4 Steps to a Healthy Father-Son Relationship
What Joy I feel to have two grown boys who not only love me, but LIKE me. We like spending time together, enjoy old routines and new adventures, want to talk and play and hang. I fly into Philadelphia for a quick weekend with our youngest, and he drops everything to be with me. On…
- All
- Albania
- Alderney
- Asia
- Bali
- Camino
- Canada
- Central America
- Costa Rica`
- Cuba
- Cyprus
- Denmark
- England
- Europe
- France
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Italy
- Kosovo
- Mexico
- Morocco
- Newfoundland
- Personal
- Poland
- Thailand
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- United States
- Vietnam
4 Steps to a Healthy Father-Son Relationship
What Joy I feel to have two grown boys who not only love me, but LIKE me. We like spending time together, enjoy old routines and new adventures, want to talk and play and hang. I fly into Philadelphia for a quick weekend with our youngest, and he drops everything to be with me. On…
Paris, One Patisserie at a Time
We seem to keep coming back to Paris, so how to keep her fresh and exciting? You can only marvel at the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur so many times. Our solution – pick a new neighbourhood, draw a 3-block radius around it and don’t go beyond. We randomly choose Levallouis-Perret, partly because it’s on…
Fragmented – Life of a Caregiver After Knee Replacement
Caring for my warrior wife after knee replacement surgery was never meant to be easy. I was prepared for medicine chart tracking, pain management, emotional counseling, rehab exercises, special food requests, disrupted sleep – it’s what we both signed on for. What I didn’t anticipate was how her shiny new titanium joint would leave me…
3 Weeks in Scotland – Lowlands
As I relate my great-grandmother’s colourful history to a local guide, I add in the detail that the younger lad she married on the train to BC was in fact a Lowlander. “Not a Sassanach?!” he gasps. Thanks to my extensive Outlander education, I know what that means and quickly reassure him that it’s not…
3 Weeks in Scotland – Northern Highlands
When young Anne McGilvery refused a marriage being forced on her, she was kicked out of the family home on the fair Isle of Mull and sailed for Canada to work as a nanny. After a decade, the itch returned and she was once again high-tailing it – this time aboard a west-bound train, where…
Family Bonding Via Comfort and Terror
For most people, taking a break from normal life means going somewhere different, away from the usual people and foods and ways of meandering through life. In our inverted reality, it means returning to the land and people we’re usually away from. After the mountain-top dragons of Vietnam and the Komodo Dragons of Indonesia, what…
Double-Sunrise Flight and Credit Card Hack
At 2:00 Thursday afternoon we walk barefoot across the sun-sparkled sands of Le Pirate Island. It’s going to take a healthy tolerance for bland movies and a clever credit card hack to survive this upcoming 34 hours door-to-door odyssey to Chicago (well, doorless beachfront Indonesian cabana to door-full seniors’ residence in Chicago north suburbs). First…
Komodo Dragon Boat Tour
It was never my intention to see a Komodo Dragon, let alone a 3-day “liveaboard” boat tour followed by a deserted tropical island. Heck I didn’t even know they were around until a random Balinese batik-shirt salesman invited us to “come to my island.” Four hours later we traded plans to end our Asia trip…
Bali Brain
A month in Ubud has given us a delightful case of Bali brain. Relaxed, rhythmic, flowing. There’s a long Typical Tourist list of retreats and temples and waterfalls that we never bother to visit, opting instead for a life of good food, workouts, swims, easy outings. We work out at our fancy gym every day.…
Wandering outside Ubud, Bali
Sarah’s left me for a solo 2-night work retreat, so I go to my happy place – wandering. Ubud is like a giant Edward Scissorshands hand with parallel fingers shooting up North and South out of the town, each separated by deep river canyons. I’ve already travelled down our finger to town several times, so…
A Toast to our College-Graduating Son
Our little baby done grow’d up and graduated. With a B.A. in city planning and urban design from Haverford College, and now a summer internship with the City of Philadelphia’s bike-share program, he’s well on his way to realizing his incredible potential. But thanks to a clever 3+2 partnership with UPenn, he’s also already halfway…
Off-Gassing with Friends
I’m not hallucinating – not quite – but in this steamy 180 degrees Russian “Banya,” memories of old friends I’ve shared saunas with are blurring my eyes as much as the sweat pouring off my forehead. We’ve lucked out on an Aufgussing ceremony at our fancy gym/spa here in Ubud, Bali. In preparation, the leader…
Timeless Comfort: Traditions and Beliefs in Bali
Our host mother sits against the wall of the open-air living space in the middle of the compound. Legs straight on the floor, bamboo and flowers and leaves at the ready, she cuts and staples a different type of offering every morning. A set of several dozen each day that will be placed on the…
White Lotussing in Bali
At age 22 I backpacked around the world for 18 months on $7,000. A key to doing this was thinking in local currency – a fancy dessert might sound cheap at $2, but an inexcusable excess at 1,000 Costa Rican colones. Ordering in a restaurant was easy because I always chose whatever’s cheapest (no drinks…
Hanoi in One Day!
