My best tip is to take along a bottle of dish soap. I use it to hand wash clothes in the sink. This works well with light and synthetic fabric, not so well with denim, which takes too long to dry and is better suited for absorbing the most moisture of any cloth when you are a castaway adrift on a small raft and it… Read more

I WANT TO PUT THE RIGHT THINGS IN ALL THE RIGHT POCKETS. Read more

My OCD has the biggest boner right now. Read more

I travel between Belgium and England all the time. I need this in my life. I needed this in my life 9 years ago. I still do now. Sob. Read more

A note from Rose when I asked her about using Burma in this piece, rather than Myanmar; may be useful if anyone’s curious: Read more

I’m always impressed by people who have jobs (or at least, those ones who are good at their jobs) where their everyday is someone’s big moment. Wedding singers definitely qualify, and celebrants, so do midwives and undertakers. You can’t really phone it in, emotionally speaking, or you _shouldn’t_, anyway, and it’s… Read more

Name-dropping and place-dropping just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, according to what my friend Vince Vaughn told me when I ran into him in Barcelona.
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I think that’s a hard line to draw. I’d probably say “lived” if it was a few months. A few weeks though? no.
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I’ve decided that if I paid bills there, I lived there. Read more

I agree with this, actually! A lot of people who identify as “travelers” tend to come off a little smug and condescending to other people (also, if you’re not a resident of the place you’re in, you’re a tourist. It’s not a bad word.). Travel is not a magical panacea that will make you better, more interesting, or more… Read more

Can I throw in an addendum that says you can’t say you “lived”somewhere for 3 months? I don’t know what the cut off should be, but if you were on a tourist visa you probably didn’t live there. I have heard people say they “lived” in Spain for 3 weeks! 3 weeks! You were on vacation! Just say you went on vacation! Ok,… Read more

That dress in the forefront looks like what comes out of a Diaper Genie. I’m so confused.

Picture this: You’re walking through a remote Vietnamese village when you feel the telltale itch of a yeast infection. Or you’re uncontrollably spewing from both ends after drinking some tainted water in Guatemala. Either way, you’re abroad and in need of a doctor, and you don’t know what do to. Read more

If someone could’ve taught me how to differentiate razor burn from genital herpes, it would’ve saved me a lot of grief in this department....key takeaway: nothing like having a bunch of Greek doctors laugh at you and your labia. Read more

Or you can just break your leg in the middle-of-nowhere Ecuador and count on the very nice paramedics and farmers from a nearby town to strap you to a gurney and hike you out of the Andes and take you to the nearest hospital! Read more

On the plus side, if you do get a UTI or a stomach bug, it’s amazing how easy it is to get antibiotics over-the-counter at pharmacies in many countries other than the U.S. (if you’re in a city or a large town, at least). It’s been easier for me to get over hassles like that while abroad then it usually is when I’m… Read more

Can someone, pretty please, conduct a study about the women who buy hook line and sinker into these marketing schemes that eventually become a Thing(tm)You(tm)Have(tm)To(tm)Have(tm)For(tm)Your(tm)SpecialDayofSnowflakery(tm)? Read more

Does it count if you go sit in front of a nearby body of water with a 6-pack and chill together? Because I plan to moon it up like that. $7.99 + gas. Read more