by Eliot Stein

“Lake Como touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing.”
Aldus Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay, 1934
Where do we come from?
Huxley may not have realized it at the time, but when he traded in [...]

by Kevin McCaughey
I brought my ukulele on our Caribbean cruise.  Every afternoon my mother and I sang old standards in the cabin, while my father reclined on his bed, reading Robert Ludlum and wagging the book to the beat when we got to a rousing number like “Five-Foot Two.”
It was December of 2002, and my [...]

by Mohezin Tejani
This morning, perched on a wooden chair in my teeming tropical garden in northern Thailand, I am writing about Africa, the continent that still holds a firm grip on me. The sun’s warmth, after the heavy dawn shower, has brought plants and insects to life. Brown centipedes and gray snails are crawling towards [...]

by Darrin DuFord

Can two hundred tons of chili save a city?
Exciting events are not supposed to happen in the suburbs.  I mean, what would the neighbors think
So I wondered what the neighbors thought as I cruised past their curtained living rooms while shell casings flew in front of my nose.  It was midnight and I [...]

by Tom Weller
No Chadian village is complete without a fou.  I discovered this in 1993 while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Beinamar, Chad.
The fou is the village crazy person.  Beinamar’s fou was typical of the fous I encountered in villages all over Southern Chad.  A middle-aged man, he wore only a pair of [...]

by Charlie Levine
Zipping along a mangrove-lined creek not much wider than his 16-foot homemade skiff, Jewel, Capt. Ansil Saunders cut the engine as we approached a pond-like opening in the lush greenery. The boat coasts to a stop, and the only thing I could hear is the wake of the small vessel sloshing against the [...]

by Taylor Jennings
Reza Shahnan’s entrance one morning during breakfast at the Park Guest Quarters in Kabul the summer of 2003 caused a bit of a stir. He was one of those unusually tall Afghan men and was wearing a finely tailored suit in sharp contrast to the olive drabs, jeans and photographer’s vests worn by [...]

by Craig Stevaux
I had every reason to think I knew Udon Thani. After all, I’d lived in the Northeastern Thai provincial capitol for five years at the height of the Vietnam War. I knew the main roads that spun off the three aligned traffic circles on the highway that ended at the Mekong River, only [...]

by Kevin McCaughey
A blind date in a small bed.   In theory it seemed a pretty ideal proposition.
The girl’s name was Dasha, a friend of Aylita’s.  Alyita was Warren’s girlfriend.  And Warren was my friend and teaching colleague.  The two girls planned to visit us in Samara, taking the overnight train from Kazan, 300 miles up [...]

by John M. Edwards
IN ANTIGUA, A YOUNG JOHN M. EDWARDS RUBS ROLLIES WITH A REAL LIVE RASTAFARIANAND LIVES TO REGRET IT.
“BOY! BOY!”
I looked over at the sculpted resort hedge, illuminated by a Tikki torch, and stepped uncertainly off the porch, like a young adult waking up from a Frank W. Dixon Hardy Boys mystery.
“Boy! Boy! [...]