This unlikely story is mostly about the immigrant girl, but it started with the immigrant man. And it ended with every country whose bounty and success attract people seeking a better life, because there in front of me was the whole immigration debate in a nutshell: a girl fleeing a country where she was valued less even than the clothes she wore, a new country that took her in, and a local population increasingly fed up with immigrants.
There’s an especial magic to seeing animals in urban environments, like a bonus prize, an expected and even undeserved doubling up on beauty. I usually prefer nature to cities (though Hong Kong is pretty nice), but I recognize what cities have to offer. I like good restaurants and air conditioning and gourmet espresso and book…
What I didn’t expect was the ubiquitous graffiti in this former Soviet bloc country that was now part of the European Union.
To dine at Orfali Bros in Dubai is to discover poetry for the first time after a lifetime of prose. So even though I don’t usually write about food or restaurants, I’ll make an exception this time. Orfali Bros — one of S. Pellegrino’s 50 best restaurants in the world and the recipient of a…
This is Dubai, a cosmopolitan city carved against all odds out of the Arabian Desert — which in turn is almost a million square miles of harsh, barely livable, practically uninhabited vastness. But to look around Dubai you’d think water grows on trees (and you’d think there are trees). Here an outdoor pedestrian mall is…
A man walks down the street staring at his phone, ignoring the world-famous Eiffel Tower rising behind him. What do we ignore in our own lives that other people would travel the world to see?
Kuala Lumpur showcases Malaysia’s harmony and parity among different racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups. At least officially. Off the record and quietly, though,…
“Are you an expert?” I asked. The answer was a lesson for anyone who ever tries to learn anything.
As I toured Kuala Lumpur, I saw various houses of worship, a mosaic of ethnicities, a plethora of restaurants, a cross-section of Asia, an endless supply of shops, and a doozie of a traffic jam. But this photo of Kampung Baru…
I was so proud of my New-York taxi-hailing skills, artfully applied in Kowloon, Hong Kong, of all places. But then when the police got involved…
A magical collection of “luminous ovoids” transforms Hong Kong’s urban landscape at dusk, carving a peaceful, happy, otherworldly retreat into the space between the busy harbor and the even busier skyscrapers that define Hong Kong Island. Here time slows. Adults frolic. Smiles abound. And reality and make-believe mingle. The exhibition is courtesy of teamLab, the…
