MoveItManning

A few weeks ago I was living in an apartment in Washington, DC. I was working at a bar, working at an art gallery, I had a lease, a gym membership, a car, a Netflix account, and 30 pairs of shoes in my closet. I am now officially homeless and am carrying around all my possessions on my back. There is no lease, no car, no gym (though I forgot to cancel Netflix, so there's still that). After two weeks in South America I am speaking Spanish on a daily basis, have ridden a runaway horse in the Andes, seen smoke from an active volcano, and trudged knee deep through bat shit. To say that this is a departure from my normal routine would be an understatement. My journey began in Quito, Ecuador. At 2850 m ... read more

At 7:00 AM I am out the door, on my way to the train station. The sun is not yet up and I tramp along in near darkness, dawn blushing ever so faintly on the horizon. It's cold and my breath hangs in the air like a spritz of perfume. Only a few other souls have ventured out so early on a Sunday, and I imagine that I am in a disaster scenario movie where everyone else has fled or died or turned into zombies. We are the sole survivors. A few more people congregate at the train station but the carriages are hardly full--maybe 10 other people are in my car. We pull out of the station spot on time, just as the sun rubs the sleep from its eyes. As we make our way ... read more

The Christmas tree in the hotel lobby was like Angelina Jolie at an all-you-can-eat buffet, or Gene Simmons on Antiques Roadshow: it just didn't belong. I am eating pineapples and drinking coconut water straight from the shell, it's over 90 degrees and I got sunburned at the pool yesterday. There is NO WAY it's December. Partridges and pear trees should be months away. Yet there it was, the Christmas tree, glowing with yuletide defiance. 'Don't you know where you are? Don't you know how hot it is? Stupid tree,' I thought. With some surprise I looked down at my knockoff retro Casio watch and saw DEC 1 starring back at me. WTF? So now that it's December and all, I should bring you up to date: After leaving Saigon my friend Emily and I traveled deeper ... read more

A spell of bad weather can start to feel like a virus that you carry from place to place. First rain, then floods, then more rain followed me from Hanoi all the way down to Nha Trang on the central coast. For a week I never felt really, truly dry. I'm inclined to believe that my bad luck charm came in the form of a bespectacled American who, when I asked where he was from, replied "Oh, nowhere really." Oh, I thought, one of those. He's a traveler. (When I pressed him further he finally admitted that he was from Pennsylvania and had a house in Las Vegas of all places) "I just travel. Been traveling for 2 years now." He said this in a kind of nonchalant way that was almost a challenge--as if he ... read more

I've been finding it difficult to keep up with my writing since coming to Vietnam. The urge to write has been replaced by the urge to watch from hidden balcony cafes, to roam the streets, and get lost among the motos and crumbling colonial architecture. Every time I sit down at a computer to type something up, I find I don't really have the words. Hanoi seemed to trigger this. Looking back on my notes about the city, they are all inelegant musings and badly written impressions. But it's forgivable--the city was awash with commerce and activity and quirky details--too much for any one hand to write down. But a few sights do stand out to me even now. First on the list are the motorbikes. Every man, woman, and child owns a motorbike in Hanoi. ... read more

Arriving in Luang Prabang was a breath of fresh air. It took two days on a boat and two nights in kooky stopover towns that seems to exist only to feed and house travelers on the way to somewhere else. The front desk clerk of one hotel didn't care about taking our names or passports, but he was adamant that we pay NOW. In dollars. It was on the boat where I got my first taste of "Laos time" when we left two hours late. But the scenery more than made up for it--lush, primordial forests, gardens of Eden flanking both sides of the river, almost burdened with growth. Laos' most important resource is forest, and it's easy to see why in this landlocked country surrounded by China, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, everyone is trying to ... read more

Today's post may come from Laos, but it concerns my time in Northern Thailand. I have been neglecting this blog as of late, too concerned with street food and waterfalls to seek out time at an internet cafe. There is much to update, and I must start with my trek in the jungles near Pai, Thailand this last week. We ended up booking with a guy named "Tony"--obviously his English name, but easy to remember. Tony was talkative, outgoing, and not shy about divulging personal information. He assured us that this trek was in a "non-touristed" area. This seems to be a hot word among the trekking circuit--every poster we encountered advertised its "non-touristed" route, and we began to wonder whether they weren't stretching the truth there...at any rate, the trek looked decent, it was in ... read more

I have traded bustling Bangkok for chilled out Chiang Mai. I stayed longer than expected in the capitol, waiting through a holiday weekend for my Vietnamese visa to come through. The travel gods rallied against me this past week as I read with growing concern about the floods in central Thailand. I had heard rumors that the trains had all but stopped, and indeed, my plans to stay in Ayuthea on the way to Chiang Mai were utterly thwarted. But such is travel. I managed to get a refund on my train ticket and was quoted about 35 dollars, more than the train, for a "VIP" bus complete with "snack and beverage" service. Much to their chagrin, I decided to look elsewhere. Although I had heard horror stories about cheap buses leaving from Koah San Road ... read more

My god, I have made it unscathed through my first day in Bangkok. My head is swimming with sensory data and, I can no longer deny it, the beginnings of a cold. I arrived changed planes in Mumbai, an odd little airport at the edge of a vast country. I could see the shanty houses even from the plane. I had a bit of the jitters again as we touched down, realizing that this is the farthest from home I've ever been, and also realizing that I never actually bothered to look at the visa requirements for passing through India...Fortunately, even though there were about ten checkpoints along the way, security wasn't that bad, and the flight to Bangkok got me in right on time. My first day was devoted to arranging onward travel, and buying ... read more