Last summer, after staying in lovely Bukit Lawang for three weeks, I took four days to visit some other parts of Sumatra: Berastagi/Brastagi, on the slopes of the volcanic Mt. Sibayak, where I planned to spend two nights and hike up the volcano, and gorgeous Lake Toba and the island…

Yves, who’s at the Hub Pub in Chiang Khong, showed us how to harvest a banana flower, during a trek into the nearby mountains.  

Chiang Khong is kind of like that kid at school who doesn’t talk much but then you get to know them and find out they’re really witty and cool and easy to be with. Chiang Khong is up there in northern Thailand on the Mekong. It’s where you pick up…

Dateline: Bukit Lawang, Sumatra. On the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park, where orang-utans still swing in the trees, gibbons sing out for mates, pythons slither and corpse flowers stink. Brown-eyed boys tout jungle treks and strum lovelorn tunes on their beat-up guitars. They roll their r’s and they…