Adam's Ambles

Under the Banyan Tree in Burma

I got onto World Hum.  Quite proud of this, really, as World Hum features some of the best travel writing talent out there.  I'm very pleased to have made the cut.

I was on my way home to visit my grandmother when she had a stroke.

Home. That’s a relative term when home refers to Burma. Because I’m half-Burmese, Burma—which I prefer to “Myanmar,” a name conjured up by the nation’s dictators—has always felt a little like home.

My relatives, even Burmese I’ve never met, treat me like a long lost son. I see elements of myself—my passivity, my faith, my taste for rich, oily hot food, and whatever capability I have for empathy—realized in this country and its culture. It’s a self-centered worldview, but travel can be narcissistic, especially in countries like Burma, which seems to naturally lend travelers a sense of self-discovery.

Yet sometimes, Burma feels more foreign than the rest of the world. Because I don’t speak Burmese. Because I put my feet up on a chair and inadvertently become the clumsy Westerner I really am. Because, geographically, home for me is really Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay. And maybe, most pertinently, because I have no real experience of the poverty and fear the average Burmese lives with daily.

From Lonely Planet's Travel Blog

I rock the US Campaign Trail:

An American's guide to America, for young Australians

What do Americans and Australians have in common? Reciprocal working-holiday visa rights, for a start. A phenomenon I write about here.

As an American, I want to thank former Australian Prime Minister John Howard for one of his last strokes of statecraft. The man was a trailblazer for backpacks the size of large children and furtive sexual encounters in filthy hostels. Howard had the American government grant its first ever working-holiday visas - to young Australians. I'm pretty happy about this turn of events. Maybe you'll all learn how to pronounce 'aluminum'.

Australians have been laden with a great responsibility: to learn about my often misunderstood country, and teach Americans about working holidays - the snooze button on the alarm clock of life. Remember, Australians pretty much invented the tradition, giving untold thousands of British school-leavers the chance to support the Australian fruit-picking industry and get badly sunburned in the process. For the record it can be a crap way to have a vacation. I remember standing in a kitchen in Brisbane with a mop, drenched in sweat, asking my pommy co-worker, 'So where are all the goddamned koalas?'

Melbourne's culture of cool

Taking it down under with an article on Melbourne:

Melbourne is Australia's second city. Yes, yes, you are, Melbourne, as much as you might deny that brash and beautiful Sydney dominates the world's image of Australia. You could say Melbourne is the Boston to Sydney's New York, or, more accurately, San Francisco to Sydney's Los Angeles; either way, one of the few flaws Melbournians will admit is the chip dug into their shoulders by the Sydney Opera House.

Let's take that analogy further, because Melbourne really is like Northern California with cricket and Australian accents. Imagine if a parallel universe ran between Sonoma and the Australian state of Victoria, and through said portal runs schizophrenic weather (Melbourne days can shift from sunny to thunderstorms in the space of a few hours), long expanses of sunbaked wine country, storm-tossed Pacific coastline and a young, beautiful population infused with the spirit of possibility, experimentation and hit-or-miss innovation.

Above all, both share a love of "lifestyle" in all its incarnations: eating, drinking, shopping and art. One great Aussie-Cali commonality: an obsession with organic ingredients, the fair-trade-y-ness of their coffee and the quality of said cups of joe — plus the soy milk.

Time to visit Burma again

Here's a December article on why people should start traveling in Burma again. It also, I believe, is one of the few travel stories in the mainstream media that addresses the actual history/culture of Burma.

It's time to go to Myanmar, also known as Burma. This might sound funny given the October crackdown on pro-democracy supporters, but based on talks with family and journalists in Southeast Asia, I believe most Burmese are eager to see tourists in their country again. Tourists bring money to the struggling economy and, more important, remind the Burmese their government isn't the sole determinant of reality in the world.

The Burmese have always wanted to share their country, because they don't like playing second fiddle to the rest of Southeast Asia. I know, because I'm half Burmese. I know the country where my roots run deep is forgotten by many travelers, but locally it is considered a cultural fountainhead, and was once the baddest boy on the block.

Haunted Maryland

So, I've been pretty shit about updating this blog, but partly that's because I've been selling a fair amount of my articles. And I realize I should start posting those articles here.  So without further ado: Travels through Haunted Maryland (wooooooooooooooooo):

A 22-year-old waiter at an elegant tidewater B&B at the tip of Maryland's Western Shore washes up on a sharp October night.

"I'm going home," he says to the late-shift dishwasher. "You'll be OK?"

There were no guests at the B&B that night, and she would be cleaning the house alone.

"Si," she says. "But no alone. Me. Y dos ninas."

The waiter pauses, remembering the stories. "Phantasmas?"

"Si."

"Scary phantasmas?"

"Oh no, no!" the dishwasher says, laughing. "Las ninas esta muy bonita."

I know that story because, four years ago, I was the waiter. Our dishwasher swore that two little girls haunted the upper floor of the building, and I've never doubted her. Because the house, like Maryland itself, is weighted with a creeping, skin-pricking age, the kind of years that well up in an old room and creep across your neck.

There are plenty of good reasons to visit Maryland in the fall. The changing leaves are fantastic, and the crisp air is invigorating. And in time for Halloween, Maryland's long dead - and those who believe in them - creep out of their holes.