sioted

As I walked in a large Ho Chi Minh City park this morning a Vietnamese woman approached me to say, "With your beard like that, you look like Chuck Norris." First, I am honored that after two months of not shaving I resemble a legendary man rumored not to shave with a razor, but rather a swift roundhouse kick to his own face; because nothing can cut Chuck Norris but Chuck Norris. Second, I am dishonored that my country's greater contributions to the world must share a spotlight with drivel such as the Total Body Gym and Walker Texas Ranger. ... read more

As a little girl raised in a Chinese household she believed in the centuries-old beliefs of her parents and parents' parents and so on. During certain holidays her mother dolled her up in fine red silk dresses. She especially loved to celebrate the moon festivals in which offerings of food, drink, and fortune are made to the gods which lived on the moon. As she recalls these childhood memories she tucks graying hair behind an ear. It was so long ago that she abandoned the red silk dresses. The best part of the Autumnal moon festival was watching her father light the incense, she explains that the rising smoke helped to carry the spiritual offerings of her father's best rice wine and mother's doughy moon cakes up to the pale moon which she remembers being in ... read more

I remember being an American outdoor-kid. In fields or woods we built forts, dug holes to China, buried stuff. Once my grade school buddy, Brian and I, discovered an arrowhead while trundling through a nearby farmer's field. With only minor understanding of DO NOT ENTER and our heads hidden well below the yellowing tips of pre-August corn we played among the even rows until mothers' calls to dinner or the sound of a tractor scattered us into the thicket. This arrowhead, my first, Brian, a more avid trundler insisted that he'd seen plenty like this one before, after a spit shine was dull gray with flecks of white. It had an uneven ridge down the middle where the scultper had chipped carelessly. Crouched on worn out jean's knees, we admired our native treasure fingering its jagged ... read more

Vang Vieng, Laos town is overrun with nineteen year old Brits. Most can't hold their liquer, fewer handle their hard drugs, and none seem to mind making asses of themselves. Four dollars buys an all day escape on a rented motorcyle. The Vang Vieng countryside is staggeringly beautiful. Rice paddies, farmers, caves, jutting mountains, and a pocked dirt road provide one helluva ride. ... read more

1,000,000. Count them, 1-2-3-4-5-6 zeroes. That is how many zeroes come after one on the 1,000,000 kip I have just burning an unfair-currency-exchange-rate hole in my pocket right now. Damn it feels good to be a gangster. ... read more

Doesn't Richard Collier's, "The Most Dangerous Game," begin this way? Wealthy Europeans and an American, Rainsford, on a boat, leisurely cruising from one tropical place to another. They discuss man's intellectual advantage over jungle animals. Rainsford stumbles off the boat and into a nightmarish game of cat and mouse; the hunter becomes the hunted. The six hour river trip from Battambang to Siem Reap loaded with bratty British kids, an obese Australian with enough luggage to clothe an entire Mekong River village, chain-smoking Germans, and Siobhan/Ted could be a nonfiction, modern day, version of Collier's story. For the first three hours we snap photos of villages stilted over the river. It's heart-breaking to see these people living without: electricity, hospitals, roads, or options. Poor naked children from this waterworld, wave and smile at, us, from the ... read more