The Luxpats

Category: Southeast Asia

  • It’s Not You It’s Me, Koh Phangan

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    luxpat
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    Koh Phangan, we need to talk. No, things have been going great, but I’m not in a good place right now and I think maybe– No it’s not that. You’re one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever met. I mean your coconuts…WOW. Your beaches are stunning, and I love that thing you do with…

  • Wish You Were Here: Penang, Malaysia

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    luxpat
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    It’s 10 p.m. and our street in Penang is stirring to life. The two girls on the corner have been chopping vegetables and heating big pots of frying oil since early evening. They’re settling into the rush now, stirring, dishing, carrying plates, taking money, coaxing the smells further and further out of the pot and down the…

  • Wish You Were Here: Huay Tung Tao Lake, Thailand

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    luxpat
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    Winter never touches Thailand. From November through February, Thailand’s cool season is a perfect summer of endlessly sunny days that peak in the upper eighties. Chiang Mai is blessedly devoid of the shirt-sticking humidity Bangkok is known for, and so going to Huay Tung Tao lake is a lot like going to a lake back…

  • Getting Dissed by a Dolphin

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    luxpat
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      Growing up, there were two kinds of kids in the world: kids who had been to Disneyland and kids who hadn’t. If you were in the first group, we poor kids naturally hated your guts. My own family’s version of a vacation was a 13-hour non-stop drive to Salt Lake City to visit relatives…

  • The Philippines: Steam and Ghosts, Part III

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    luxpat
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    The zoo is an hour’s drive in the rain, through soupy fields of rice paddies. Occasionally we pass a farmhouse that seems to float in the water around it. A family sits on the porch: a grandmother,  a mother, and a small boy watching a teenaged boy steering their water buffalo through the muddy furrows.…

  • The Philippines: Steam and Ghosts

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    luxpat
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    They send a car to fetch me in the morning, even though the call center is only a kilometer from my hotel. I am a client, and they are careful about security. On the drive we pass through shafts of dusty sun that pierce the dome above us. Even the sunny days steam here, even…