Ko Phi Phi, a drop dead gorgeous, jungled limestone and white sand butterfly is one of Thailand’s signature islands. Just fifteen years ago it was a backpacker’s secret, laced with sandy trails and dotted with a few thatched bungalows. Then it blew up, grew concrete streets, plugged into absurdly loud sound systems, and became the cheesy fire dance Mecca of the south seas.
On a somewhat stylish visit to Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, Adam Skolnick comes face to face with dragons and lives to tell …
Spa Magazine – October 2005 It was a historic sausage. It was so good that at the risk of contradicting medical fact, I …
Men’s Journal Magazine – November 2006 East Africa Conjure East Africa in your mind’s eye and you’ll pull up archetypal images of an …
The Moken people first caught my attention after the 2004 tsunami. Their village on South Surin island in the Andaman Sea was wiped out, and yet they had no casualties. They escaped to the mountains because their legends about the seasonal patterns of the sea primed them to notice nature’s signs. Since I live in Los Angeles, where nature’s voice is drowned out by the roar of cars, this amazed me — although it wasn’t that long ago when I would hike to a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains and sit for hours, wanting so badly to tap into the great mystery that there were times I swore I could feel nature’s rhythms and read its signs. But as the years have worn on I’ve lost that connection, and my culture lacks the stories and legends to lead me there