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
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
Tokyo spread out 800 feet below us, an indistinguishable sea of buildings, shoulder to shoulder, stretched out across the Kanto Plain and broken only by the hard edges of the sea. Periodic clusters of skyscrapers showed where the rails and elevated highways, steel and concrete ribbons, come together. Somewhere to the west, Mount Fuji hid… Read More Back to the Future
Kutaisi was previously Georgia’s second city and an ancient capital, but has been declining since independence and has now been eclipsed in size by Batumi, the flashy, new-money Black Sea resort city. It was not on my list, but Kutaisi’s new life as a budget airline hub brought me here and I was happily surprised… Read More Last Stop: Kutaisi
Georgia-bound, Gyumri slowly receded behind us as the driver picked his way through the potholes. He was an older gentlemen, nattily dressed for our day of driving in slacks and a cardigan. I never got his name, but he reminded me of one of my grandfathers, the same deep-set, slightly sweet scent of tobacco around… Read More Far Corners of a Small Country
Like any activity, travel carries calculated risks. I weigh costs, time and safety against the places I go, researching in an effort to inform myself ahead of time. Ultimately though nothing can quite prepare for the experience on the ground in a new place. Here I’ve had more luck over the years than I ever… Read More Hits and Misses
Zak Abroad 