A Taste of Travel Fun to Come (a.k.a. excerpts)

"The sound system comes to life. The air pressure from the pumping speakers distorts my face like a 3 G Space Shuttle lift-off. I sit back and relax as we dart into traffic, reminding myself that one of the glories of traveling is to experience new things, like listening to “Hotel California” at a volume that would make Metallica proud while blood pours out of my ears, leaving a trail behind us on the steaming Bangkok pavement."

"There’s a reason foreign food is called foreign—it’s not what you’re accustomed to eating. To me eggs that have been buried in the ground for ten years or eel brains qualify as foreign food, especially since I didn’t know eels had brains as I understand them. But to someone in, say, Chiang Mai, Spam and Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs cereal probably seem at least as incomprehensible. Hell, they are to me and I live here."

"If a grocery store doesn’t have small change they give you a piece of candy instead. Sure, it tastes better than the bills, but if I wanted candy I’d buy some. Besides, they don’t give you a choice of flavors. I need to pay closer attention because the coffee ones might be Rp25, vanilla 50, and that odd-tasting tropical something-or-other is their way of saying “Don’t come back until you have small bills.” But I have a plan. I’m not going to eat my candy change. I’m going to save them and pay for my next grocery purchase with them, though something tells me that if I do they’ll give me my change in grains of rice."