Here I am in Hanoi, standing in front of Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. Hanoi was grey, crowded, and the air was chokingly dirty on the day we visited (we spent most of our time up north in a lovely hill area called Thanh Hoa, visiting farmers and sharing one memorable meal with local Communist officials, [...]

Dhaka, officially the most crowded city on earth, is a hive: the streets are packed; traffic is jammed; airwaves are full of Bengali and Muslim news, soaps, and musicals; shops are tiny, and people are poor. Despite it all, the residents go about their business, the society somehow holds together, and I saw no one [...]

It’s a mind-bender flying from Ho Chi Minh City, with its luxury hotels and swank restaurants, to Thanh Hoa, where I spent a day with small-time rice farmers up in the hills. In Thanh Hoa they still use water buffalo to pull their plows, and transplant rice seedlings the same way they did a thousand [...]

I arrived very late last night (or very early this morning, depending on how you look at it) in The City Once Known as Saigon. Walking around today — a tourist in full, complete with a brand new tropical shirt and camera around the neck — I am immediately targeted by every street person. Here [...]