Discovering San Francisco: dive bars, red meat, strips clubs, and martinis.

  By the time I first made it to Haight-Ashbury the only hippies left were crusty gutter punks yelling at the tourists from their cardboard sidewalk guesthouses. A jangle of extremes. A mix of cultures, tempered by the past, with…

Paris. Chasing the romantic ghost.

  When I asked my daughter if she could pick any place in the world to see she chose Paris. A city hopelessly entwined with the collective consciousness of postcard stereotypes and cartoon romanticism. Both deeply longed for in my…

Fantastic pork knuckle (Khao Kha Moo) and other street food delights in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Whereas Bangkok can be an urban grind choked with traffic Chiang Mai opens up considerably. The town is much smaller and the city center is very pedestrian friendly. With less traffic to fight, the food can get more mobile. I…