guthrie's stars

Growing up in small-town Western Australia, my exposure to Croatia and the former Yugoslavia was minuscule. Like most things, my first memories are through sports: specifically the players with Croatian and Serbian ancestry playing for the Socceroos, Australia’s men’s soccer team. They were the ones with the funny sounding last names, at least to our Anglo-centric ears, with names like “ Viduka ”, once our main striker. Otherwise, the main memory I have relating to the region is doing a class project on the war impacting civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina in second grade. I made a poster on a pin-up board, sticking on pictures and text with glue, describing the innocent children there. Our teacher tried to impart upon us how these were normal kids just like us, going through a very sad experience.  Despite these occasional encounters with the region—a Croatian friend from high school, some Serbian democracy activists who I saw speak during college, gorgeous beach images of Croatia...

My paternal grandfather’s first wife, Chong Len Feng, was born in Jamaica, to a Chinese father and an Afro-Jamaican mother. Soon after her birth, she was sent back to China to be raised Chinese, before an arranged marriage to my grandfather brought her to Borneo Island in the 1920s. As far as I know, I’m the first member of my family to return to Jamaica since Len Feng left.  Although the primary reason I came was for a relaxing, warm winter escape, Jamaica and the Caribbean has long been a place of fascination to me. There are the common cultural touchstones: ‘Cool Runnings’, an obsession with Bob Marley in high school, and discovering a love of Jamaican beef patties at DC’s various Jamaican restaurants (like Aussie meat pies, only flakier!).  But even earlier than these interactions, my relationship with the region was formed through my dad’s love of the West Indies’ cricket team. Growing up a cricket obsessed boy in the 90s, I recall one Monday morning, when one of my class...

"Dinner with the Commissioner" and "Black Town/White Town," parts 2 and 3 in an occasional series from "Flatnose: The Axis of Evil Tour" There is a dialogue that I have with locals here on a daily basis. "Your country?," they ask, sometimes gently, sometimes more demandingly. "Australia," I respond, occasionally throwing a list of famous Australian cricket players at them in order to convince them that I am, despite my appearance, Australian. "But you look like…"—and then they pause—"Japanese!" Increasingly, I meet other trans-national floaters such as myself from other countries. A Vietnamese Frenchman working in China, a German of Indian descent studying in Washington, a Korean Kazakh on her way to Liberia (she had the hardest jumble of ethnic-national-residency for me to process). So I can understand, especially in a place where we such folk are rare, how confusing it can be. "Dinner with the Commissione...

Spa life in Rishikesh, part 1 in an occasional series from "Flatnose: On the Road" "I'm in Rishikesh, Dad! They call it the 'yoga capital of India!,'" exclaimed the girl sitting next to me at our internet cafe. Forty years after the Beatles came to this traditionally holy town on the Ganges for their famous studies with the Maharishi, Rishikesh is now a full-blown "spiritual tourism" center. Avoiding the cow dung and ignoring the begging of the town's many religious mendicants, one soon realizes that almost all the stores around Swarg Ashram and Laxan Jhula cater to foreigners. Even the ashrams, Hindu traditional communities, seem filled with backpackers as much as local pilgrims, who have been using the town as a staging point for pilgrimages to Hinduism's holiest sites just north in the Himalayan ranges. Ayurvedic massage and reiki, rafting and trekking, yoga and meditation: the town's billboards are a backpacker's vision laid...

I’m about to leave Chengdu to go traveling for almost three months, but in some ways, I’ve already long since left town. These weeks of planning and research are supposed to be the easy part, where I get all of my ducks in a row, my couches and hostels and tickets booked in advance, my visa papers in order, all ready to process. Instead, I’m going in with only the barest of bookings made, three out of four visas still unprocessed (I have the one required first, however) and my plans only loosely routed out. Planning everything out from one’s living room can be daunting. And in a way: it seems to miss the point of backpacking, the room for spontaneity and—rare in today’s society--adventure. This will be very much a go-with-the-flow journey, and whether it leads me to spiritual clarity and memorable new international friendships or to sweaty lines and bureaucratic hoops of frustration or robbery, street side curry-induced illness, minor tragedy or simply traveler aimlessness is uncertain...

Originally posted in  April, 2006 My guise is up as soon as I reach into my pocket. It’s just too Lonely Planet-perfect to resist: the smoky coals, the roasting satay ayam, the Malay man’s skillful fanning wrist. As I gingerly ease the camera out into the open, two young girls behind the stall shriek and take cover, suddenly self-conscious of the foreigner in their midst. After purchasing five satay sticks for one ringgit, I quickly wander off to explore another part of the bustling Friday night market where, as long as I don’t attempt any verbal communication, my Chinese blood can temporarily bleed into the crowd, passing me off as simply another local. I linger with unnecessary caution at Sri Lalang’s main intersection, a crossing traveled more commonly by motorbike than by car. Helmet-less mothers, sometimes with as many as three child passengers: two toddlers up front against the handles and the oldest clutching on from behind, chug by dutifully. Most of the storefronts have cl...