, there’s no better place to learn about his life and work than Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya: the Mahatma Gandhi Museum in Mumbai, India. It’s fair to say that ..read more