I don’t care much for lists when I travel. And I hate the term “Bucket List.” But I do like reflection and I believe there is a merit to an organized mind. So I decided to make a list of my most recent top ten (or so) travel experiences. I started it as an exercise in chronology. I went back in my mind to January 2023 when I was about halfway through my stay in Indonesia and moved forward from there. The 12 months that followed took me far afield to wonderful experience. At every turn I continued to enjoy the kindness of strangers. I delighted in art, music, food, and daily life from different corners of the world.
Finally, I thought it was worth making a list — one to memorialize my own feelings and thoughts and to inspire your own travel in 2024 and beyond.
Experiences I will never forget:
Komodo Dragon safari
Orangutan jungle on Borneo
Malacca & the Straits Settlements.
King cakes in Tawain
Cherry blossoms in Seoul
Yakut Sparrows baseball game in Tokyo
Family in St. Andrews
The museum of everything in Glasgow
Siccar Point
Tyneside walk in the snow in Newcastle.
Sondheim & Friends in London.
I love Indonesia. It is diverse, the facilities are good, the prices are low, the people are friendly, and the culture, natural surroundings, and history are compelling. Indonesia, 17,000 islands, has seas like America has fruited plains. Seeing Komodo Dragons and being introduced to a peddler who can communicate with them was wondrous and every bit as scary as it sounds. Our tour was during the day and our guide almost walked into one of these giant ambush hunters. When I look at this photo I ask, “What was I thinking?!?” Nonetheless, seeing these dragons — apex predators about whom very little is known but much is said — was arresting. Considering how hundreds co-exist on the island with them was both inspiring and puzzling.
Orang utans are found on two of Indonesia’s largest islands, Sumatra and Borneo. Borneo in fact, is the fourth largest island on earth. Our river boat guide was a Dyak. Twenty five years ago I might have labeled him as a “head hunter”. We saw and got close to many organutans, who were smaller than I expected. We saw amazing sites on our night time jungle walk (even if it made my sleep aboard our boat a bit uneasy.) The minute I got into the jungle I felt that Borneo was the place that all those scary and irresistible tropes of so called primitive tribes had had their origin. The thrill of it never left me.
Malacca. (with some credit to W. Somerset Maugham). Every place has a voice. There are voices to which we are more attuned to than others and so it was with me and Malacca. Its voice told me to slow down; there was nothing it asked of me other than to just be and think about the history of colonists, travelers, settlers, shipmates, and more that pasted through its straits. The British author and supposed one-time spy, W. Somerset Maugham traveled extensively in this part of the world. If any foreign destination benefited from a writer’s presence it might be here, what Maugham and his contemporaries called “The Malay” and its British controlled Straits Settlements.
I watch them fabricate the dough, mixed the meat, and create the white, soft, claim-shaped pie. I continued to watch as these pies were paced in narrow compartments in a coal heated oven. I paid my two yuan every day for one of these magnificent hot treats on a street corner of Taipei. It is hard to visit Taiwan without thinking of China and its claims to the island. I was in China over ten years ago and I think I can say that Taiwan is no China. In fact, it reminded me of Japan more than any other place in Asia
Cherry Blossoms in Seoul. Who knew? Apparently EVERYONE in Seoul. I don’t see how anything got done in an office during those April days. The parks were crowded with well-dressed locals, each with a plastic cup of coffee or bubble tea. Couples and groups enjoying the white and pink explosion of blossoms that said “Spring is here”. To me it also said that Seoul is the place to be. It is the part of Asia that looks most like the U.S. And Koreans sort of act a bit like Americans in how they carry themselves.
Yakut Sparrows baseball game in Tokyo. This was my third extended visit to Japan and the first in spring. The people, culture, landscape, food, facilities, and more are first rate. The mix of old and new, the innovative and the ancient, is like no where else. Japan makes me feel that I am 500 years in the past and 50 years in the future. It is the Land of Heit — yes. I don’t know the word for no because I am certain that I have never heard it. The Japanese are incredibly helpful to strangers. I was excited to go to a baseball game during my visit. I was so glad that I did. I first noticed the couple’s interest in me when I was returning with some food and beer to my seat at the historic park. I had been absorbed watching the Tokyo Yakut Sparrows play Yokohama — as much by the fans as the players. I was able to make it back to the general area of my seat but apparently looked confused enough that I needed some direction. This couple pointed out my seat for me, smiling broadly as they did. During one of the late innings, the woman in the couple gave me the team mascot. We could not communicate in either of our languages but words were not needed. On my ANA flight back from Japan a few days later I was asked if I was a fan when the flight attendant noticed the mascot — a key chain — that I had hung on my backpack. Heit, I said, and smiled.
The Grays in St. Andrew’s, Scotland. My Scottish born cousin by marriage grew up in St. Andrews. Famous for its golf courses and college (filled with Americans from what I could tell). I traveled to Scotaand for my first time to celebrate Isabell’s birthday. FISHTAIL was the best fish & chips I had in the UK.
I love Glasgow. I knew nothing about it and thought that Edinburgh would be my favourite city in Scotland. What I called the “Museum of Everything” is Glasgow’s Museum, built for an work exhibition. I loved it as I did everything in the city, including its almost toy-like underground subway and it architecture that proclaims its 19th century “Engine of Empire” status , Glasvegan Restaurant, and the River Clyde with wonderful street art; and is close to Stirling as well.
It was geology that brought me to Dunbar. Just a 30 minute public bus ride from my hotel is Siccar Point. If you know the name John Hutton, called the “Father of Time”, you know Siccer Point. You may also know that there is not that much to see see from the land and no boat tours were offered in November. Still, I had to see the place where one might argue modern geology started. After consulting the weather forecast, I made plans for my intervening days. I learned only by passing the house that John Muir was born in Dunbar. The museum that memorialises his childhood is small, tidy, and deeply informative. An afternoon there and at the seafood restaurant is reason enough to travel the sort distance from Edinburgh.I have to admit that Siccar Point doesn’t offer some of the geologic spectacle as other places but very few were more important to the history of geology, and of the Scottish Enlightenment as well. Siccar Point was cold, windy, stark, unforgettable. It was Scottish!
From Dundee I traveled to the north of England because that seemed the most convenient. Along the same lines I went to Newcastle upon Tyne. I had heard of Newcastle, as in “Bringing coals to Newcastle” as a indicator of accomplishing something that is not needed. It snowed in Newcastle and I took a walk along the Tyne on a sunny winter-warm day. Bridges towered above, the Tyne moved rapidly past the Glasshouse and Museum in an old mill. I was removed from the energy of the city center but not from the mood of a city that felt like home.
London is the world’s largest small town, make that collection of small towns. Every few blocks and it’s a different neighbourhood each with a football team to compulsively follow. Yet each of these small town’s were microcosms of the globe. During my first three days I found myself wondering if I had returned to Delphi, or Singapore, or Dubai. The diversity is everywhere. London and all of England is also familiar, especially I would say to a native New Yorker. Maybe that is why I choose the musical “Sondheim & Friends”, with Bernadette Peters (there is a lie going around that she is 70). I could have easy named the football themed “Dear England” or another West End show that I saw. Winston Churchill observed that the UK and the US were two great nations divided by a common language. London and New York are two great cities united by a common love of theater, news, celebrity, Christmas spectaculars, and a place for everyone.