Last year, I went on date to see the movie Kedi at The Music Box here in Chicago. Kedi, in Turkish, simply means "cat," and the film documents the cats in Istanbul who rule the streets and seem, all at once, to belong to everyone...

I didn't particularly love Koh Samui the first time around. Nothing against it, it just wasn't the most memorable place. But that's where I ended up for my last few days of vacation in Thailand. I was having a terrible time deciding on where to...

"Two weeks is more than most Americans get for vacation each year." I reminded myself of that in my Chiang Mai hostel, two weeks before leaving. I'd been traveling for fifteen months, eleven of those in Asia, and it was time to go home. Two weeks, at...