I went back to Europe this summer, my first visit since the pandemic began. Revenge travel was in full swing, and Paris was at the top of my list (along with about ten million other tourists). Barcelona and Madrid sandwiched the trip on either sides; chosen deliberately as cities that I knew would be fun and comfortable, were affordable for someone earning in Thai baht, and could be scoped out for possible future moves. It was a recon mission, a treat, and comfort food for my soul all in one. I gained a lot of insight from that six-week trip. It felt like a return to traveling, obviously, but ..read more

Greetings from Bangkok!!(…!?!?) So I live in Thailand now, and three months into it that’s a sentence I’m still wrapping my head around. Of all the pandemic consequences, this wasn’t even remotely in the realm of realities I thought possible. (Broke? Yes, very likely. Discouraged and despondent? Totally. Relocating to Southeast Asia for the first time in 9 years to live a whole new life? Get outta here.) To be clear, I moved to Thailand during a pandemic due to a job offer, not as an escape. It was early September and I was finally settling into Chicago (– my second pandemic move of the year ..read more

One of my last days in Wellington. New Year’s Eve, 2017 Every January I lay out concrete, practical goals for the year. See resolutions from previous years here. Soooo 2017 wasn’t great. 2017 was the dirt-flavored jelly bean, the collapsed soufflé; the disappointing taste of vodka in your martini when you definitely requested gin. Basically, the “how the hell did you happen??” of years.  But to be fair, after nine years of living abroad I was due for one of them to be kind of crap. And in a way, I’m glad it was: when you crash into t ..read more

Confession: for years, I saw Taiwan as China’s Canada. That is to say: it was so close in proximity, why would I visit the neighbor when I could use my vacation time to go literally anywhere else? (Yep, this is also me admitting I’ve still never been to Canada.) But then I began traveling full-time, and after hitting the road a little too hard, found myself needing a breather — so when my good friend Tom mentioned he had a spare room going, the idea of spending three months in a chilled-out city with tropical weather and cheap food b ..read more

“Give me your phone,” ordered a stranger on my right. I looked up from the windowsill where I sat perched, mesmerized by the killer pork belly po’ boy in my hands. “Give me your phone,” the woman repeated. “The light’s really nice, and you look good in this window.” The po’ boys in question. I wasn’t sure I believed her intentions, but I did suddenly recognize her: a few minutes earlier she’d been standing next to me at the bar, ordering drinks to go (because, New Orleans). She had looked friendly enough — but that was when she was inside. Now she and her husband were outside, no walls t ..read more

In this series, I round up the five best things I ate in a particular city or country. Click here to read previous 5BTIAs from Paris, London, and more. You guys. Why has no one told me about Chicago? Or I suppose more accurately: why has no one insisted I go to Chicago?! It took 29 years of flying through O’Hare — and thus purely seeing Chicago as a Layover City — before I finally pulled the trigger on leaving the confines of the airport.* (*Technically I’ve ventured into the city twice due to flight delays; I was a child both times and my only memories were of the hotels and and on ..read more

I don’t know at what point the idea came to me, but somewhere in the last couple years — most likely thanks to photos on Facestagram or Pinstabook or one of those platforms that makes the world seem so hazily wholesome — I decided I wanted to experience Midsommar in Sweden. Maybe it was the flower crowns. Maybe it was the absurdity of nights that never truly get dark. Who knows. (It was definitely the flower crowns.) Regardless the impetus, it was an easy enough desire to fulfill: my best friend moved to Sweden a couple of years ago, and was ..read more

When I told friends and family (and blog readers, and bartenders, and strangers on the street) that I was moving to New Zealand, I was met with a number of politely bewildered looks. “Oh! Are you a huge Lord of the Rings fan…?” Nope. “Right, so you must be into hiking? You should definitely check out –“ Noooope. “Ummm….you like sheep?” (Well yes, but I could’ve stayed in Ireland if I just wanted to be around sheep.) Whatever a “New Zealand person” looks like, I clearly don’t fall into that category. So before I start writing about my experiences this year in Wellington, I thoug ..read more

“Can I ask you something?” the hazel-eyed Brit interrupted from across the hostel breakfast table. “Let me get this right: you’re not a beach person. And you don’t dive or scuba or hike. What…exactly…are you hoping to get out of being here?” It was a surprisingly personal and pointed question for someone I’d known for all of an hour. I could’ve been offended (“What’s it to you my trip has no purpose, guy??”) but he wasn’t far off: I had landed in Fiji for seven days, with absolutely zero plans, and was clearly a bit lost. “I don’t know,” I responded slowly. “But ..read more

I’m a small-stakes waffler. I’ll lay in bed for an hour in the mornings debating if I reeeally want a shower, or waste twenty minutes rewriting the same email with different comma placements. (These blog posts take days to finalize for not dissimilar reasons.) But the larger and brasher the decision, the happier I am to plow ahead with the first impulse that comes to mind. Move to [insert new country] without a job or money? Hell yeah. Meet a Tinder date in the countryside at night with no cell service or ability to speak the local language, again? Well, I haven’t been murdered yet. So a coup ..read more