With only one day in Hanoi – a sprawling city of 8.6 million people – we have to prioritize. First priority is getting to my language school for the refund of 45 million dong I overpaid. My trust in humanity remains strong – the owner is there and happy to see me. The other reward…
Northern Vietnam: Hue, Ninh Binh
While we prefer long stays in one place to truly settle in, after two months in Central Vietnam (Hoi An) what a shame it would be to not broaden our understanding of this beautiful country with a week in Northern Vietnam. Thanks to a sooner-than-expected expiring tourist visa, we pack it all into a scant…
Broken Rice – Final Flavours of Hoi An
Broken rice – those discard, misshapen bits after the milling and cleaning process – has come a long way. From animal feed, to poor-man’s food during times of starvation, to the iconic Cơm tấm dish with fried egg and pork. Today it stands proudly as a cultural symbol of the hardships, poverty, and resilience of…
Stranger in a Splendid Land
We immigrants, we foreigners, we digital nomads and wealthy tourists and entitled expats – too often we’re loud, intrusive, whatever is the opposite of subtle. Our unnecessarily big bodies take up a lot of space. Our voluminous chatter in Babel tongues clogs the airways. Our tentative driving clogs up intersections. We do not blend. And…
In Praise of Praise
Empty Nest + Retirement + Nomadic Lifestyle aint for the faint of ego. I had expected more times of loneliness, boredom, and questions of purpose than I’ve ended up feeling. But I never anticipated how the triple-whammy of losing in-person-parenting, work and home community would dam up the steady stream of strokes that keep us…
A Typical Day in an Atypical Life
“What do you do all day?” I’m often asked. Other than “there’s still not enough time,” I’m never quite sure how to answer. We live here, so it’s not all tours and insta-photo moments. So here’s my journal from just this one random any ol’ day as a digital nomad in Hoi An, Vietnam. 6:15…
Tet in Hoi An – Year of the Fire Horse
We move from the beach over to the heart of Hoi An, Vietnam just in time for “Tet” – the lunar new year we narrowly call “Chinese New Year” in Vancouver. While the calendar new year in Montreal was met with kombucha, half-hearted resolutions and Emily in Paris, Tet in Hoi An is a full-throated…
A Million Dong Can’t Be Wrong
It’s 9pm on my first night in Vietnam when I become a millionaire. On the corner of a well-lit street, with no traffic noise to drown out the waves lapping on the shore one block away, I slip a crisp $100 bill to our AirBnB host, who opens her wallet and pulls out 2.6 million…
Chiang Rai (Northern Thailand Part Three)
Last stop of our Northern Thailand jaunt is Chiang Rai. Honestly it’s a lot like Chiang Mai but on a smaller scale, but there are some fantastical quirky sites (Condom Café anyone?) to make it a worthy stop. White Temple of Chiang Rai If Gaudi were to build a Buddhist temple, he’d come up with…
Mae Salong (Northern Thailand Part Two)
Chiang Dao may have been scenic, but three hours further north into the mountains we are ensconced in the beauty of Mae Salong. Twenty miles from the border of our old stomping grounds of Myanmar, this is also the region where refugee Chinese soldiers fought back against the Chinese Communist regime, and were subsequently welcomed…
Currently in...
Moncton, New Brunswick for a month of post-knee-replacement rehab (Sarah's) with our lovely Galen and his fiance Cai.
Heading to...
Newfoundland, Uruguay, Chile, Easter Island, Carnival!, Monteverde. Please share any sites, people or ideas by email.