Tag Archives: passport

AtW #37: Never Lose Your Passport!

My guest today is Moisés Santiago. We touched on a variety of topics, including being a teacher in China, spaying your cat (not for the faint of heart), staying calm in stressful situations, and the importance of maintaining possession of your passport while traveling abroad. It turns out that both of us have had the pleasure of losing our passport, though his experience had significantly worse consequences than mine.

The Streets of Old Hanoi

At last we arrived in Hanoi. This was to be Katie's final destination in Vietnam, and the beginning of my solo overland trip to Beijing. We stayed in the Old Quarter, a small section in the middle of the city. The Lonely Planet calls traffic in the Old Quarter “oppressive,” and I couldn't agree more. Simply walking across the street required absolute concentration and patience to avoid the swarms of motorcycles. But, as in every other Vietnamese city we had visited, Hanoi delighted the senses.

Manzhouli: Land of Matryoshka Dreams

The hotel’s front desk was on the third floor. The manager, a middle-aged man with a comb-over and a leather jacket, held a cigarette between the index and middle fingers of his right hand while clicking his ancient computer’s mouse. He was playing solitaire. When he saw me walk up with my huge backpack, he took one last drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray, next to its brethren. To my relief, he told me that there were vacancies, and rooms were only 50 rmb. I had been prepared to spend many times that amount on this holiday weekend.