Back wandering around Hanoi after our daytrip out of the city, I was struck by the widespread ability to adapt and adopt in Vietnam. People seem adept at finding practices from other cultures and making them their own. The lacquer paintings are one example, alongside the numerous culinary examples pulled from the French colonial era… Read More Land of Dragons and Fairies
While Hanoi has much to see, it is also easy and worthwhile to get out of town. The tourism industry in Vietnam in a model of efficiency and organization. Small storefronts pepper the Old Quarter offering up a menu of daytrips and overnight choices, all at reasonable prices, and complemented in the virtual marketplace where… Read More Bending With the Wind
Pleasant memories of my younger days, warmed by 15 years of nostalgia, led to Hanoi’s selection for a fall trip. With just over a week on the ground, Hannah and I opted to base ourselves in the long-running Vietnamese capital, a tireless yet pleasant city set along the curving floodplain of the Red River. Revisiting… Read More Open Door Renovations
Along with our longer day trips, we traveled to many different areas in the city as well. Transportation is the life blood of any city, the key ingredient to it all functioning, and this is truer yet in a megacity like Mexico. Driving here appears to be an act of faith, enduring frustration punctuated by… Read More Under the Fifth Sun
There is so much to see beyond the boundaries of Mexico City that deciding which direction to head is almost paralyzing. Fortunately, Mexico’s Secretariat of Tourism has come to the rescue with its Pueblos Magicos program, an on-and-off-again effort meant to highlight the many places worthy of a visit around the country. At the risk… Read More Pueblos Magicos
It had been over a decade since my first and only trip to Mexico City and I was long overdue for a sequel. True to the Hollywood formula, all the successful elements of that trip – locale, food, people, sights – were dutifully recreated. Like any sequel, new elements like my wife and a proper… Read More CDMX: The Sequel
We eased away from Naoshima to cities in a gradation of ferry, train, and shinkansen. By midday we were back underground, Osaka’s subway taking us into the heart of the metropolis. At first glance, Japan’s second city looks a lot like Tokyo: the same tower clusters, narrow lanes, elevated highways, and fine-grain concrete urbanism filling… Read More A Fistful of Yen
After more than a week of Japanese cities, we allowed ourselves a change of pace. From Kyoto, a few trains, a dockside lunch, and a brief rush through the heat found us on a small ferry bound for Naoshima. The small island loomed up ahead, bare brown rock rising from the inland sea, the distance… Read More Floating Worlds
Kyoto wasn’t on my list while trip planning. Everything I’d heard was of a nice but overtouristed city, camera-toting visitors trawling the streets, trailing behind women in kimonos, snapping mindlessly, or shuffling in long, winding queues on pathways between shrines. This didn’t appeal to me and I pushed back until, in the end, the inexorable… Read More Old Enough
We broke away from Tokyo for a daytrip into the western suburbs, a morning express train taking us to Kawagoe before a bus transfer to another smaller town. Our destination: the Kinbue Soy Sauce factory. Hannah had reached out over email weeks before, and we stood under a mister in the shade, dodging the heat,… Read More Day Trippers
Zak Abroad 