The Long-Term Resident visa is one of the best things Thailand offers a foreigner — a ten-year stay, tidy re-entry, and a real sense of permanence. I’m glad I have it. But getting it taught me some expensive lessons, and … Read More
Masonry Blog + Sidebar
I’m Comfortable Alone. I Don’t Want to Be.
People watch me do this — land in a city where I can’t read a single sign, find dinner, sort the taxi, sleep fine in a room by myself halfway around the world — and they assume I’ve solved something. … Read More
The Business Card That Has Never Once Asked Me About a Business – APEC
Here is the worst way to end a trip. You have been in the air for twenty-plus hours. Your body has no idea what time it is. You shuffle off the jet bridge at Bangkok, follow the herd down toward … Read More
The Terminal Is the Most Important Number Flight Search Won’t Show You
Right now I’ve got a one-way from Minneapolis to Seoul sitting in my account, booked a while ago, and I still haven’t locked in the leg after it. Bangkok, probably — maybe somewhere else. I’ll decide later; that’s how I … Read More
They Wanted Me to Wait Until October. It’s My Heart.
A scan I almost talked myself out of getting came back with a flag on it. Nothing I could feel, nothing I’d have known was there — just a number on a report that said look closer. So they went … Read More
I Finally Did the All-Inclusive Math. Cancún, Two Kids, One Week.
A couple of weeks ago, writing about cruise drink packages, I admitted something out loud: I like all-inclusives because they let me stop thinking, and I’d never once actually checked whether that convenience was costing me money. I just assumed … Read More
The Cure Was Never Standing Still
People sometimes ask me how I got through the hardest part, and I never have a good answer ready. I freeze a little. Not because it’s too painful to say out loud — because the honest answer isn’t a thing … Read More
Delta Almost Got Beyond Diamond Right. Here’s How I’d Finish It.
Let me say up front where I’m coming from, because it colors everything that follows: I love this program. My loyalty to Delta traces back to a Northwest frequent-flyer account I opened as a kid, before Delta ever absorbed it, … Read More
Go Get Your Passport. The World Is Cheaper Than You Think.
I have a friend who tells me, regularly, that he’s jealous of my life. All the places, all the stamps. And I’ve told him, just as regularly, that he could fly out and stay in my spare room for nothing … Read More
Tell Google Flights Where You Are, Not Where You’re Going
I would never have made it to the Maldives. It was never on a list. I’m not sure it had ever crossed my mind as a real place I might actually go — it lived in that mental folder of … Read More
